The impunity murder that began the tragic week of 1977: "Spanish democracy has a debt to my brother"

“We learned the news for the news of three in the afternoon.They opened with the news: ‘There has been a murder in Madrid.A student has died at the hands of the extreme right, Arturo Ruiz García ’”.Manuel Ruiz, his brother, clearly remembers those initial moments "until everything becomes a nebula".Arturo was 19 when two shots in the back signed his life.His death inaugurated the tragic week of Madrid, seven days in which there was also the slaughter of Atocha's lawyers.The judicial persecution of the executioners, full of shadows, continues to weigh today in the family.

"Neither the Police nor the Judiciary have done anything to locate the murderers," says El Independiente Manuel, the brother who, 45 years later, leads the search for answers.Two people linked to the extreme right were identified as the author and accomplice of the homicide, which occurred on January 23, 1977 between the Star and Silva streets of Madrid, behind the Gran Vía, during a pro-amnesty demonstration: the Argentine Jorge Cesarsky Goldsteinand the Spanish José Ignacio Fernández Guaza.It was Cesarsky, 50, who delivered the gun to Fernández Guaza, 29, with whom the young man, a guerrilla militant of Cristo Rey, ended up firing at Arturo.It was noon and the proclamation "Viva Cristo Rey" accompanied lead.

Both were known in the circles of the extreme right, between groups such as Force Nueva or Triple A, and presumed their connections with the security forces.The Argentine, insurance agent, captured his clients at the police stations.Spanish, according to its surroundings, did work for the Civil Guard.Cesarsky was judged and sentenced to six years in jail for terrorism and illicit possession of arms.Barely turned 10 months.Fernández Guaza's trail faded the day after the murder, in an episode that seems traced to Fernando Lerdo de Tejada, one of the authors of the slaughter of Atocha lawyers, even today in an unknown whereabouts.

His Obito was eclipsed by the slaughter perpetrated by an ultra -rightist command on the night of January 24, 1977.Five labor lawyers of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and workers commissions were killed.It was an earthquake in full transition, which staggered the move.By then, Arturo's family lived between darkness."Atocha killing overshadowed everything around but I don't want it to be understood," Manuel replies."They have kept the live memory.My family has been silent time.We do not close mourning.Some of my brothers still do not close because it was very traumatic ”.

“Now, when anything happens, they put a team of psychologists at the service of the family.Not only did they not put psychologists, but they did the opposite.The lawyer we had, Juan Ignacio Ortiz de Urbina, called him at night and told him that if he continued investigating he would end up like those of Atocha, ”he evokes.The family buried Arturo in the strictest intimacy in the Fuencarral cemetery.During the following years, while the country walked towards the recovery of democracy, Arturo's relatives tried to digest the pain."For years every Thursday I accompanied my parents to the cemetery to take a bouquet of red carnations," he recalls.

Manuel receives us not far from the field where he once rested the remains of Arturo, later transferred to Granada.In the district of Fuencarral-El Pardo municipal sports facilities have been the name of their brother since 2019.In his confines a graffiti reproduces his face, that of one of his last photographs."They knew about her hair," says his brother."For 39 years, my colleagues did not know anything.I kept it as something personal because it hurt a lot.I had a year with my brother a year.We slept together, we made communion together, we went to the same institute in Granada ... ”, he says.

“For many years I could not see the programs on the occasion of the anniversary.Nor have I seen the movie ‘Seven days of January’ [directed by Juan Antonio Bardem].I understood many years after this I do not have to forget it, because first my brother does not deserve it and second because it is not justice, ”he says.“I didn't want to make my mother suffer, the only one who kept the guy when Arturo died.It comforted us all.It was an impressive woman.In his last years, to hold on, ended up badly because it was a pressure cooker, ”he adds.“With my mother I never talked about my brother's case.The last was the day he died ".After his death, in 1997, the family tried without success to reopen the case.

The gunmen who never paid

José Ignacio Fernández Guaza.It was the author of Arturo's murder.In the summary of the instruction, Judge Rafael Estévez establishes that «Jorge Cesarsky used the day of the events a gun with which he shot, then if the weapon was taken by José Ignacio Fernández Guaza, who immediately used it to perform to performIn turn, two more shots, which are presumed were those that caused Arturo's death ».Fernández Guaza received the motes of "El Frutero" or "The Postures".In addition to his work for the Civil Guard, he was involved in prostitution networks.The investigation directed its steps to the Basque Country, where it had to find the complicity of security forces agents.Arturo's family claimed unsuccessfully to intervene the phones of the relatives of Fernández Guaza before the suspicion that he maintained contact with them.

