Hello, welcome and thanks for listening to Crimes of the Basque Lands.
A quick content warning, this podcast details crimes and descriptions of violence that may
be disturbing or triggering.
It may not be suitable for all listeners.
We'll do our best to warn listeners about what to expect before each episode and to
include them in our show notes.
So enjoy the show.
Bat, bi, hiru, lau Watch your back, watch your back
Ertzaintza's gonna get you Watch your back, watch your back
Ertzaintza's gonna get you Watch you back
It's the Crimes of the Basquelands.
Hi Douglas.
Hi Julie.
How you doing?
Good.
How are you doing?
We're doing great.
Thanks.
Welcome to Crimes of the Basquelands.
That's us.
We have guests today.
Yes.
Very exciting.
Should we introduce our guests?
Yes.
It's Inigo.
Hey, hi.
Thank you for having me.
And Ramon.
Hey guys.
Thank you for having me.
Yes.
And today we're drinking, you're drinking...
A txakoli.
A Hitzalde.
A Hitzalde, yes.
Which we've had before.
It's from Getaria.
Yep.
And it's quite tasty and very refreshing.
It is.
Perfect for spring.
Yeah.
And our friend Ramon was telling us it's probably next to the rocks, right?
Yeah, we are thinking now that it's Getaria.
Like Getaria is like tucked against a rock mountainside.
Yeah, you have to go through some small tunnels in the way there.
So it's probably what it is.
Makes sense.
Very atmospheric.
I like the description.
Well, this is Crimes of the Basquelands.
So we talk about any crimes, any and all crimes that are either in the Basque Country or...
Related to Basque Country in any way whatsoever.
Yes.
Any tenuous link.
Very tenuous.
It's all good.
So it's a Basque person living elsewhere that committed a crime or was the victim of a crime
or anything.
Exactly.
We're learning about crimes and the Basque Country.
Yeah.
Our story today is...
Well, the title is Monte Jura, which you guys will probably have seen in the title.
It's the name of a little mountain.
Okay.
And I actually thought you might know it because it's three kilometers from Estella in Navarre.
Oh yeah.
Estella in Navarre.
Which is where your husband is from, right?
Well, he's not from there, but yes, he has family from...
Oh my God, am I going to try to remember the name of the town?
Around there.
On the spot, can't remember the name.
It's all good.
But they have a lot of connections to Estella because my husband did live there.
This time Douglas is going to tell me the story.
It is.
It's me.
I'm super excited.
And Ramon, and you go.
We're going to tell you the story.
Indeed.
And you guys may be asking yourselves why guests now, right?
And I think why not?
Why not?
We're always, I think we're trying to understand a bit more about the Basque Country and how
things happen here.
As we are not actually from here.
Exactly.
We've been here from some time, but these guys have been here for longer.
For their lives.
Indeed.
Their whole lives.
And I think that that kind of context is going to work well in this story because it's so
rich.
It's very political.
Okay.
Lots of names.
So ask if you're not following.
I will.
You're there.
We have a lot of questions.
You're there for the listeners.
Okay.
So the Carlists is one of the big themes of today's story.
Carlistas, Carlists, and we may ask ourselves who these guys are, right?
And I think I'm going to just, well, let me put a bit more context.
So the Carlists.
That's important for our story.
And why did I say Montejura?
Montejura is this mountain just south of Estella.
And it's a place where every year the Carlists gather to remember their dead people in war.
Okay.
So the Carlists is a political party.
We'll get into it when we'll look a little bit more specifically about who they are now
in a little bit.
But so they go, they're a group, a party.
They're still a party, a political party today.
And the Carlist Wars began in the 1830s.
So it's quite a long time ago, a long party.
And they went, they go up this mountain and it's a very conservative group.
So it's very religious.
They're very Christian in general.
We're going to see there's complications to the story.
It's not so simple.
And they go up this mountain and they kind of have a mass to remember the dead that fought
for the values that they believe in.
The fallen soldiers.
Exactly.
And the story we're going to be thinking about happened in 1976 right in the middle of transition
between, so transition as we call here is the situation between the death of Franco
and becoming a democracy in a way.
