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Four years after this famous process started, it seems like it is finishing. Although the young boys who went to prison are out now, they are not free, and they will have to implement the sentences until 2024 and 2025. Even so, the parents platform and the social platform which were created when all started, decided to finish their work here. On October 2016, when some young people of a little town in Navarre where arrested and accused of terrorism, due to a fight in a bar during the festivities, a social movement was created, and the parents of this people created a platform to ask for justice and denounce a judicial, political and mediatic farce. Now, 4 years later, the situation has changed, and the platforms see that their work has come to an end. 

 

For giving an overlook to the case, we have been listening to the people in charge of the platforms in Naiz Irratia, and we have been speaking with Bel Pozueta, the mother of one of the accused ones and a congresswoman in Madrid nowadays.

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Current situation

As the process has been different for each of them, the current situation is also different. 8 young people between 19 and 32 years old were arrested on November 2016 and 7 went to prison in Madrid. Some of them went out of jail on December, but Jokin, Adur and Oihan had to stay at prison. After the sentence was out, on June 2017, Aratz, Inaki, Julen, and Jon Ander, were arrested and sent to jail again. In addition, each person received different sentences, so the time they had to spend at prison was different too. Due to that, they have been getting permissions to go out at different times. Last December, Inaki and Aratz got the third grade, so they went out of prison but had to return every night to sleep at the prison of Zaballa, in Vitoria-Gasteiz. In march, when the pandemic started, they got the permission to stay at home due to the sanitary situation, but they had to wear an ankle bracelet. Last 3rd of July, after 3 years and a half at jail, Jokin Adur and Oihan got the third grade and the procedure was the same. Firstly, going to jail to sleep and then they got the ankle bracelet. Last December, Julen and Jonan, the last remaining at prison, got some special permissions for studing and working even if they are in a second grade. So, like this, they are outside working and studying although the go every night to sleep to Zaballa. In this way, even if they are not free because the sentences don’t finish until 2025, the boys are at home with their families and friends.

 

We have been listening to an interview in Naiz Irratia, where Antxon Ramirez de Alda, the father of one of the boys, and Aritz Leoz, the spokesperson of the platform “Altsasukoak aske” have been speaking about the process and the end of it. They say that is very nice to go walking through the streets of Altsasu and to see one of them. Four years later it seems like they are rebuilding their life, they have started working and you can see them hanging around with their friends.

 

Antxon says: "the penal cycle will end on 2025, but the vital cycle will never end, because de experience doesn’t vanish". The familiars of the accused boys made a special relationship along the process because they had meetings weekly, and they shared the same suffering.

 

 

The end of an era

As we mentioned before, when this boys were detained in 2016 the parents platform and a social movement in the town were created in the town. Since the first day of the arrest, people started to gather at the front of the town hall in order to protest and to ask for the freedom of the young boys. Watching the magnitude that was taking the issue they decided to continue with the gatherings and with different initiatives in each moment. For a couple of months, the residents of this town gathered there every day, and you could see there every kind of people with different ages, ideology, and origin. Then, decided to make that gatherings only at Fridays, and that has been like that until last 11th of December. That Friday, was the last gathering in four years, but the first that the boys were there. After the gathering, the boys went to the square and remove the paintings of their faces simulating the end. 

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As Leoz said, it is like the end of an era, because we have been reuniting there every week for years although it rained cats and dogs, and now is the moment to leave that space for other recognitions. Besides, "it was a way to say that solidarity means and worth a lot".  They see their work as finished, because although they didn’t get a fair trial, the accused ones are at home. These last years, they have been in charge of organizing different kinds of protest and activities. Demonstrations, mountain and bicycle marches, marches to the prisons, talks all over the Spanish state, press conferences, a music festival, and different cultural initiatives. Some of the demonstration became historical because they reunited around 100.000 people. The trial produced also a big social movement, because in that moment people watched clearly that everything was a big farse. They saw that the evidences were manipulated or not accepted in favor of the Civil Guards. That generated a big anger and feeling of vulnerability in the society, because showed that police, instead of protecting you, could do whatever they wanted with you.

 

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They were not only asking for a fair trial and freedom, they were also the voice of a town that was been treated as a hell. The media spoke about a town with walks of shame, treated it as a nest of terrorists, a place in which violence was taught to children. The residents started to see cameras in their town every day, and they were not there for saying good things. They had to listen people that didn´t even know locating that little town in a map, saying false and terrible things about them and their town. It was very hard for them listening to that things and couldn´t defend themselves.

 

But they also could see other good many things with this. As Bel Pozueta, ex spokesperson of the parents team and mother of one of the boys told us, it wasn’t everything bad. She remarks the solidarity and support received, it has been amazing, a big energy for them and something she would never imagine before. She also says that she has grown up as a person, like a personal empowerment, and they have seen that they are able to achieve whatever you resolve to do. Furthermore, they have known very nice people, many places and different institutions. She also knew her family from a different perspective, she knew them in a deeper way and they created a very strong emotional connection.

 

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That injustice had a big social answer. It created a big solidarity wave, and many people went to the streets to protest. Pozueta said: “it was unbelievable, when you go up the scenery and see so many people that agree with the case, you feel thrilled”. She thinks that they have reunited very different people and that they have raised awareness about going to the streets to protest. She recognizes that things like this have happened in the history of the Basque Country, but she thinks that nowadays this case has been an exception. Moreover, we have seen it months later in Catalonia, and she values that for them we have been like a mirror, because what happened in Altsasu, occurred then in Catalonia. As a summary of this four year for them she says: “they got as into a whirlwind and we have been going round and round, we couldn’t control our lives”

 

In addition, she thinks that this case affected her personality. She has never accepted “just because” as an answer, she is very fighter and she always looks for a reason. She has gained the strength to speak loudly in front of the people. Besides, she says she is very shy and she has learned how to manage the relationships and how to speak in front of the people as I said.

 

She also told us how she lived the moment when they told her they were asking 50 years of prison for her son. She felt fury, she couldn`t believe it. She received a phone call telling her that, she went home and started crying a lot. Regarding to the arrest, she remembers it as something they expected to. Police was around their house for days, so they were waiting to something happen, and finally arrived.

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