3 March 1976 — Massacre in Gasteiz: The Basque Country’s ‘Bloody Sunday’

On 3 March 1976 during a general strike in the Basque city of Vitoria-Gastiez, five men were shot dead by Spanish police at a church where thousands of workers had assembled for a meeting. It was the biggest massacres of civilians in the Basque Country since the Spanish Civil War. The massacre had been preceded by mass militant workers’ demonstrations across the Spanish state following the death of General Franco in November 1975. Workers demanded: an end to state controlled trade unions and the right to free association, wage increases, and an amnesty for political prisoners. They received overwhelming support from the people and for several months hundreds of thousands marched on the streets in support of these basic demands. The Spanish state’s response was swift and brutal.

Prelude to a Massacre

In late 1971, thirty five years after leading a military coup against the Second Spanish Republic and establishing a fascist dictatorship, General Franco declared at a public rally in Madrid, “there would be no deep seated political reforms” as long as he lived. His death just four years later provided real hope of political, economic and social change to those who had long suffered under an oppressive and autocratic Spanish state. Almost forty years after the Civil War political parties were still illegal, membership of free trade unions was prohibited, public demonstrations were banned, military courts were used to enforce public order, the media endured widespread state censorship, and thousands of political prisoners languished in gaol.Franco’s death unleashed an unprecedented wave of strikes and demonstrations.

Following a successful ‘Day of Struggle’ in January 1976 with massive strikes and demonstrations across the Spanish State (there were more days lost to strikes in January 1976 alone than for the whole of 1975), Interior Minister Manuel Fraga warned workers and those marching on the streets, “not to expect any other treatment than that meted out by all States when they see their very roots under attack.” A crisis meeting of senior political and military figures called to discuss, ‘a dangerous increase in the level of Communist subversion’, heard that the military was “ready to defend Spanish values — the Catholic faith, the family and political unity.”

Internationally, as the Spanish government sought to negotiate its entry into the European Economic Community, it engaged in a diplomatic charm offensive with its Foreign Minister, Jose Maria de Areliza, touring several European capitals, including Dublin. In a memo to the Irish government from the Irish Ambassador in Madrid, Areliza’s tour was considered a “cosmetic exercise” and the Spanish government was reported to be “frightened by what had happened in Portugal.” On 2nd March Areliza promised the British government that “his country was moving towards a more liberal and democratic regime.” His words belied the reality. The following day Spanish police launched a murderous offensive against striking workers in the Basque city of Gasteiz.

Workers’ Struggle in Gasteiz

Situated in the south-eastern corner of the Basque Country, Gasteiz, the capital of the province of Araba, was built in the Middle Ages as a defensive outpost of the kingdom of Navarre. Given its location, as the shortest route between Castille and northern Europe, it has historically been an important trading centre. In the late 1950s the Franco regime embarked on a series of economic reforms and appointed a number of neo-liberal technocrats drawn from members of the secretive Catholic lay organisation Opus Dei to key government positions. An Economic Stabilisation Plan was published in 1959 and over the following decades a series of four year Economic Development Plans led to rapid industrial development, based on substantial tax incentives and grants for manufacturing firms to build their plants in designated zones. Gasteiz was one of the cities in the designated zones and a substantial number of multinational companies located their manufacturing plants there.

While the city experienced major economic and industrial development, workers’ wage rates continued to be dictated by the State controlled unions. In the early 1970s there were major disputes in several manufacturing plants, most prominently in the city’s Michelin car factory where workers sought a pay increase. This struggle led to a common demand among workers in all sectors for a pay increase across the board of 5,000 pesetas per month, a 40 hour week, retirement age of 60 and the right to free association and assembly. A series of strikes were organised and employers responded by locking out workers. As the strikes continued an Association of Women was established, which held regular marches around the city square in support of the workers, organised strike funds and collected food from local villages.

In February two general strikes brought the city to a standstill and another was called for 3 March. The strike was an overwhelming success with the entire city shut down. In the morning police had opened fire on workers, injuring many, none fatal. At 5.00pm a general assembly of workers, called to assess the day’s events, was due to take place at the church of St Francis of Assisi in the neighbourhood of San Francisco. An estimated 5,000 people gathered. The church was packed to capacity while hundreds stood outside. Tensions mounted as armed police in armoured jeeps began surrounding the church and ordered that it be cleared.

‘Get them out however you can!’