So it's right in the middle and I think it's a great occasion for us to kind of think about
the context and what was happening around that.
Yeah, for sure.
So the first Carlist War was 1833 to 1840.
Second Carlist War 1846 to 1849.
Third Carlist War 1872.
It doesn't say finishing dates.
I'm not sure if it was very long.
Was it 1876, right?
Yeah, right.
Maybe.
I believe so, yeah.
Well done.
Well these are the three wars that are known as Carlist Wars.
And I just wanted to highlight a bit of the context of who these people are.
Why Carlists, right?
Not to overextend.
No.
So at the end of 18th century, Spain is in turmoil.
Finances have gone poorly wrong and there are uprisings in the streets against the ministers
of the king.
At the time the country was an absolute monarchy, but a lot of the king at the time delegated
a lot of the power in his ministers, which were in very poor regard by the populace in
general.
And then in the context of all this with the American colonies already starting to shaking
up and coming to life and thinking of independence, in comes Napoleon and his armies invading
Spain and setting a, one of Napoleon's brothers, I believe it was, as a king.
Jose I with a bin.
Right.
And then, well, Napoleon loses that war.
The first major land defeat, I believe happens in Spain, in fact, in Bylen.
Then in comes the son of last king, which if I remember correctly, Carlos IV.
Okay.
Yes.
Then his son, Fernando VII, Fernando VII would roll in and would need to, so before
that, a constitution had been passed on liberal political thinking grounds with the key element
of it being the modern idea of the constitution where the nation of Spain is declared as such
and made the subject of sovereignty for the country instead of just the previously existing
monarchy, which was absolute by divine right and the people have nothing to say about it.
So Fernando VII, when he comes back into the country, he's faced with the decision of what
model of the country does he want to go with and he opts for absolute monarchy.
Okay.
At one point, I believe he was deposed and then came back.
Ten years after his return, which were absolute hardline absolute monarchy, then Fernando
VII dies in 1833, I believe it was, after the 10 years of absolute monarchy, which became
known as the Decada Ominosa, if I recall correctly.
What does that mean?
The ominous decades.
An absolutist decades.
Like something really grim and, you know.
Okay.
Never heard that one.
That's interesting.
Dark ages.
Yes, the dark ages.
Can you say it again?
What was that?
La Decada Ominosa.
Of course, of course it was.
The ominous decades.
Ominous decades.
Of course it was a decade that was dark from the perspective of the liberals.
I mean, yes, yes.
Not from the perspective of the absolutists.
Of course, yes.
The people that were oppressed.
Called it the ominous decades.
The 1% were happy.
So then, after Fernando VII dies, there is two competing claims for the throne, which
are his daughter, which would be Isabel I.
Isabel I.
Or Elizabeth.
To Samuel II, of course.
Sorry about that.
And a competing claim from the dead king's brother, Carlos Maria Isidro.
Right.
In the meantime, it is also important to say that the late king, Fernando VII, had passed
a pragmatic sanction, kind of a royal decree, saying that a woman could inherit the throne
of Spain.
My understanding of it is that Spanish royal law, if there is such a thing, accepts queens
as rulers.
Yeah.
But not the tradition of the family of Bourbon.
Exactly.
So, from their origins in France, they had inherited the Salic law, which states that
no female can be a queen.
So the pragmatic sanction coming from Fernando VII, what it had done is it had abolished
the Salic law.
Yeah.
And then that was the reason of it.
Makes it so Spanish tradition has preference over family tradition, in that sense.
And therefore, yeah, the monarchical tradition of Spain, where women could be queens and
rule, as opposed to the tradition of the family itself, which didn't accept females as, or
women as rulers.
Right.
So they wouldn't be eligible.
So whichever of the two sides you take of this ruling, whether you accept it or reject
it, determines which one is in your eyes the rightful heir.
Exactly.
And the Carlis chose Carlos.
Hence the name.
And they just stuck with that name because whoever descended from Carlos is who they
want, even though they're fighting, you know, for Javier and for many kings, the names of
which were never Carlos, right?
That's true.
Yeah.
Some Carlos.
