Rafael Hernando assures that the man assassinated by ETA Gregorio Ordóñez would say today "Let Txapote vote for you"

The senator of the Popular Party for Almería, Rafael Hernando, has said that if Gregorio Ordóñez, assassinated by ETA, were alive, “he would say of Sánchez: ‘That I vote for you Txapote'”.

The second secretary of the Permanent Deputation of the Senate has claimed to have been a friend of Ordóñez in the New Generations of the PP “for many years, until he was assassinated.” “I respect her sister, but she does not represent all the victims of ETA,” Hernando has recriminated the president of the Collective of Victims of Terrorism in the Basque Country (Covite), Consuelo Ordóñez.

Her response was not long in coming: “To be such a friend [suyo] in these 28 years I have not met you. What is obvious is that you learned nothing from him.” And he added: “There is no worse filth than that of those who dare to say what Goyo would think if he were alive. Not even his own family have ever done it ”.

Ordóñez has attached to his tweet a screenshot of Hernando’s statements, published at 00:46 this morning, and later deleted. Given the criticism received and with the response from the president of Covite already issued, Hernando has shared his message again 12 hours later, with slight changes —adds a “I think” prior to the statement about ‘May I vote for you Txapote’ and modifies the sentence in which he refers to his representation of the victims of ETA.

Given this, Consuelo Ordóñez has uploaded again: “He must have regretted deleting his tweet and he just put it back 20 minutes ago.” “The friend”, she has sarcastically put in quotation marks, which she has sentenced: “There is no greater manifestation of evil, knowingly.”

Among the responses to the first reaction of the also activist against ETA, the Minister of the Interior Fernando Grande-Marlaska has accused the PP of “playing with such a hard issue for Spanish society, which united us Democrats and was the key to the defeat” of the terrorist organization. “The PP does not have real and effective democratic values,” said Marlaska, in relation to the change of opinion of the party leader in Extremadura, María Guardiola, in her position with Vox.

“This is what happens when the political class trivializes terrorism”

It is not the first time that Consuelo Ordóñez has had to defend the memory of her brother. Last Saturday July 8, the Pamplona bullring chanted, as a chant, “Que te vote Txapote”. He thus condemned it: “This is what happens when the political class normalizes and trivializes terrorism and terrorists, knowing the pain it causes its victims. This is the level of a part of the voters of the Abertzale right. They have caught up with their brothers on the Abertzale left”.

The expression, now present on mugs, t-shirts and even songs at town festivals, refers to Txapote, the nickname of one of the ETA leaders with the most victims under his signature and convicted, among other things, of the murder of Gregorio Ordonez.

Covite then insisted again on the pain that this “slogan” produces to many victims, who have to listen to the name of the ETA member “machaconamente”. “Frivolizing terrorism in this way cannot lead us to anything good,” he concluded.

The use of this phrase has spread in recent months. Specifically, from outside cited at the beginning of February by the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, in a debate in the Madrid Assembly, to try to avoid criticism from the opposition for its management. And now it intends to be registered as a trademark by a businessman.

“ETA assassinated Gregorio Ordóñez on January 23, 1995” and 28 years after his assassination “every year it is more important than the previous one to remember who he was and try to follow his example,” said Consuelo Ordóñez at the tribute for the anniversary of the murder of his brother. “Stop lying with this sensitive issue for the victims. It is not the governments that release the prisoners, neither the Basque Government nor the central government. They are the judges”, Ordóñez asked the PP more than six months ago, before the popular ones used the name of the terrorist as a slogan against Sánchez.