Born in 1947, the warm 1960s surprised you in the middle of your youth.

Our family had lost war. Not much was said about him since my father's death. Anyway, there was an uncle, an anarchist, who didn't stop. There was something in the environment, even if we couldn't know what it was. The mother, for example, was hit by the bombing of Otxandio. From there he went to Bilbao. He counted his stay at the Hotel Carlton, the time to enter the boat to evacuate the children...

To Havana?

But he bothered our grandfather and asked him as much as a Republican who was on call and begged him not to go up. They didn't embark. They walked back and remained hidden. My mother sometimes told us these scrolls. On other occasions, we asked him and he told us nothing. I remember my grandfather who was sick from jail, tuberculous. I got anecdotes, until about 17-18 years old I started to compose the puzzle. I went to the nuns' college, and there it was all Franco, that education of the time. At home, the environment was different: not just the Catholic religion. Fortunately, what he saw at home won that battle.

At 18 years old.

Yes, I met the Piru, my man, and his friends. That also helped me sort out the ideas. It was the time of the first refugees in Vitoria-Gasteiz… That was when I was awakened by political conscience. It was an attack on a train somewhere, and I remember people, people from the PNV and others being arrested. ETA also released some of them here, as I have later known. For example, Mario Onaindia was here. Sabin Arana Bilbao was shot here, arrested here. Our greatest friend still lives in France. It hasn’t returned… I remember how Arantxa Aretxandieta escaped. Repression also took place in Álava. Motriku [Jesús María Markiegi], the young man killed in Gernika in the 1970s, was from here.

He first studied Social Assistant, then studied Journalism, in Pamplona, in the early 1980s.

I studied first in Vitoria, but I didn't like that social worker. I worked as a teacher at an adult school in Abetxuko, in the Vitoria neighborhood. Later, I had the opportunity to marry and work in Pamplona. I worked and studied journalism. I already had two daughters.

He has just made a book on the massacre of 3 March 1976: 3 March 1976 (S., 2012). Your second son was still in the womb, as we read in the book. You haven't jumped in time!

Ha, ha, ha. I went to Pamplona with three or four years to our second, yes. Maybe I woke up on March 3 ... Until then I knew I could think, think, but then I knew that commitment is necessary. In other words, it is necessary to transform reality, as Marx said. Since 3 March I started in the Pro-Amnesty Committees, and since then I have been a grassroots militant, without further ado.

Tell us the atmosphere surrounding you during that time.

Before 3 March, strikes had taken place in Vitoria-Gasteiz, particularly in the Michelín area of Vitoria-Gasteiz. I remember the workers entering the Church of the Homeless, followed by a flock of police officers. Among those affected was the process of dismantling Burgos, which has already been appealed. I had the first demonstrations. We do participate in them. Once, as soon as we started, we had to run in front of the Jesús Obrero school. It was the time we heard Radio Paris in the car. Then the shooting of Txiki and Otaegi.

And all three of the FRAP.

Yes, the ones we never mentioned. There were also demonstrations, but very small. We were always the same. Of course, they did not allow them to manifest themselves. When it was the September 27 shooting, I was three months pregnant waiting for my first daughter. We were in the Plaza de la Virgen Blanca when the police arrived and we climbed the stairs of San Miguel, a lot of people. They took one of our friends, a girl, they had it inside for a month. At the same time, when one of our friends escaped, my man was doing military service. For they took him and locked him in his cell until the remaining time of service, year and three months was over! I would like to say that before 3 March there was movement in Vitoria. An environment that helped us to create awareness. Before, however, it was May of 68…

Have you heard of this?

Bounce, yes. I had guys in Paris. Our mother and an aunt went to see them with a seven-day intention, but they couldn't return them immediately: the month of May caught them, the strikes on both sides, and they had to stay there for a month. I was curious to know that May, and that's when I first heard Sartre's name. There are many elements at stake, but, after all, the key is compromise. We thought, we talked, we thought about the revolution, the Cuban revolution at the time, the independence of Algeria… It’s very good to talk about it, and we acted, but the militancy has to put all the ingredients in its place and form the puzzle.

Around the 3 March massacre…

This helped me put the pieces in place. So yes. The previous ones were not massive movements. That on 3 March, yes. The protest took place when the company Forjas Alavesas joined the strike, when the struggle intensified. In any case, I also remember before March, at Christmas, at a demonstration in the centre of Vitoria-Gasteiz, in which the workers dress the divers. From Christmas to March, two calls for strike were made. They paralyzed the industry, but the city didn't. On March 3, the city was completely paralyzed by the workers. Vitoria was mute.

Silence, that's what you wrote in the book.

Absolute. Protesters in one, policemen in the other… You couldn’t see anything else. It was the most general strike I've ever seen in my life. At times, there was no one on the street. Our mother told us: “This silence reminds me of the civil war.” A soft wind was blowing, and on the street of the Fueros, for example, the papers were moving. It looked like a deserted city. I've never seen anything like that. The Assembly had done a great deal of work to raise people ' s awareness.

