Kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco

Miguel Ángel Blanco Garrido was born on 13 May 1968 in Ermua, a town in the Biscay province of Spain's Basque Country. He was the son of Galician immigrants: his father, Miguel Blanco, worked in construction, and his mother, Consuelo Garrido, was a housewife. He had one sister, María del Mar. Blanco studied economics at the University of the Basque Country's Sarriko campus, then worked alongside his father in construction before taking a job at Eman Consulting in the nearby town of Eibar, commuting there daily by train. Outside work, he played drums in the bands Póker and Cañaveral. In 1995 he joined Nuevas Generaciones, the youth wing of the People's Party, and stood as its third-place candidate in that year's municipal elections; under Spain's proportional voting system he won enough votes to take a seat on the Ermua town council.

On 10 July 1997, while on his way to see a client, Blanco was kidnapped by ETA, the Basque separatist group. ETA said it would kill him unless the Spanish government began transferring all ETA prisoners to jails within the Basque Country within 48 hours. The ultimatum set off some of the largest public demonstrations in modern Spanish history, with hundreds of thousands of people across the country calling for his release. The government did not meet the deadline. Roughly 50 minutes after it expired, at 16:50 on 12 July 1997, Blanco was shot in the back of the head. He was found soon after on the outskirts of San Sebastián with his hands bound, still alive. He died in hospital at 4:30 a.m. on 13 July 1997, three days after he was taken. He is buried in Faramontaos, A Merca, alongside his parents.

Blanco's kidnapping and killing had a lasting effect on Spanish public life. In an unprecedented response, even some of ETA's own supporters publicly condemned the killing. The wave of civic protest that followed became known as the “Spirit of Ermua,” and it led to the founding of the anti-terrorist organization Foro de Ermua as well as the Fundación Miguel Ángel Blanco, a foundation established in his name. A third man connected to the kidnapping died by suicide about two years after the killing.

In 2006, a trial opened for two people named as Blanco's kidnappers and killers: Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, known by the alias “Txapote,” and Irantzu Gallastegi, known by the alias “Amaia.” Blanco's father died in March 2020, and his mother, Consuelo Garrido, died three weeks later, on 1 April 2020, from COVID-19.