Irene Fernández Perera

Description

On the morning of 20 August 2000, Civil Guard officers Irene Fernández Pereda and José Ángel de Jesús Encinas received a call at the barracks in Sallent de Gállego (Huesca) to go on duty at the fiestas in a nearby village. The time was shortly after 6.00 am and the two officers made their way quickly to their car.
Irene Fernández got into the vehicle and started the engine, detonating a 10-kilogram explosive charge attached to the underside of the Nissan Patrol. She caught the full impact of the blast and was killed immediately, and Officer De Jesús, who was walking around the automobile to the passenger side, was fatally injured. ETA claimed responsibility for the attack. Terrorists José Ignacio Guridi Lasa, Aitor Aguirrebarrena Beldarrain and Asier Arzalluz Goñi were convicted of being the perpetrators of the crime and Javier García Gaztelu, alias Txapote, of being an accessory.

Irene Fernández Pereda was a laboratory technician. She had joined the Civil Guard five years before and had been serving in Sallent de Gállego for three years. She was very well-known in the town as the first woman civil guard to serve in the barracks. On the day she was killed, she had just returned to work after her summer holidays.

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