Jesús Jiménez Jimeno

Description

Each morning, a Civil Guard convoy consisting of a coach, a minibus and an off-road vehicle took seventy officers, aged between 18 and 25, from the Traffic School on Calle Príncipe de Vergara to the motorcycle practice ground in Venta de la Rubia, on the outskirts of Madrid. On the morning of 14 June 1986, ETA terrorists planted a van containing 35 kilograms of explosives and various kilograms of shrapnel in Plaza de la República Dominicana. They detonated the explosives as the Civil Guard convoy was passing Number 7. Twelve civil guards were killed and a further 78 people (including officers and passers-by) were injured by the huge blast.

Jesús Jiménez Jimeno was twenty years old and was originally from Cascante del Río (Teruel). “We were with my son on Sunday in Teruel at four o’clock in the afternoon, and he said, ‘I’ll see you in a fortnight’s time, Mum’ —Jesús’s mother recounted on the television programme Informe Semanal—. I still have that memory of him heading off with his bag in his hand, but it is very sad.”

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