Two initiatives are under way to gain the institutional and judicial recognition of Txomin Letamendi
The Observatory for Human Rights in the Basque Country and the relatives of Txomin Letamendi, a PNV militant "murdered by torture" in Madrid in 1950, will promote new initiatives to restore his honour and obtain just moral satisfaction.
Txomin Letamendi Murua worked for Lehendakari Jose Antonio Agirre as an information service agent when he went into exile. He was first arrested in San Sebastian in 1946 and detained in Barcelona a year later.
According to the ECHR, "interrogations and torture at the time of the two arrests and subsequent imprisonment in Guadalajara caused serious physical and psychological damage and his release", although he died on 20 December 1950 in Madrid when he was in the custody of his brother Juan.
At present, Letamendi has no official confession whatsoever. In December 2024, his successors initiated a judicial process in San Sebastian to determine the responsibility of the two Francoist policemen involved in the interrogations.
Now, with a view to the 75th anniversary of the death, the family, with the impetus of the NGO Hunting Centre, has launched two initiatives. On the one hand, it has registered a request for the Basque Government to "make a personalized institutional recognition, to restore its honour and to achieve its fair moral satisfaction".
This recognition is supported by Act No. 9/2023 on the Historical and Democratic Memory of the Basque Country. The association acknowledges that this issue has not yet been regulated, but recalls that the lehendakari, Imanol Pradales, used this procedure to recognize the first Basque Government Councillor, Alfredo Espinosa Orive, on 1 April.
On the other hand, proceedings have also been initiated for judicial recognition through the form of voluntary jurisdiction regulated by the Democratic Memory Act 20/2022, which does not punish the perpetrators, but merely "judicial verification of the facts".
In the words of the ECHR, "this is the first time in the Basque Country that the path of voluntary jurisdiction has been opened, and we want to open that path with the aim of opening the door to so many other events that remain without judicial reaction today."
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