Jorge Cesarsky.This Argentine, who was at that time 50 years old, was well known in the police circles of the time.SELL SANTIOS DE SANITAS TO THE AGENTS.He had arrived in Spain in 1965 and belonged to the Argentine anti -communist alliance group triple to.He was provisional in February 1979 and, as Manuel recalls with bitter.He was sentenced to 6 years for crime of terrorism and illicit possession of arms.Manuel underlines precisely that the judge who assumed the case and traded in jail to Cesarsky was that of the Court of Instruction number one, Rafael Gómez-Chaparro, who was also in charge of the case of La Matanza de Atocha.

The investigation brought together a dozen witnesses.But it did not serve to hunt the author of the shots.On the other hand, the slaughter of the lawyers was the first trial that laid on the bench and condemned the extreme right.Some of its correspondible also knew the flight.Carlos García Juliá, sentenced to a total of 193 years, escaped to Brazil in 1994 and was extradited to Spain in 2020.Fernando Lerdo de Tejada, another of those involved, is in an unknown whereabouts.He fled in April 1979 when he was granted a Holy Week permit and have not transcended his news since then.

In Manuel, there was a pre -established plan.“And if he hadn't seemed a lot because they always went for them and they were the same.Or they were guerrillas of Christ King or members of the Police, ”argues one of the main faces of the Argentine complaint against Rodolfo Martín Villa, at that time Minister of the Interior and whom Manuel considers political responsible for the events of that January 23.“I would like to chat with Martín Villa.I don't want me to go to jail but tell things that you probably know.In the weeks the PCE was legalized.Things are not unconnected and I would like to know if not investigating this type of crimes was part of the negotiation that was done with the left, ”he details.

“Felipe González says that we are, the complainants, the criminals.Someone says that in his day he was called a socialist and who was legalized his party a few days after my brother died, ”he says.“If democracy supports a paternity test, some are going to take many clicks because the parents of democracy are not the Emeritus King or González.They are Arturo, Mari Luz Nájera [died the next day because of the impact of a smoke boat that destroyed his skull in the manifestation of rejection for the death of Arturo], Atocha's lawyers and the people who left their lives ”.

A crime without punishment

The crime of his brother was unpunished, like many others of the Tardofranchism, entangled in the fog of the old loyalties of the security forces and the wishes of many of turning page at all costs."Spanish democracy has a debt to my brother and with those who were on the road," says Manuel.“If this had occurred in another country they would have been considered some heroes.Here, if you do, it seems that you are denoting those called parents and heroes and that time is showing us that they came to politics to enrich and mediate ”.A debt that signs Paca Sauquillo, sister of one of the fallen lawyers in the firm of number 55 of Atocha Street.“The murders of that week were those that advanced in the legalization of some parties and in democracy.Everything that is recognition to victims is an obligation ".

“What remains to know is why it occurred that week.From the political point of view, why what was happening was not controlled.It would be necessary to know what situation there was at that time in the Ministry of the Interior.There were too many facts, ”says Sauquillo.“There were also Italian fascist elements that were here in Madrid.We need to analyze the causes, ”suggests.Manuel also bets on shedding light on what remained in the shadow zone."The gunmen would have a lot.

Elaborated mourning, Arturo's brother admits that the relatives of those who died at the hands of those who resisted leaving behind the Franco dictatorship are "uncomfortable for everyone"."For some it is a reminder that they acted badly and for others it is a reminder that they are acting badly," he says.At the time of the shots and his almost immediate death, Arturo Ruiz kept 75 pesetas in his pockets, a photo size of a girl and a keychain with the portraits of the Kennedy brothers.

On the second anniversary of his death, his father wrote on the reverse of one of his black and white portraits: "Weapons will not erase your smile".Manuel likes to imagine how the future of that 19 -year -old would have been if they hadn't taken it away."It would have been a good lawyer.My mother always told her that she was a lawyer of poor lawsuits, those lawyers who do not eat a thread, ”he says with emotion."My brother is basically a victim of the extreme right and, secondly, of the dismembered left".