Carlos Hugo.
Exactly.
And we talk about that.
Yeah, that's the thing.
The Carlistas would speak of their aspirants, aspirant kings, with the full designation
or the full name like Carlos VII, Charles VII.
Yes, they counted.
As they saw them as rightful kings, therefore, you address them as such.
And all have fashioned this, you know, kind of way of holding themselves.
That's part of it, and that's, of course, one of the reasons behind the eruption of
the first Carlis war and then, of course, the Carlis war that came after it.
But also apart this dynastical problem, there was a huge array of ideological differences
between the people defending the right of Isabel and people defending Carlos.
One being the conception of the monarchy that each band will defend.
The Carlis will be defenders of the Ancien Regime, the conception of the absolute monarchy
in line with what things have.
Divine, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
Divine right and a strong sense of the importance of political Catholicism, even though, of
course, the liberals, namely those that defended Isabel Segunda, were also Catholic.
But in a...
Yeah.
Because it was the 19th century anyway.
Yeah.
I think that what is important for listeners to keep in mind is that Carlismo was just
one example and illustration of a further movement that happened in the whole of Europe
of the Ancien Regime resisting to die.
Yeah, the counterrevolution.
Yes.
Resisting the death of the monarchy.
The death of the absolute monarchy, the death of the type of social system that had for
many centuries existed in Europe prior to the French Revolution and to the revolution
that came after it.
Right, okay.
And it is important to say that, and I think this is already being mentioned, that during
the Civil War, the Carlists fight in the end on Franco's side.
Right, they did.
And they win.
Yes.
Yeah.
But they also...
And the Carlistas were like pro-Franco.
Yeah.
Pro...
Conservatism.
Yeah.
Catholicism.
Yeah.
Really, I think one of...
Clearly it's not one of them only, but one of...
And then who would be the left?
Who would be...
Liberals, the people who at that point were fighting for...
Did they have a name?
Republicanism.
The republicans.
Liberals, communists, socialists, anarchists, you name it, you have it.
Also vast nationalists.
And they refer to themselves as the republic.
Because it was a republic.
There was a republic.
Yes, you would say so.
Where those parties existed.
It's... yeah.
So the republican side of the civil war was very...
Fractural.
Very plural and very fractional.
So was the national, so called, the so called national side.
Nationalists, yeah.
I mean, proof to that is that one of the first things that Franco did was to impose on the
Carlis unification with the Falangist.
Wait.
La Falange.
Oh.
What's that in English?
Falangs.
Falangs, really?
The Greek military formation.
And how would you define them?
So they were, in a way, sort of much like the Nazi party in Germany, a nationalist socialist
in a sense, party.
Meaning, focusing a lot more than in socialism itself, in a centralized, self-autonomous,
country enclosed economy.
Eventually what happens is that Franco, once the war is over, and the time comes for, when
everybody comes to you looking for their piece of the pie, Franco, kind of, in a way betrays
the Carlistas.
And the Falangistas.
And the Falangistas both, by rolling them into a single party.
Where they could bicker and fight each other.
Nor the Carlis, neither the Falangists were very happy about this.
No.
Because only Franco's win, essentially.
That's part of the impression of...
Yeah, there's a frustration within the Carlis party, and I think this is going to be important
for our story.
Right, right.
Okay.
So, we saw how the Carlism formed in the 19th century.
And then how it progressed throughout the years.
And they constantly fighting for the fueros, the local rights for this king.
And then what their position was within the Franco dictatorship.
Finally, yep.
They win with Franco in 37.
And then they're brought into the government.
And then we're going to continue soon.
Okay, so what a great historical background.
Should we take a break?
We are taking a break.
Okay, let's do it.
And we're back.
Yes.
So, we're back.
And we're back.
So we were talking a little bit about the Carlis being brought into the Francoist government
after they won the civil war in 1937.
And they were actually included in the government, right?
They were actually joined with the phalangists.
We mentioned that as well.
They were considered part of the Francoist regime.
And so they had, coming up really up to our story, they had this commemoration every year
where they would commemorate the dead in those three wars.
Perhaps four, we were saying.
Including the civil war, yeah.
