José Ignacio Barandiarán Urkola, 11.07.1978. Shot dead – San Sebastián

José Ignacio Barandiarán Urkola, known as Joseba Barandiaran (Astigarraga, November 11, 1959 – San Sebastián, July 11, 1978), was a young man who lost his life participating in violent incidents against the police during a demonstration of the radical left against the Spanish Transition.

A few days before his death, on July 8, during the Sanfermines in Pamplona, serious incidents took place between the Armed Police and left-wing radicals that provoked riots in the bullring and moved to the surrounding area. Germán Rodríguez, a member of the Revolutionary Communist League (LKI, a party that emerged from ETA), was mortally wounded by a bullet while assaulting a police bus. These events are known as the Sanfermines of 1978 and are considered one of the most violent and well-known episodes of police repression during the Spanish Transition.

As a result of this event, a general political strike was called in the Basque Country and Navarra. Violent incidents occurred in numerous localities in both territories. In one of these protests, held in San Sebastian on Tuesday, July 11, Joseba Barandiaran, a young man of nationalist ideology, was killed.

During a confrontation between the police and demonstrators at the confluence of San Bartolomé and Cuesta de Aldapeta streets in the center of the capital of Gipuzkoa, Barandiaran was mortally wounded by a bullet in the chest and died almost instantly.

A citizen commission, in charge of investigating the facts, accused the Armed Police of being the author of the shots a few months later. The judicial investigations carried out in the following years showed that the shot had come from the ranks of the Public Order Forces, but the Barandiaran case was provisionally dismissed 7 years later as the author of the shots that ended the young man’s life could not be identified. The city council of San Sebastián, the city of San Sebastián, was the only one in charge of the case. The city council of San Sebastián, the city of San Sebastián, was the only one in charge of the case.

The City Council of San Sebastian, in response to requests from numerous residents of Astigarraga, decided on March 14, 1980 to give the name of Joseba Barandiaran to a square in that town (which at that time depended as a neighborhood of San Sebastian). At present, there is still a Joseba Barandiaran Square/Joseba Barandiaran Plaza in Astigarraga.