March 3 calls for "recognition of the responsibility of the Kingdom of Spain for the events of 1976"

The March 3 Association has asked the State for "an official statement denying the official Franco version and acknowledging that the Kingdom of Spain is responsible for the criminal activity of the police", referring to the police attack in 1976 at the San Francisco church in the Zaramaga district of Vitoria-Gasteiz that killed five people and injured nearly a hundred.

The March 3 Victims Collective regrets that "no state has taken a step to establish responsibility." This Saturday a moving and vindictive tribute was made in the Alavesa capital, and inthe last 50 years  has been praised "those who have kept the flame alive."

During the event, the spokespersons for the association, Nerea Martínez and Leire Manzanos, read a text in which they called for "justice" for the five workers killed in the "police massacre"; Francisco Aznar, Romualdo Barroso, José Castillo, Pedro Mari Martínez and Bienvenido Perea; as well as for Juan Gabriel Rodrigo and Vicente Antón Ferrero, who were killed, respectively.

They have also reminded all those injured, repressed and imprisoned after the crimes in Vitoria, as a tribute, but also as a denunciation, denouncing the "unbearable model of impunity in Spain".

The association has had words of thanks for "the people of Vitoria" who have managed to "reverse the official version by facing all the difficulties imaginable", "calling for the word justice after five decades of impunity".

"Institutional abandonment"

The March 3 Association has denounced that power "led to oblivion" of the victims mentioned and has stated that "many silenced and consented to it, but some maintained it, in the darkest years, continuously and with commitment." On the contrary, it has stated that today March 3 has become a "meeting point" and that everyone wants to "be in the picture." "It has not always been so, we know it and you know it." The group has criticized that "institutions have arrived with decades of backwardness."

The association has said that it will not miss the opportunity to tell its story "from 1976, but also from this long journey of half a century against impunity . "" If we have come this far and will continue to move forward, it is certainly because of those who have managed to keep the memory of the people of Vitoria alive, "he said.

The March 3 Victims Association appreciates the "loudspeaker" given to it by the Bloody Sunday Trust Irish platform, founded in 1972 in memory of 14 people killed by police in Derry. Bloody Sunday managed to get the British Government to take responsibility for the massacre.

The event was attended by institutional representatives, including the Counsellor for Justice and Human Rights, María Jesús San José, and the director of the Gogora Institute, Alberto Alonso, as well as the leader of EH Bildu in the Basque Parliament, Pello Otxandiano, and representatives of the PSE, PNV and Elkarrekin coalition.