If you consider to be one of them.
The Carlis themselves, we were saying.
No, but certainly the tribute that they were paying, and they still pay yearly, to the
death in Montejura includes the civil war.
They include the civil war, okay.
It was like the fourth Carlis war.
Yeah.
At some point, Franco was going to decide who was going to be the king of Spain.
And it's between Juan Carlos and Carlos Hugo Borbón Parma.
And at some point, Franco ruled Juan de Borbón out entirely because Juan de Borbón and his
acolytes were conspiring with the allies, with Americans and with the Socialist Party
of Spain to form a political bloc in opposition to Franco.
And then after that, Carlos Hugo had his great opportunity.
There was a certain moment in which Franco seemed to be leaning toward that guy.
But after a while, he in the end decided that he was going to be Juan Carlos.
In the meanwhile, Juan Carlos, who then would be Juan Carlos the first king of Spain.
A young man, an teenager.
Was Franco's ward.
It's a son of a defeated king who then moves to live with the family of the vectors.
And therefore is kind of captive there.
A ward of the state.
Yeah.
It's captive there.
They train him.
They send, in the case of Juan Carlos, they put him through schools.
Then they send him to the Navy and I believe the Air Force.
They put the man through quite a bit of military training.
They were always very on top of him.
You know, every statement, every press, anything was tightly controlled by the regime.
So essentially a captive.
So after Franco chooses Juan Carlos as king, as a successor.
And note on this, also it needs to be mentioned that Franco choosing Juan Carlos is a deliberate
break in the legitimate line of succession of the House of Urbán.
So it's Juan de Borbón.
In a way.
The father.
Yeah.
It's a slight to the institution of the monarchy in a way.
And to Juan de Borbón of course.
Franco chooses Juan Carlos.
Yes.
Which makes Carlos Hugo de Borbón Parma kind of, you know, a free agent now.
He's not going to be king.
And so he more confidently turns to the left, more liberal.
And he continues going to the mass every year in...
In Montejura.
Exactly.
I was just going to add to your point of this mountain being important.
It is important and significant, especially because some battles in all the Carlos War
were fought.
Around there.
Yes.
Yeah.
Which is why they chose it as a place to commemorate.
It's a very much of a symbol.
Yes.
And yeah, so, you know, they're going up there, they're commemorating and we're now coming
up to the...
The 1970s.
The 70s.
Yeah, 76.
Yes.
And Carlos Hugo de Borbón Parma, the guy who didn't get the crown, is going now.
He's married with Princess Irene of Holland.
They're going to meet at the monastery of Irache, which is just at the feet of...
At the base of...
At the base of the mountain.
And however, as we have been highlighting, there have been schisms within the Carlis
movement.
Yeah.
And so there are people who are very unhappy that Carlos Hugo has become so leftist.
So there was a sense of hostility between these two Carlis families.
Absolutely.
And to the point where these guys, what were they called?
The Comunión Tradicionalista or the Tradicionalist Communion.
The Tradición Comunista.
They choose Sixto, Enrique de Borbón, Carlos Hugo de Borbón Parma's brother as the rightful
heir.
Of the throne.
This is what got me into this story.
Okay.
And you sent me this video.
Okay.
And it's like there's colored cameras.
It's 1976 and we're seeing these...
Technicolor.
People going up a mountain.
And it's crazy because, you know, there's just like, they're just filming people and
they're all like with Icurriñas, which are the Basque flag, screaming, you know, gore
uscadi, ascatuta, hurrah to a free Basque country.
And you know, during, you know, it's 76.
So this is one year.
Well, it's months.
So Franco died in November, 20th of November.
And that was in May.
It was the ninth of, 10th of May.
So the end of 75 and then 76 was the first year.
A very confused country.
Yeah.
In fighting and uncertainty.
There were strikes across the country.
Everybody was like, what is going on?
Is ACTIV during this time?
Oh, everyone is.
Yeah.
There's literally tens of ACTIV.
There is a lot at stake, right?
Like there's a lot of power.
Not only at Aries, but at others.
Yeah, there's a lot at stake.
