{"id":350733,"date":"2025-12-16T01:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T01:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/350733\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T01:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T01:46:08","slug":"i-kept-a-shotgun-next-to-the-bed-when-a-racing-santander-duo-stood-up-to-franco-racing-santander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/350733\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I kept a shotgun next to the bed\u2019: when a Racing Santander duo stood up to Franco | Racing Santander"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the clatter of studs and the shouts of encouragement, the players of Racing Santander<\/a> filed out of the home dressing room and into the tunnel to face their opponents. All of them, that was, except two. The broad-shouldered centre-forward Aitor Aguirre and the winger Sergio Manzanera lingered furtively.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said that if we could do something to damage this military regime, we should,\u201d recalls Aguirre on the terrace of the restaurant he ran for many years after his retirement. \u201cBut it had to be subtle, or they wouldn\u2019t let us out on the field. So, we slipped into the toilets with a pair of bootlaces. I tied one onto Sergio, and he tied one onto me, so they looked like armbands.\u201d<\/p>\n

They swiftly rejoined their teammates, leaving an empty changing room behind. A very different scene would greet them on their return at half-time \u2013 the narrow corridors packed with armed police after their protest had been noted and repercussions began. Judicial proceedings, death threats and public condemnation soon followed. Yet the experience would only serve to forge an emerging friendship into a lifelong bond.<\/p>\n

By 1975, Francisco Franco\u2019s failing health and the regime\u2019s deepening vulnerability had encouraged a swell of civil unrest. With Spain increasingly isolated internationally, authorities became ever more reactive in their attempts to suppress dissent. That August, Franco signed a decree that hastily enshrined new anti-terror powers, compelling military courts to impose death penalties for attacks on state officials. Applied retrospectively, the laws led to four tribunals in which 11 members of ETA and the Revolutionary Antifascist Patriotic Front (FRAP) were convicted of murder and condemned to death.<\/p>\n

Racing Santander\u2019s Aitor Aguirre: \u2018I\u2019m almost certain I\u2019d do it again. It was an important milestone.\u2019 Photograph: Fundaci\u00f3n Real Racing Club<\/p>\n

The sentences sparked an international outcry with demonstrations besieging Spanish embassies, Pope Paul VI calling for clemency, and Nicol\u00e1s Franco urging his younger brother to show mercy. But a Franco-led cabinet meeting confirmed five of the sentences. The regime\u2019s only concession to foreign pressure was to abandon its preferred method of execution \u2013 the garrotte.<\/p>\n

On the morning of Saturday 27 September 1975 five men were executed \u2013 the final time the death penalty was used in Spain. \u00c0ngel Otaegui, in Burgos at 8.30am, followed by fellow ETA member Juan Paredes Manot in Barcelona at 8.35am. In Madrid, Ram\u00f3n Garcia Sanz faced the firing squad at 9.20am, followed by Jos\u00e9 Luis S\u00e1nchez Bravo at 9.40am. Finally, Jos\u00e9 Humberto Baena was shot dead at 10.15am.<\/p>\n

That night, the Racing players gathered at the Hotel Rhin on Santander\u2019s seafront ahead of their match against Elche the following day. Sharing a room were Aguirre, a Basque raised amid the repression of his region\u2019s language and identity, and Manzanera, from a Republican family in Valencia whose father had been vindictively stripped of his job as a postmaster due to his beliefs. They took their news from the Radio Espa\u00f1a Independiente, a station founded by the exiled Spanish Communist Party to broadcast unfiltered to Spaniards at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we heard the details of the executions, my heart was pounding,\u201d remembers Manzanera. \u201cWe had to do something. I don\u2019t know which of us suggested wearing black armbands, but that\u2019s what we agreed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following afternoon, the plan was quietly put into action. After crouching together, armbands visible, alongside their teammates for a pre-match photo, it was business as usual in the first half, with Manzanera crossing for Aguirre to head Racing ahead. It seemed the gesture had gone unnoticed. But on their return to the dressing rooms, the tunnel was stuffed with the grey uniforms of the feared Polic\u00eda Armada.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere they were,\u201d says Aguirre, \u201cthere must have been about 20 officers there, maybe more.\u201d The pair were given an ultimatum: take off the armbands or be arrested immediately. \u201cSergio and I agreed we had already achieved what we wanted. This would be in all the newspapers the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a delay to the second half as rumours swirled around the ground, the pair were allowed to take the field. Elche found an equaliser, but Aguirre settled the game with a late winner.<\/p>\n

\"SergioSergio Manzanera: \u2018It gives me great satisfaction to know that I\u2019ve contributed my tiny grain of sand to democracy.\u2019 Photograph: Fundaci\u00f3n Real Racing Club<\/p>\n

Ordered to report to the police station the following morning, the two were interrogated in different rooms and had distinct experiences. Aguirre was met with immediate hostility on account of his Basque identity, while officers found Manzanera\u2019s motives harder to fathom and questioned him with a puzzled politeness. In the afternoon, they were taken to court, where prosecutors motioned for a custodial sentence of five years and a day. Manzanera recalls the nervous wait: \u201cWe were sitting outside. Then the club\u2019s lawyer came out and told us that since there was no public disturbance \u2013 no objects thrown onto the field, no assaults or anything \u2013 the judge had decided to impose a very large fine. But we could go home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though home offered little sanctuary in a city that traditionally leaned to the right. There were confrontations in the street, their mail was tampered with and danger escalated alarmingly when a convention of the far-right paramilitary group, the Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey (Warriors of Christ the King), sentenced them to death.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to live cautiously, checking under our cars to see if they\u2019d planted a bomb or something,\u201d says Aguirre. \u201cI had two small children. My wife had to leave and take them to her mother\u2019s in Sestao\u201d. Manzanera remembers the sleepless nights: \u201cI lived alone in a top-floor apartment. Every night I would listen to the elevator coming up in the early hours of the morning. I kept a shotgun next to the bed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some relief came when the trembling voice of prime minister Carlos Arias Navarro announced Franco\u2019s death on 20 November. After almost four decades of dictatorial stranglehold, Spain began its precarious transition to democracy.<\/p>\n

Fifty years on, despite the hundreds of miles that separate them, a connection between Aguirre and Manzanera endures, born from that humble act in a changing room one Sunday afternoon in a very different Spain. \u201cIt gives me great satisfaction to know that I\u2019ve contributed my tiny grain of sand to democracy, to trying to change something,\u201d Manzanera reflects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m almost certain I\u2019d do it again,\u201d says Aguirre. \u201cIt was an important milestone. A significant moment in my life, and I\u2019ll carry that with me until they take me to the cemetery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once Upon a Time in La Liga is published by Pitch Publishing and available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid the clatter of studs and the shouts of encouragement, the players of Racing Santander filed out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-350733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}