40 years after the murder of 'Yoyes', the first female ETA leader to challenge the armed group

This Thursday marks the 40th anniversary of the murder of Dolores González Katarain, 'Yoyes', who, after twelve years in exile and outside ETA, decided to return to Ordizia, where ETA executedthe former leader "for treason" in his home town, on a market day and in the presence of his young son.

Yoyes (Ordizia, 1954) fled to the North in 1973, where he ascended the organization chart of the armed group untilhe became the first female leader of ETA. José Miguel Beñaran was an assistant to 'Argala' and succeeded him after the death of the Spanish Basque Battalion (BVE) in 1978.

Lourdes Auzmendi, widow of Eduardo Moreno Bergareche 'Pertur' and former ETA-pm militant, recalled the machismo of the time : "In the 1970s the role of women was not what you would expect in an organization called revolutionaries. They had to be raising their children, having the warrior's rest. We were literally men's."

However, his internal disagreements led him to leave the institution in 1979. When his son Arkaitzwas born in 1982, he began to prepare for his return, aware of the danger. This was reflected in his personal diaries, according to the posthumous book Yoyes, from his window.

Wednesday, 10 September 1986, , was a fair day in the Goierri region of Gipuzkoa. 'Yoyes' had only been in the Basque Country for eleven months, after taking the avenues of social integration and leaving behind a long exile in Mexico.

The attempt to regain an independent life was nipped in the bud when José Antonio López Ruiz 'Ku

The murder caused a major shock and led to a general strike that paralysed Ordizia. Historian Gaizka Fernandez and film director Helena Taberna have discussed the historic event.

Kepa Korta, who was to be mayor of Euskadiko Ezkerra the following year, was part of a popular platform that collected 8,000 reproach signatures in factories and commissions (1500 of them in the town itself).

According to Korta, these mobilizations "did a lot of damage to ETA" and laidthe foundations for a peaceful social response that would materialize massively after the kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco years later.