Literally tens of armed terrorist groups of all varieties and all political ideas, a lot
of foreign mercenaries.
Tens of layers, political instability.
And these two ex pretendants, maybe pretendants of the crown, one with his princess going
up a mountain.
Is it exciting?
Well, all of them going up the mountain.
Yeah, literally.
Three comedies from this day.
All right.
So these guys are all, all these people are doing this ritual going up the mountain.
Yes.
And it's gonna, all hell's gonna break loose at the top of that.
Two people are gonna die.
Okay.
I'm excited.
All right.
Let's take a quick break.
Yeah, guys.
We'll be back in a second.
Hey, we're back.
Yes.
And so let's give it a little recap.
We need a recap, right?
It's a lot of information.
I know guys, I just wanted to use this first to learn a little bit about Carlism.
Yeah.
And yeah.
It's very interesting.
Internal Spanish politics and the place of the Basque Country and a little bit.
I thought that was an interesting topic.
Yeah.
With the excuse of this crime.
So we are, we had Franco choose between two possible kings.
He in the end didn't choose Carlos Hugo, who is the guy we're gonna follow in our story.
He's gonna go up the mountain and his brother is gonna be going up the mountain being supported
by the kind of radical right wingers of the Carlists.
Okay.
All right.
And then on the other hand, Franco chose Juan Carlos who did become king.
He was brought up by Franco in a way.
You know, he was a ward of the state.
It was a ward of the state.
Exactly.
And he was kind of educated toward this.
And after he, Juan Carlos was chosen as king, we see that Carlos Hugo, who had already started,
you know, in the sixties already had had contact with Franco and they had gone up Montejura
together.
He eventually became more freed to become perhaps more honest or evolve in his politics.
And he became much more liberal, much more, yeah, asking for freedoms.
And he was still going up this mountain.
He had a different ideology from Franco.
Yeah.
And also amongst all those things, we see that this is actually the year, not exactly,
well it was November 75 that Franco died.
And this is May 76.
So this is right in the middle of it all.
And we didn't quite introduce this very structurally, but you know, this is why we're covering this.
Franco dies on November 20th.
There's just all sorts of competing, competing political powers.
We're going up the mountain now.
It's Montejura.
It's on the 9th of May, what has happened is that Sixto, the right wing potential,
Carlis's guy, has had a lot of support from the United States, politically right.
Oh, so they were backing him.
Yeah.
They wanted him to be king.
Yeah.
Well, not exactly.
Well, no, they wanted to cause problems in Europe.
And Carlos Hugo is going up the mountain as he's been doing for years.
Carlos Hugo is with his wife at the monastery of Irache, which is at the base of the mountain.
And there's commotion.
People start throwing things at the more left leaning Carlistas who are with Carlos Hugo.
And it turns out that one of this Argentinian guy, Rodolfo Eduardo Amiran, is one of the
biggest instigators.
It's kind of the guy who's directing that kind of lets throw stones.
And eventually, Jose Luis Marin Garcia Verde shoots somebody in the crowd and they die.
Ricardo Garcia Pallejero.
But why were they...
What was the conflict?
So why were they fighting each other?
While Hugo and everybody were gathering, the left leaning Carlis were gathering, the right
leaning Carlis, they start causing problems.
And to the extent where they end up shooting a person in the crowds, this shooting happens.
There's a shot, hurt.
You can see the film, the guy is being carried away.
I'm not sure you see the actual shot, but you see the guy being carried towards the
church and set next to the church and they're trying to stop his bleeding.
Of course, the crowd is clearly asking the police to intervene.
Yeah, there's police everywhere.
What do they say?
Estamos bajo ordenes.
We're under order.
We are under order.
Tonight.
And they're just not...
Intervene.
But in the end, they call an ambulance and everybody decides to go up the mountain anyway.
So they all start to go up the mountain anyway.
Right?
Carlos Hugo, his wife and some priests and everybody, ton of people.
And when we see these images, it's ridiculous.
It's like, what is a medium sized mountain, right?
But it's a mountain.
It's kind of a... and it's got quite a steep slope.
But these people...
You have to work to get to the top.
