SOLVEDListenMarkina, Basque Country, Spain · 1980s
1980 Markina attack
On 20 September 1980, four off-duty Spanish civil guards were shot dead by ETA gunmen in a bar near Markina in the Basque Country.
What happened
The 1980 Zarautz attack was a mass shooting carried out by the Basque separatist organisation ETA on 3 November 1980 in Zarautz, a town in the province of Gipuzkoa in Spain's Basque Country. The targets were several off-duty civil guards from the local traffic department who were in a bar in the town. According to the account, it was the second deadliest ETA attack of 1980, a year in which the organisation killed more people than in any other.
The attack followed a series of earlier fatal ETA attacks in Zarautz. A civil guard was killed there on 18 October 1975, described as the last person killed by ETA during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and further attacks caused fatalities on 5 July 1978 and 16 May 1980. The shooting also came a day after demonstrations organised by the Basque Country's main political parties, at which about 15,000 people turned out "against terrorism and for peace." Those rallies had been called amid rising political violence, including the killing of university professor Juan de Dios Doval, a member of the local executive of the Union of the Democratic Centre, then Spain's governing party.
Testimony given at a later trial indicated that an ETA unit had spent October observing the movements of civil guards at the Aizea bar. Shortly before midnight, five off-duty civil guards were in the bar along with at least 20 other people when two armed individuals entered, shouted slogans in support of ETA, and opened fire. The shooting lasted less than ten seconds. Four of the civil guards died and the fifth was wounded; two waiters and three other customers were also injured. One of those customers died the following morning after being struck in the head and throat. The attackers fled in a Renault 18 driven by an accomplice, with three additional ETA members assisting the escape.
The next day, about 3,000 people demonstrated against ETA violence, and the local council passed a motion condemning the attack. The two councillors of Herri Batasuna, the party closest to ETA, abstained from the vote, though both condemned the attack personally and one resigned from the party in protest.
On 17 March 1988, Juan María Tapia Irujo was sentenced to 66 years in prison for taking part in the attack. His testimony led to José Javier Zabaleta Elosegi, known as "Baldo," receiving a 200-year sentence for his participation in and authorship of the attack. An appeal against Zabaleta's sentence was rejected in 2003.
