Francisco Cipriano Díaz

Description

At 7.05 pm on the evening of 29 May 1991, several ETA members pushed a car bomb containing twelve gas bottles, each containing eighteen kilograms of ammonal into the courtyard of the Civil Guard Barracks in Vic (Barcelona). At that time of day, many of the civil guards’ family members were in their homes and several children were playing in the courtyard.

Once the car, with reverse gear locked, was in the courtyard, terrorist Juan Carlos Monteagudo detonated the explosives by remote control. As a direct result of the explosion, nine people were killed, five of them children, and another 44 were wounded. The General Hospital in Vic was overwhelmed by the number of victims and some of the wounded had to be flown to other hospitals in Barcelona by helicopter.

The explosion killed nine people, amongst them Francisco Cipriano Díaz, who was studying when the bomb went off. He was killed instantly. He was in third year of secondary school, specialising in science, at that Callis High School in Vic. That day his parents were attending a funeral in Zaragoza. Francisco’s sister, Pilar, aged eighteen, was also injured in the blast.

Press