Probably 20, 30 people across kind of just going up the mountain.
The whole thing is just people walking up the mountain.
You know, it's a mess.
And so what happens is that on the ninth, the night before, Sixto and his quadrilla,
his group of friends, his bunch of no goods, they went up with tons of batons.
So they got sent up post.
They were there on the ninth.
On the previous day, Sixto had gone up with his friends.
So this is the 10th in the morning.
And these guys go up like with their batons.
The left wing Carlos are going up there.
And when you start getting up at the top, they start being beaten with batons.
And eventually there's had to be lots of shooting, some shots, a number of shots.
And eventually somebody shoots with a machine gun.
And one guy dies.
But there's probably injuries.
There were dozens of injuries.
And the guy who died at the top of the mountain was Antonio Jimenez Santos.
And well, yeah, he was already dead when they were bringing him down.
And you can even see that in images of the video.
You can see him being brought down in what you call these stretcher.
So our feelings go out to these two guys' families.
And it's still even controversial.
One of them at some point, I'm sorry, I'm not sure which one, but somebody wanted to
put a hat, a boyna on a coffin, which was apparently a symbol of the Carlists.
And his mother was like, no, he wasn't a Carlist.
So just to highlight that there were all these political movements happening.
Maybe he was just more...
His death was even controversial.
What was he?
Was he more left wing?
Was he more Basque nationalist?
Was he more Christian Catholic?
Yeah.
So, you know, these are the two deaths at Monte Jura.
On that same day, immediately after the shooting at the top of the mountain, Sixto was escorted
away by the police, the one that had support of the United States, apparently.
He was escorted to France very...
Well, you know, keep him safe.
Efficiently, yes.
Without declaring to the police anything.
He was just taken.
Come on.
Yeah.
I mean...
I just, to clarify something that is maybe of some importance, we are of course not saying
that the United States was interested in making Sixto the king of Spain.
No.
That was of course not the case.
If anything, which is, I agree, not entirely proven, the US would be interested in creating
political instability in certain countries, including Spain.
What is for sure, however, is that the government of Spain supported Sixto's acolytes to go
to Monte Jura and defeat.
Sounds like a mess.
Just sounds like a mess.
It is a mess in its transition.
You know, although the police initially did nothing, they eventually do take people into
custody.
They take this Argentinian guy, Rodolfo Eduardo Amarón, Stefano Dole Chiaie, an Italian anti-communist
from an organization, OTAN.
I had never heard of it.
I thought it was very ironic because it's...
OTAN.
Yeah, because it's the same as NATO in Sicily.
It sounds hilarious that NATO is a terrorist organization.
And then there's José Luis Marín García Verde, then José Arturo Márquez de Prado
and Francisco Carreras García Mourinho.
All these guys were taken into custody and eventually only the last three, José Luis,
José Arturo and Francisco Carreras were deemed to be more responsible for those two deaths.
And there was a law of amnesty, which just excused everybody.
So amazing.
I mean, for sure.
One of the main requests from the transition was that they excuse all the political prisoners,
all the people who were union leaders.
And there were many of them around this time.
And so, yeah, it was...
And so they did excuse a lot of those people and a lot of the political prisoners, including
everybody involved in the story.
So, yeah, we're...
That's the end of the story.
So we got to the top of the mountain.
Carlos Sixto had been hiding with the far right of the Carlisks on the top of the mountain
to cause problems, to cause chaos and mayhem.
And Carlos Hugo went up at the bottom of the monastery.
One person was shot.
He was taken to hospital.
When it got to the top, there was a lot of mayhem.
So, yeah, it was really...
If you think about it, the operation was designed so they caused chaos at both ends.
So people had nowhere to go.
If you see the footage, you see people completely confused, just standing around, others running
upwards, others running downwards, people carrying others.
Not sure what's going on.
Yeah.
And in the end...
It's really much worse, is what I always think.
Carlos Luis Marin Garcia Verde, who was an ex-military guy, or it says military, so I'm
not sure if he was ex or current, but he was implicated in the shooting of both of them,
actually.
Even though there were all these foreign mercenaries, the Italians, the Argentinians, and that was
it.
