Josu Barandica (Bermeo, 1939) knew perfectly all the secrets of that giant building, as he studied there for 13 years. On 5 November, therefore, he entered the seminar in Derio without any problems, driving a second-hand quadribus, although by then all the surrounding areas had been occupied by the police.

They came directly from San Juan de Luz, from the press conference that accompanied the four winds the lockdown begun the day before by the Abades, with Juan Mari Arrangi and Angel Zelaieta. Through Telesforo Monzón, The Times, Le Monde, Reuters and other international media gathered at the Angelu abbey of Piarres Xarriton to address the issue. “The issue was very serious, we held a full seminar, and that press conference was our strongest speaker,” Barandica said after 50 years.

The imprisonment of dozens of Biscayan priests who remained for twenty-five days at the Derio seminary since 4 November 1968 was not an isolated event, but another eye of the chain of concern that existed within the church of the Basque Country among the young priests and seminarians. The young people who witnessed and experienced the oppression of Franco, not only denounced the close link between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the regime, but also claimed a Church that was not “subject to the intention and life of capitalism”, called the Basque Working People.

It is wrong to believe that this is a remote history, because, as now, it was more about changing the system than about religion and faith, than about changing the same system that is now in force.

With the action of Derio they wanted to obtain the intervention of the Vatican, and although they did not, they ended the lockdown convinced that the appointment of the Basque bishop José María Cirarda as apostolic administrator of Bizkaia would bring with it some change. But the few hopes soon faded: jail, exile, torture, fines -- they continued to be the bread of every day.

Parishes as a refuge against Franco

From the very moment when the Francoist “crusade” began in 1936, the Spanish Catholic Church found dissidents within itself. Do not forget the Basque priests shot by golfers, some of them, such as José Aristimuño Olaso Aitzol, who were tortured to the point of distorting the face in Ondarreta prison. For his part, the bishop of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Mateo Múgica, died locked and blind in the Zarautz desert, after his conscience forced him not to support the uprising.

The letter of the 339 Basque abades, signed in 1960, once again showed Basque dissent. ETA was born two years earlier, and both abbeys and convents became a refuge from the clandestine struggle. Through groups such as Herri Gaztedi, cultural activities were promoted in the villages. In Orozko, for example, in the parish of La Barandica, social preparatory courses were organized.

Why did they get into those cases? The question has an easy answer for the former abbot: “We use our own bells.” The Church was very strong among the citizens, but at the same time it was subjected to dictatorship, and they took advantage of this contradiction to unite the people: persecuted, with difficulties to survive, workers… “In our sermons we talked about rights”.

One of these sermons was fined by Juan Mari Arrangi (Durango, 1941) for preaching against torture and detention. Ordered at the age of 25, he began his ecclesiastical career in the mining areas of Ortuella and witnessed the situation and political repression of his workers: “The first reaction was to denounce by sermons and writings, but the ecclesiastical hierarchy remained complicit in the regime.”

After the false referendum in 1966, a group of priests and religious sent an open letter to Franco, in Spanish and Basque, in the face of the emergency situation first established in Bizkaia:

“For you and your government will have reason to take this decision, because we cannot stay without casting our cry of grief and rejecting ourselves, when we see the facts that have been pronounced and the shameful situation in our country.”

“But the words were not enough,” says Arrangi, “it was time to move on to the facts.”

Indarra Group

Among the priests there were a number of opinions among those who said that it was necessary to act more harshly and those who did not see anything clear. The House of Spiritual Exercises in Begoña became the epicenter of debates and programs. Those who were in higher ecclesiastical responsibilities accused the most committed priests of “making politics”, precisely they resorted to the political organization imposed since the war.

They met at the Abades Coordinator to start preparing the activities – the name “Borroka” began to be used shortly before Derio’s lockdown, under the slogan “Against Hardness”. The first coup d ' état occurred in 1967: The Gran Vía de Bilbao was filled with demonstrators with a fountain that joined the workers of the Etxebarri Strip Mill factory, who carried a long strike.

