This is a very incredible case (source, in Spanish) . We had grown used to see former fascists recycled into paladins of "democracy", to see fascist monuments and street names still standing after three decades in many Spanish towns... but this is a really new twist. Eloy Ruiz Cortadi, natural from Sestao, Biscay, former municipal policeman of neighbouring Portugalete in the last years of the fascist regime and well known militant of the fascist death squad Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey (Guerrillas of Christ King) very active in some parts of the Basque Country in the 1970s (later replaced by the Batallón Vasco-Español and later by the GAL and other acronyms, always barely hiding police-led death squads) has become president of the Galician Association of Victims of Terrorism... and has been invited by our welcoming (more like boot-licking actually) authorities to talk in our only autonomous (and not sovereign) Parliament, not witout causing some protests. His speech has basically justified tortures and the attitude of the Spanish government in this issue, reprobing the Basque Parliament because of denouncing them. Ruiz Cortadi was the son of a powerful local mafioso who was a close friend of the King's father and had such influence that it was rumored that he named the provincial governors. His own record is not better, as municpal policeman he was responsible of many tortures and in his free time he went to beat demonstrators with chains and batons and threatened them with guns or attacked them with pepper sprays. In 1972 he was responsible of the attempted kidnap of a local "red" priest and important lesions as they failed to achieve their goal. In that time municipal policemen even entered armed to film a sermon in the local church and they forced mass assistants (then traditionally youngsters) to sing the facist hymn before allowing them to enter the church. Eventually ETA attented against him and he fled to his other fatherland: Galicia, where he's been also very vocal against all form of national or linguistic advance, even opposing daycare centers for children. Now he returns with all oficial blessings to preach respect for torturers under the cover of "victim of terrorism". This is the kind of pants-lowering that our each day less and less democratic authorities practice all the time. We don't want these kind of criminals around here and we are very sorry for those who have to bear them elsehwere.
1 comment:
I am from Portugalete, and feel very happy those terrorists are shown public, after so many years enjoining our money and laughing at the society.
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