As part of a Concordant between the Vatican and General Franco signed in 1953, Spanish police and military required the permission of a Bishop before entering a catholic church. In the event, when the police demanded entry to clear the church, the Bishop of Gasteiz abstained, so allowing them entry. Police began firing multiple canisters of tear gas through the church windows choking those inside. Police radio communication during the course of the day was picked up and recorded the chilling conversation between police officers:

Proceed with clearing the church. Over. So we have it surrounded by personnel outside. We are going to have to use arms! Over. Get them out however you can……Send me more arms. We’ve shot more than 2,000 bullets. Over. Are there any wounded? Over. At the moment none of us are wounded. Over. Ok. That’s good. Over. There was certainly a massacre here. Over. Ok that’s good. Over.

There was pandemonium as men, women and children sought to escape the suffocating fumes. As waves of people crashed through the doors into the open air, police opened fire. When night fell three workers lay dead and two more died later from their injuries. Over 100 were injured. Medical staff expressed surprise that the death toll was not higher.

Those killed were: Pedro Martinez Ocio, aged 27; Francesco Aznar, aged 17; Romualdo Barnoso, aged 19; José Castillo, aged 43; and Bienviendo Pareda, aged 32.

It was the biggest massacre of civilians in the Basque Country since the Civil War. And the death toll did not end there.

Over the following days, during protests in the Basque Country and Catalonia held in solidarity with the dead of Gasteiz, two more men died at the hands of Spanish State forces. In Basauri, an industrial suburb of Bilbao, nineteen year old steel worker Vincente Anton Ferroro was shot in the head by the Guardia Civil. In the Catalan city of Tarragona police attacked a demonstration involving hundreds of workers chanting “Vitoria brothers, we do not forget.” Juan Gabriel Rodrigo, also aged nineteen, fell from a roof, where he had sought sanctuary from the police attack, and died. Further afield in Rome, workers demonstrating at the Spanish Embassy attacked it with petrol bombs and missiles. Italian police fired live ammunition at the crowd, killing a passerby, 53 year old Mario Marrota.

The Spanish authorities issued a communique claiming that police were forced to use firearms to free themselves from a hostile crowd using broken church windows and statues as missiles. Despite these official claims, there were no police injuries reported at the church. One police Inspector was injured later that night when a petrol bomb was thrown at the local police station and two others suffered minor injuries.

Financial Times correspondent, Roger Matthews, described the tense atmosphere in Gasteiz:

The paramilitary Guardia Civil armed with automatic weapons stand in groups of 30 guarding the main roads into the town. Convoys of riot police tour the principal streets, their Land Rovers and wire meshed buses forced to detour past some working class areas where barricades erected last night are still standing. …..All factories in this city of 170,000 people are shut, as are all the shops, banks and main commercial areas. Workers standing in small groups on street corners incorrectly think that there may be a dozen dead, and wild rumours of a military take-over vie with others even more alarming.

The funerals of the first three men killed took place on 5 March and was the occasion of a huge outpouring of grief, anger and solidarity. An estimated 50,000 people attended the funeral, and as a police helicopter whirred overhead, mourners heard strong denunciations of the massacre from the pulpit. Accusing the Spanish police of murder, a homily written jointly by all of the clergy of Gasteiz said:

The forces used death dealing arms in absurd abundance, in a completely irrational way, without prior warning, against a defenceless crowd, which had gone out of its way to avoid any kind of provocation…..The workers’ deaths were absolutely unjustified and must therefore be considered as what they really were, homicide.

The priests went on to call for those responsible for the massacre to be identified and arrested. In defiance of a government decree, issued the day before, that police were authorised to raid churches to break up unauthorised meetings, the clergy reassured those present that the churches would continue to be available for workers’ assemblies. Following the funeral mass the coffins of the three men were borne shoulder high and walked through the city for two hours, passing lines of heavily armed police and Guardia Civil three deep carrying rifles, pistols and sub-machine guns at the headquarters of the provincial government.

As the huge crowd passed by the defiant mood of the people of Gasteiz was described by London Times correspondent, Harry Debelius:

Probably the most massive non-violent act of defiance in 40 years of Spanish history took place in this Basque city today as thousands of people attending a funeral insulted armed police with silent gestures. Insulting the police has been a court martial offence, even for civilians, ever since General Franco overthrew the second Spanish republic. But the people of Vitoria did not seem to care today as they mourned their dead.

While the workers ultimately succeeded in their campaign for an end to state controlled unions, and for pay increases and pensions, forty years on the people of Gasteiz continue to seek truth and justice for those murdered by the Spanish State on 3rd March 1976.