An unprecedented trial was held today to acknowledge that Txomin Letamendi died under Franco's torture and to prove what happened judicially

Txomin Letamendi ,a militant and combatant of the AJ repressed by Francoism, today led the first trialof voluntary jurisdiction in the South Basque Country under the Democratic Memory Act.

Unlike other judicial proceedings, this trial has not consisted of a judicial hearing directed against a particular person, but of an administrative act in which a fact is to be ascertained.

Letamendi was an agent of the information service for the exiled president, José Antonio Agirre, and was taken to the screens by director Asier Altuna in the filmKarmele (based on Kirmen Uribe 's novel Elkarrekin esnatzeko ordua), which has the background of a lawsuit filed by the GEBehatokia association and the family in December 2024, on the 75th anniversary of his death.

Criminal case filed.

However, this criminal case was dismissed becausethe two Francoist police officers involved in the interrogations of Letamendi had died, thereby "extinguishing" possible criminal liability.

As a result, the family requested that a voluntary court trial be held at the hands of the ECHR, which now pursues two objectives: on the one hand, to verify that Txomin's death was motivated by "the torture he suffered" and "the period of brutal imprisonment he suffered", and, on the other, "to question the political sentences of Francoism".

Prior to the trial, in Court of First Instance No. 7 in Donostia-San Sebastián, the spokesman for the GEO , Agus Hernán, and lawyer Óscar Sánchez met outside the Palace of Justice with relatives of Letamendi, who were also attended by PNV leader Markel Olano and EH Bildu leader Maddalen Iriarte.

Hernan has since confirmed to journalists that this trial is an "uncharged trial" involving a historian and one of Letamendi's sons, while the family lawyer has made an explanation of the facts, backed by documentary evidence. "

Hernán has explained that the victims have the right to have "a social truth, an institutional truth and a judicial truth", which is what is still lacking in the case of Letamendi, because the social truth "has always had it" and that of the institutions was achieved with the "recognition" made last year by the Basque Government.

"We are now closing that cycle with the judicial truth," Hernán stressed.