José Luis Alcazo Alcazo

Offspring: 0

José Luis Alcazo Alcazo had completed his degree in History at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He planned to return to his native town of Albero Bajo, in Huesca, and take care of his family’s affairs. On 13 September 1979, he had travelled to Madrid to pick up his notes and move his belongings to Huesca. His family had come with him. However, he also met up with some college friends for a farewell gathering in the Retiro Park in Madrid. As well as José Luis (affectionately known as ‘Josefo’), the regulars at these gatherings were Marisol de Mateo, Jesús Oyamburu, Luciano Sánchez and Mariela Quiñones. That day they were also joined by Mariela’s friend, Luis Canicio.

 

It was getting dark and the group started walking down Paseo de Fernán Núñez. Suddenly, from behind the hedges, they heard a cry of ‘Now!’ and several juveniles came out towards them, armed with baseball bats and sticks. The group were young far-right activists who had gone out to ‘defend’ their area.

 

‘They attacked Luis and Jesús first’, recalled Mariela Quiñones in a report published in eldiario.es on 12 September 2019. ‘They hit them from behind, so they did not see the aggressors and were unable to defend themselves. They split Luis’ head open and he was left lying unconscious on the ground’. José Luis jumped in to try to defend his friends. ‘Josefo rolled up his sleeves, at which they all went after him’, said Quiñones (eldiario.es, 12/09/2019). ‘He tried to grab the bat from one of the boys and then he took off running. He ran into a metal fence. He tripped over it and once he was on the ground, they attacked him. After a blow to the skull with a bat, he stopped moving’.

 

The rest of the group managed to escape their assailants. Hours later they learned that Josefo had been taken to the La Paz Hospital. When they arrived, they found Josefo’s distraught parents, who had just formally identified their son’s body.

 

There were ten assailants in all, eight of whom were over 16, the age of criminal responsibility. They styled themselves ‘The Batters’ and said they wanted to defend the ‘National Zone’ in the centre of Madrid, where they lived. They told the police that they went around ‘cleaning up the Retiro’ of ‘hooligans, drug addicts, knife wielders and homosexuals’. Their names were José Miguel Fernández Marín, Emeterio Iglesias Sánchez, Miguel Cebrián Carbonell, Gabriel Rodríguez Medina, the brothers Ángel Luis and José Antonio Nieto García, Fernando Pita da Veiga Corral and Eduardo Limiñana San Juan — the mastermind and, by his own confession, the one who delivered the fatal blow. The other two were minors: Pablo Calderón Fornos, aged 14 and the third of the Nieto García brothers, José María, aged 15.

 

Of the ten aggressors, only eight —those who were over the age of criminal responsibility— were prosecuted. The two minors, Pablo Calderón Fornos and José María Nieto García, simply spent a few months in a juvenile centre and were not prosecuted. Of the eight who were prosecuted, only three received custodial sentences in excess of their pre-trial detention: Eduardo Limiñana who was sentenced to over eleven years in prison, Gabriel Rodríguez, over ten years and Ángel Luis García Nieto, who, as the eldest, received a sentence of over fourteen years in prison.

#TalDiacomoHoy de 1979 fue asesinado por jóvenes ultraderechista en el #Retiro José Luis Alcazo, se encontraba despidiéndose de sus amigos, había acabado la carrera de Historia y se volvía a su pueblo.

Es la primera vez que recuerdo a esta VT, desconocía que existía 🙏🏽🧵 pic.twitter.com/TmEcuH04Hk

— Consuelo Ordóñez (@ConsuorF) September 13, 2023