1977 Atocha massacre

Three men rang the doorbell of 55 Atocha Street between 10:30 pm and 10:45 pm on 24 January 1977. Their target was Joaquín Navarro, the general secretary of Comisiones Obreras, who was then leading a transport strike in Madrid, had fought corruption within the sector, and had denounced the state-controlled labor organization Sindicato Vertical. Two of the men, carrying loaded weapons, entered the office, while the third, carrying an unloaded pistol, stayed at the entrance to keep watch. The first to be killed was Rodríguez Leal. The attackers searched the office and found the eight remaining staff. However, not finding Navarro, as he had departed just before, they decided to kill all present. Told to raise their "little hands up high" the eight were lined up against a wall and shot. Two victims, Luis Javier Benavides and Enrique Valdevira, were killed instantly, and two more, Serafín Holgado and Francisco Javier Sauquillo, died shortly after being taken to hospital. The remaining four, Dolores González Ruiz (the wife of Sauquillo), Miguel Sarabia, Alejandro Ruiz-Huerta and Luis Ramos Pardo were gravely injured, but survived. González Ruiz was pregnant at the time and lost the child as a result of the attack. Manuela Carmena, who would later become Mayor of Madrid in 2015, had been in the office earlier in the evening but was called away. The same night, unidentified persons attacked an empty office used by the UGT labor union, affiliated with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). ==Political context and response==

File:Santiago Carrillo 003.jpg|alt=portrait from the chest upwards of man giving speech, a large crowd slightly out of focus is behind him|thumb|233x233px|Santiago Carrillo, General Secretary of the PCE, who urged mass peaceful protests in response to the Atocha massacre. "The ultra far right feels that it is irreversibly losing control of the state. So it is trying to create a climate of anarchy [and] ... terror in order to provoke a reaction from the army and the police against the democratization process."Following Franco's death in November 1975, Spain witnessed a period of significant political instability and violence. Ultra right-wing elements of the armed forces and high-ranking officials from the Franco regime, known as the Búnker, were to varying degrees engaged in a strategy of tension designed to reverse Spain's transition to constitutional democracy. The open emergence of independent labor unions in 1976, although still illegal, and an explosion in demands for improvements in working conditions and political reform, led to an upsurge in industrial strife across the country. In 1976, 110 million working days were lost to strikes compared to 10.4 million in 1975. This undermined the power bases of former regime officials, their business allies and those from the Francoist labor organization (Sindicato Vertical). On the same day, the far-left organization GRAPO kidnapped the President of the Supreme Council of Military Justice, Emilio Villaescusa Quilis.In the days immediately after the massacre, calls for stop work protests were heeded by upwards of half a million workers across Spain. The strikes were largest in the Basque Country, Asturias, Catalonia and Madrid, with universities and courts across the country shut down in protest. The PCE was legalized soon after on 9 April 1977; the Party's earlier embrace of Eurocommunism (essentially a rejection of Soviet-style socialism) and a highly visible role in promoting a peaceful response to the massacre allowed the government the necessary political space to lift the ban in place since 1939. With the passing of Act 19 covering labor rights on 1 April and the ratification of the ILO Conventions on freedom of association and collective bargaining on 20 April, independent unions became legal and the Francoist Sindicato Vertical system was effectively dissolved. ==Capture, trial, prison and escape==

,'' Blas Piñar, salutes during a rally in Madrid in May 1976. At his left is one of the perpetrators of the Atocha massacre, Carlos García Juliá. The murderers, believing themselves well protected via political connections, carried on with their lives as normal. However, on 15 March 1977, José Fernández Cerrá, Carlos García Juliá and Fernando Lerdo de Tejada were arrested as the perpetrators. Francisco Albadalejo Corredera, provincial secretary of the Francoist transport labor union, was also arrested for having ordered the killings. Leocadio Jiménez Caravaca and Simón Ramón Fernández Palacios, veterans of the Blue Division, were arrested for supplying weapons. Gloria Herguedas, Cerrá's girlfriend, was arrested as an accomplice. During the trial the accused made contacts with well-known leaders of the extreme right, including Blas Piñar (founder of Fuerza Nueva) and Mariano Sánchez Covisa (leader of Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey). In 1991, with more than 10 years remaining in his sentence, García Juliá was unusually granted parole and then in 1994 given permission to take up employment in Paraguay. While his parole was rescinded shortly after, he had already absconded. After more than 20 years on the run, García Juliá was rearrested in Brazil in 2018, extradited to Spain in February 2020, and transferred to Soto del Real prison to serve the remainder of his sentence. Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, called the extradition a triumph of "democracy and justice". One of the survivors, Miguel Ángel Sarabia, commented in 2005: "Although now it may seem a small thing, the 1980 trial of the Atocha murderers – despite the arrogance of the accused ... – it was the first time that the extreme right was sitting on the bench, tried and condemned." == Subsequent revelations ==

In March 1984 the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero reported that Italian neo-fascists were involved in the massacre, suggesting a "Black International" network. This theory was further supported in October 1990 after revelations from the Italian CESIS (Executive Committee for Intelligence and Security Services) concerning Operation Gladio, a clandestine anti-communist structure created during the Cold War. It was alleged that Carlo Cicuttini had played a role in the Atocha massacre. Cicuttini had fled to Spain in 1972 following a bombing carried out with Vincenzo Vinciguerra in Peteano, Italy, which had killed three police officers. He was reported to have had connections to Spanish security services and been active in the anti-ETA paramilitary organization GAL. Sentenced in Italy to life in prison in 1987, Spain denied Italian requests for his extradition. Cicuttini was arrested in France in 1998 and extradited to Italy, where he died in 2010. While the Atocha murders were the most infamous act during Spain's democratic transition, between 1977 and 1980, far right organizations carried out more than 70 assassinations. Jaime Sartorius, a lawyer who worked on the prosecution at the original trial in 1980, would declare in 2002: "The masterminds are missing. They did not let us investigate. To us, the investigations pointed to the secret services, but only pointed." ==Legacy==

On 11 January 2002, the Council of Ministers granted the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Raymond of Peñafort to the four murdered lawyers, with the Cross of the Order given to Ángel Rodríguez Leal. Across Madrid, there are 25 streets and squares dedicated to the victims of the Atocha massacre and many more across Spain. Journalist Juancho Dumall, writing in 2017 on the 40th anniversary of the massacre, highlighted that the attack had the opposite effect of what was intended: "It was a terrorist act that marked the future of the country in a way that the murderers would never have suspected and, instead, was the one desired by the victims." That debate was echoed in the words of Atocha massacre survivor Dolores González Ruiz, who died in 2015: "In the course of my life, my dreams broke me." ==Popular culture==

The 1979 film Seven Days in January presented an account of the events of the 1977 Atocha massacre. The film won the Golden Prize at the 11th Moscow International Film Festival. In 2024 RTVE broadcast a six part drama series, Las abogadas, based on the lives and careers of people involved. It covered the period from the late 1960s until 1977, culminating in the massacre and its immediate aftermath. ==Gallery==