Sánchez says that ETA "began to lose" the day he assassinated Blanco and defends memory to repair past mistakes

He affirms that it was "a before and after" because "fear was lost" and stresses that the spirit of Ermua will always be that of "unity and peace"

BILBAO, 10 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, assures that ETA "definitely began to lose" with the kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco because it marked a "before and after in the unfortunate history of terrorism". After assuring that "people have lost their fear", he states that memory, collective and historical, is "essential to repair the errors of the past, to treasure the truth and to guarantee justice".

In an article published in El Correo and El Diario Vasco, Pedro Sánchez, who will be present in Ermua this Sunday at the event to mark the 25th anniversary of the popular mayor's kidnapping and murder, affirms that Miguel Ángel Blanco is a name that "will always be recorded in the history of pain" of the country, and that "is part of Spanish democracy.

Pedro Sánchez affirms that his kidnapping was "revenge and a terrifying reaction" after the Civil Guard released prison officer José Antonio Ortega Lara nine days earlier, who had been locked up "in an inhumane cell" for 532 days.

The President of the Government assures that in the case of Blanco "there was no room for hope" but it was "a before and after in the unfortunate history of terrorism" in Spain.

In his opinion, people "lost their fear" and the "brutal threat, the feeling of witnessing a murder in slow motion and the impotence in the face of years of forced silence made solidarity and indignation take to the streets."

"The entire town of Ermua has held its breath since that Thursday, July 10, 25 years ago. On the second night of the kidnapping, just 24 hours before the ultimatum was fulfilled, hundreds of people lit candles and kept a vigil to accompany relatives of the young councilor, to ask for his freedom," says Sánchez, who also recalls that Bilbao experienced the "largest demonstration in its history" the following morning.

Likewise, he recalls that the streets were filled with people crying out for Michelangelo's freedom not only in the Basque Country, since the same thing happened throughout Spain and hundreds of thousands of people raised their voices "against brutality, against death" . As he highlights, Spain "peacefully and bravely faced" the terrorist organization but ETA, "once again, ignored the people" because it killed Miguel Ángel Blanco with two shots in the neck, being "the 778th person on the payroll of dead at the hands of ETA".

The President of the Government assures that Ermua became, from that moment, "the symbol of the citizen's struggle against the terrorist group" and Spain "as a whole expressed its rejection, its condemnation of that barbarity", with around four million people who They took to the streets during those days to "show the rage, the indignation, the deep pain of a country ravaged by years of violence."

"While they protected the headquarters of Herri Batasuna, in front of 40,000 or 50,000 people, six Ertzainas decided to uncover their faces. It was a tremendously symbolic gesture: it was enough to hide, to remain silent. The protesters embraced them. The people decided that this had to end," he says.

As he underlines, "silence and fear began to disappear in Basque society and never returned" because many citizens, who had remained "indifferent to terrorist fanaticism, finally raised their voices."

"The spirit of Ermua will always be the spirit of unity and peace. The spirit of coexistence that does not admit any type of violence. If before the ETA murders had generated paralysis, from that July 12 they generated mobilizations. Faced with the totalitarian coercion of terrorism, the defense of human rights was imposed. Faced with 'the socialization of suffering' -as ETA called its insanity-, freedom, democracy and life were imposed. Miguel Ángel Blanco, ETA began to lose definitively," he says.

Pedro Sánchez states that 14 years passed until on October 20, 2011, the terrorist group announced the definitive cessation of armed activity, "without conditions" and Spain "ended 43 years of terrorism, with 829 fatalities".

In his opinion, the end of this "dark period" in the history of Spain could have come about thanks to "the titanic effort of each democratic government in its commitment to dialogue, the unity of the parties in the face of terror and hatred, the work of justice, the essential international collaboration, the invaluable work of the Security Forces and, of course, Basque and Spanish society".

The President of the Government adds that many young people today were not born when Michelangelo was assassinated and, for this reason, Basque civil society organizations should be thanked for "devoting so much effort to maintaining his memory and the memory of the victims" .

In his opinion, memory, collective and historical, is "essential to repair the errors of the past, to treasure the truth and to guarantee justice."

"The Basque Country will never forget its recent history, nor should the path that has been traveled to reach freedom be forgotten, in any corner of our country, now or in the future," he concludes.