Begoña Urroz

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María Begoña Urroz Ibarrola ( August 1958 - June 28, 1960 in San Sebastian ) was a Basque toddler who, at the age of 22 months, became the first civilian death in a terrorist attack in Spain since the civil war . The perpetrators belonged to the Directorio Revolucionario Ibérico de Liberación (DRIL) organization formed to overthrow the dictatorships Francisco Franco and António de Oliveira Salazar and were never brought to account.

family

Begoña was the first child of Jesusa Ibarrola Telletxea († 2016) and Juan Urroz Gragirena († 2008), a factory worker. After their death, the couple had another daughter, whom they also named Begoña in memory of the firstborn, and a son.

attack

On June 27, 1960, Begoña's mother took her daughter to the Amara train station, San Sebastian, and placed the child in the care of an aunt who worked in the luggage storage while she went shopping in a nearby store. During this time, the station was the target of an incendiary attack by DRIL. At 7:10 p.m. a mixture of sulfuric acid , potassium chlorate and sugar ignited . Begoña was caught in a flame, 90 percent of her skin was burned, and she succumbed to serious injuries in the hospital the following day. Five other people between the ages of 15 and 60 were injured, including Urroz's aunt.

The DRIL had already placed four bombs in the center of Madrid in February 1960, two of which were defused by the police. Two of the bombs exploded, fatally injuring José Ramón Pérez, one of the bombers. The series of attacks continued on June 26 with a bomb in the baggage car of a train from Madrid to Barcelona. On June 27, in addition to Amara, the luggage storage facilities at three other train stations were also targeted by bomb attacks.

aftermath

Numerous mourners attended the girl's public funeral, as did the Provincial Governor of Gipuzkoa , who described her as the victim of a “criminal attack”.

Although the more important with substantial support representatives of the Cuban revolutionary leadership organized Directorio Revolucionario Ibérico de Liberación (DRIL) in the Venezuelan newspaper on June 29, El Nacional had claimed responsibility for the series of attacks and the Basque separatist organization ETA (ETA) any involvement of himself pointed out, Begoña Urroz was long regarded as the ETA's first fatality. The DRIL disbanded in September 1960 after the arrest of its most important members in Liège, while the ETA became the most prominent organization fighting the Spanish state, which was responsible for the deaths of more than 850 people with its terrorist acts from 1968 onwards.

In 2010, the Spanish parliament unanimously declared June 27 - the anniversary of the attack in San Sebastian - the national day of remembrance for the victims of terrorism. In 2011, Urroz was officially recognized by the state as a victim of terrorism, combined with a compensation payment of 250,000 euros to her family. In 2012, the Spanish government awarded Urroz the posthumous Cross of Merit Gran Cruz de la Real Orden del Reconocimiento Civil .

In 2015, the prominent Basque economics professor Mikel Buesa, brother of the politician Fernando Buesa, who was murdered by the ETA in 2000, pointed out the erroneous attribution of the bombing to the ETA and the actual authorship of the DRIL. In doing so, he relied on the findings of a master's thesis in the subject of terrorism studies by Alfredo Hedroso from 2014, which he was supervising. A study by the Spanish Memorial Center for Victims of Terrorism published in June 2019 dealt in detail with the attack in 1960 and documented it as the result of a two-year period Research all available information on the background and the perpetrators of the attack, who have since died.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ La primera víctima de ETA. In: El País of January 31, 2010, accessed on July 1, 2019 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ a b c d El jefe del comando que mató a la niña Begoña Urroz acabó de 'lugarteniente' del Che Guevara. In: El Mundo of June 30, 2019, accessed on July 2, 2019 (Spanish)
  3. ↑ El Congreso declara el 27 de junio el Día de las Víctimas del Terrorismo. In: El Mundo of March 11, 2010, accessed on July 1, 2019 (Spanish)
  4. ↑ Terror victim recognized, 50 years on. In: El País of December 13, 2011, accessed on July 1, 2019 (English)
  5. ↑ El Gobierno condecora a un bebé de 22 meses, primera víctima de ETA. In: El Público of April 13, 2012, accessed on July 1, 2019 (Spanish)
  6. ↑ Mikel Buesa: Memento 11-M. In: Libertad Digital of March 17, 2015, accessed July 1, 2019 (Spanish)
  7. ↑ Mikel Buesa: Precisiones sobre el asesinato de Pardines Arcay a manos de ETA. In: Libertad Digital of June 14, 2015, accessed July 1, 2019 (Spanish)
  8. ↑ Alfredo Hedroso López: ¿Begoña Urroz o José Antonio Pardines Arcay? Universidad Internacional de La Rioja. Final de Master en Estudios sobre Terrorismo. (Spanish)
personal data
SURNAME Urroz, Begoña
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Urroz Ibarrola, María Begoña
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first victim of a terrorist attack in Spain
DATE OF BIRTH August 1958
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 1960
Place of death San Sebastian