And they were...
Because of that law, they were all excused.
So that was the end of this.
I just want to recognize that in 2018, Podemos and Compromis wanted to cancel the amnesty.
Those are two political parties.
Yeah.
And they wanted to cancel the amnesty, and PSOE, PP, and Ciudadanos were against it.
Other political parties.
Yeah.
And also, the Carlos...I forget which year exactly, but they accused the king, Juan Carlos,
the first king.
The one that's currently considered the ex.
They accused him personally of orchestrating this, and they came out.
And so it's a mess, right?
But we learned...
Did they?
Well, they accused...
The court has called them.
And nothing...
Nothing.
They just accused him.
Sure.
To save.
So it's mostly an episode about learning about the Carlists, because every article you read
about anywhere, the Spanish history or Basque history, the Carlists are so important.
So we learned a lot about them today, I think.
Even if it was a little bit confusing.
It was confusing for me.
I hope you guys got...
Too much history.
But you know, politics is confusing.
It's not simple.
Yeah, it is.
It wasn't...
I didn't really know where to start.
So you know, as long as we...
And you guys did great.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for all your insight.
Yeah, thanks for coming.
It was amazing.
It was super fun to have you guys insights.
I think essential, but yeah.
Should we do a mini crime time?
Yes.
Okay.
I believe our guest Indigo has a mini crime time he wants to share with us.
Go for it.
All right.
Let's go.
Yes.
I don't know to what extent this even qualifies as crime because...
That's why it's a mini crime.
It doesn't matter.
It is really, really puny.
So if our listeners are expecting something spectacular, they are going to be very disappointed.
No problem.
I gotta say that back in 2018, I think it was, it was around Christmas time.
Well, as by means of introduction, I gotta say that I live in Bilbao in the very interesting
area of San Francisco.
If you are in Bilbao, that's the right place to be because it is very multi-culti.
Multi-culti.
Finest part of town.
Very exciting and very vibrating in many, many ways.
And then we have people from various parts of the globe and we have a very sizable Moroccan
community.
Okay.
That's the introduction.
Now, I am not, I'm not blaming anybody here because the only person to be blamed of what
this crime that I'm going to describe is me myself.
So I was returning home from a night out and then, you know, this effect that alcohol has
many times of, you know, of lowering down your level of hardness and everything.
So I was approaching home and then there was this guy and then he approaches me and he
started speaking in French, which of course I will not be able to understand.
And then I said, no, it's going to be Spanish or English.
One of the two you decide.
And then in Spanish, he said to me that he was in a very, very bad situation, very problematic
situation in which he basically take home message was that he needed to call home in
Morocco to speak to his mom.
And then of course, I mean, it was Christmas time.
I am not going to pretend that I am the best person in the globe, but if someone is in
dire straits, of course I'm very happy to help and do unto others, et cetera.
And then I said, of course.
I did not even think that it was very unlikely that this man was going to call his mom in
Morocco at fucking five o'clock in the morning.
But he started dialing.
But then all of a sudden he started running very fast.
And the best thing was that he was running in the direction of my apartment.
So I said, OK, I'm going to I'm going to because this was the scenario I would be home.
And of course, I mean, there was no way for me to catch him.
And the reason I say that maybe this does not qualify as crime is because he because
you did technically and maybe I mean, someday this guy will return me my phone after having.
No, no, I don't think so.
I give you some props for being such a nice guy like going up like his he wants to talk
to his mom.
I was a slightly tipsy and that may have been a factor accounting for my niceness.
But yeah.
Well, thank you.
That was a great, great.
Yeah, that was great.
Well, guys, that was a great episode.
I hope everybody had a good time.
See you guys next time.
We'll be here.
We bid you a goor.
A goor.
Crimes of the Basque Lands is written and produced by Davos de Carvalho, Julie Garcia, and Megan Dooley.
The sound and editing for each episode by Davos de Carvalho.
I'm Megan Dooley.
Theme song written by Davos de Carvalho, Julie Garcia.
I'm Megan Dooley.
Sung by the choir with no name and produced by Tom Squires.
Podcast art by Distinct Signal.
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