What happened the day after 3 March?

Sessions of support to the Assembly, arrests on the one hand… Nabes, inside Olabarria… And silence, what brings the revolution, if you want. But the achievements were great. Apart from those who accused of sedition, in the rest of the cases they returned to their jobs. Over the next five years, the factory agreements were not fragile. It wasn’t “killed five people and it’s already!”, no. The situation of the workers improved. For example, representatives of the vertical union disappeared. The representative was elected by the assembly of workers. Another thing is what the Transition meant: the unions emerged, instead of the assembly began working the committees, CCOO and UGT joined the Transition… Little by little, the essence of this struggle has been lost. The bureaucracy of the unions is always there.

Is it past 3 March, forgotten?

Many have forgotten it, they have abandoned it for many years. Until 3 March it seemed that it had to be forgotten, the demand then, the struggle then. It seemed like you had to hide. The City Hall did not want to make memories, the police distributed firewood, the unions in silence, the small media impact… They considered it a cursed day when it was a small revolution! That has been the case for many years. That is no longer the case.

All the work on the 3 March massacre is what you published at the end of last year. Anyway, he's a journalist, he's collaborating by writing a column in the Gara newspaper once a week. What kind of journalism did you begin?

I started in radio, in culture, in society, in politics. From time to time, I made reports of all kinds in newspapers here and there, until I was given the opportunity to write what I thought. The last time I worked in the newspaper for eight hours, I did so in the Algerian newspaper, until it was closed. He was in charge of opinion. It is a time that comes spontaneously, that is, counting the news to give an opinion on the situation.

What is the journalist's present position on?

He's the messenger of power. It's lost a lot. I see a lot of young people in college, for example, who don't have a journalist's criteria. I remember what they were saying. “The journalist should know what the news will be that will arouse interest.” See what's worth to be news when you go down the street. Without a journalistic criterion, you will hardly bear witness to a human, political or social fact. Or investigative journalism: starting from concrete data and developing research. I think that has been lost. On the other hand, the press conferences, the political news… are always one and the same, there are no news!

Why do you fear the politician appearing in the newspapers?

Some of you are going to be afraid, yes, but others are fascinated to show up there.

Bad looking, I meant.

Because they've done wrong, whatever it is. They have done wrong and, you know, they are aware that they have done wrong. However, he could not be mistaken. They also have communication offices, through which to pass to get anything. If you don't take a step, you won't, you'll get the technical details of what's been news so far, completely forgetting the human. That doesn't help journalism. If you request an interview, you must send questions in advance. Everything is tied, they don't let you paint. It's tired.

Finally, you came to the forefront of the policy: He was the top of the list of the D3M Democracia 3 Million platform in Álava, even though you were in jail.

I've always been a grassroots militant, I've already told you. I started in committees in favour of amnesty, and since then I have been a militant in one way or another. When they started with the illegal parties, I shook my face, I found it barbaric what they wanted to do. Then, when they started looking for well-defined people, they came to see me to participate in the press conferences and all of this and that. So, until they put me at the top of the list. Anyway, thanks to the young people around me, I'm a chaotic. The young people helped me a lot. Without them I would not fill my agenda! It was the compromise that the militancy asked me for, nothing else. It's like when I've been touched by pasting posters. Well, they said it to me once and it's not bad said. “It’s militant what you do when you have to do what you have to do.” Both in public and in secret. Even more so in the Basque Country.

That commitment led him to jail. Did you expect something like this?

No. The day before the arrest, at the exit of the notary, a friend told me: "Didn't you realize we were only surrounded by the police? ". “No!” I say. I do what I have to do, not looking right or left or backwards. When the platform was formed, I was asked to put my name on the list, and I said yes. And no, I didn't think they were going to give that much importance to my person. I didn't expect jail. That’s why it influenced me so much in those early days… I had a hard time, in those times when my man was going to have surgery. I knew my daughters would also care...

“Those first days,” he says.

Yes. I didn't know what was going to come, how long was I going to be there. I started thinking about whether it would be better to change my chip and get used to being inside. Then, when I was taken to Valladolid, a friend of Vitoria happened to me there – that helped me a lot – and when I started to change my chip, when I had already overcome the discomfort of the first twenty days, I left free.

They were released, but they were waiting for trial for three years.

Yes. It wasn't good years. However, when I was called to the press conferences, or when we did the hearings, I was there. The jail, of course, impressed me, but it didn't take away my strength to keep my commitment. Bad moments also help you live. When I was inside I relativized a lot of things, I enjoyed little things: I liked listening to music in the jail yard, reading a good book, talking to a friend… The inside, the jail, taught me to appreciate little things you don’t appreciate when you’re on the street. And people. The companions I found in jail, for example, their sweetness, their ideological strength… Those people have since been very special. Some are on the street, some are inside, they have to be on the street. The Parot doctrine! They had long had to be on the street. The priority is to take them out. It is not enough to fill the streets once a year, you have to fill them every day!