That's how 1968 came. The year Marthing Luther King was killed. And Txabi Etxebarrieta. Paris. Prague. Vietnam. Junta de Arantzazu and Zamora prison. Meliton Manzanas. Son of Itziar. Conclusions of the fifth assembly. The creation of different fronts within ETA will mean, in Barandica’s words, that the organization “is incorporated into the themes of the people”, which will have a great influence in the coming years.

During the months of July and August 1968, a group of priests will hold two enclosures in the offices of the Bishopric of Bilbao, including the prohibition of funeral masses in favor of Etxebarrieta to demand the rejection of the order of the Civil Governor. The answer is the same and we can read it in a letter that is kept in the archive of the Benedictine in Lazkao: “It serves as a scandal to the faithful, and as an offense to the Church and the Homeland”

Derio: “Four, four, thousand”

4 November, at 4 p.m., and a thousand pesetas in the pocket for maintenance expenses. Four, four, thousand. This was the slogan to go to the court of Derio's seminary. Tired of the eternal answers, the priests planned this action with the intention of doing something stronger. But why Derio? “If something was going on in the long term, we couldn’t get into a cathedral,” Barandica says, “we needed a building like this: beds, rooms… and it was a place we knew well, that was important. But above all, the seminar would be a big resonance box.”

The lockdown had not been thought of from the next day until the next day. They had previously worked well on their message in an extensive report. The skeleton was the work of Luis Mari Laibarra, abbot of the Urigoiti district of Orozko. Laibarra lived in the same house as Barandica: “He built the document, wrote it and then commented it at night.”

The final touches were carried out in the house of Periko Berrioategortua of Amorebieta, and one rainy day on the eve of the lockdown left the report at the train station to be taken to Rome by Martín Olazar and Juan Mari Arrangi. “We tried to reach Pope Paul VI through senior religious leaders related to Euskal Herria, but there was no official response,” says Arrangi.

Shortly afterwards, the abate Martin Orbe tried in vain to do the same. And a year later, when the police arrested him in connection with the operation of the Bilbao Corridor, they made him pay his daring [see Article 25]. “You cannot be subjected to torture for a lifetime,” he recently acknowledged with ARGIA (No. 2,613) During the interview.

As soon as they crossed the door of Derio’s seminary, the priests became part of a harsh political scenario. Eight SEAT 1500, three jeep and two National Police buses. The agents tried to get in. Seminarians and teachers in front of them. Punishment for divinis and Sundays without mass in many towns. Solidarity of the Catalan abades: “Amb the situation in which the Poble Basc is stubborn.”

While the Spanish press called them rebel priests or problematic priests, the international press accurately explained the reasons for the action.

Among the priests, a group was formed to spread the confinement, another to talk to the parish priest and another to organize meals. The owner of the bar Cantábrico of Bilbao, which later opened the Taberna de Iñaki, prepared meals for the okupas of the seminary: “I think Iñaki did almost everything for free,” says Barandica with a thank you smile. There were many anonymous people who helped financially this action.

When the night fell, under the shelter of the night, those who were locked up in the seminary went to the people to explain their reasons. The rooms were filled with people. That was not a strike, it was to go directly against the Church: they wanted to lead their task by a “defeated” people.

After the death of sick bishop Pablo Gurorder and the inauguration of Cirarda as bishop of Bilbao, the priests left the seminary a few days later. Why? In the last issue of the newsletters that were drafted during those weeks, the following was explained:

“As far as we’ve asked, don’t forget, but we’ve decided to do it. (…) We intend to move outside, until we get our heads together with our Erriaga and for the sake of our country.”

“The Church changed us”

The priests finished the occupation with the commitment to collaborate with the popular movements. Many resigned from the state’s salary, sought civil work and participated in trade union or political organizations; they also continued the protests, such as the hunger strike of a group of priests in May 1969. “We wanted to change the Church and he changed us,” says Juan Mari Arrangi.

Arrests, torture, sentences of several years in the special prison of priests in Zamora, exile... The compromise reached put many abades at the centre of repression and in practice the Indarra group was dismantled. But they left the Borroka disk for memory.