project Miguel Ángel Blanco
Through the letters received by the Blanco Garrido family, the project seeks to understand how the kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco marked a turning point in the public response to ETA terrorism.
In 2022, the Miguel Angel Blanco Foundation donated to the General file of the University of Navarra the letters received by the family of the mayor after his assassination by ETA in 1997.
Since then, the MAB project of the School of Communication has been working on the study and knowledge dissemination of their contents. These letters reflect the social and media impact of his murder, which constitutes one of those essential events for the configuration of the collective report .
When the Miguel Ángel Blanco Foundation visited the University in 2022, a proposal for the transfer to the University of the contents of "the Ermua garage" was transferred to Marimar Blanco. There, the Blanco Garrido family kept hundreds of letters, documents and objects they received during the days following the assassination of Miguel Ángel in 1997. The transfer of the material was formalized in September and took the form of 37 boxes full of valuable research material. After their digitization and anonymization, the research group Narrative, violence and report is working, with the support of the Victims of Terrorism Foundation, on their study and knowledge dissemination.
The project 's research revolves around four fundamental objectives:
To study the relationship between the media coverage of the kidnapping and murder of the Basque councilman and the subsequent public response.
To analyze the emotions present in the letters and how they influenced the citizen response in those days.
Conduct a detailed analysis of the language used in the letters to establish common thought patterns or reactions.
To disseminate original and unpublished material that takes us back to a core topic in our recent history and that updates the commitment to freedom and against terrorism.
Research topics
- The role of emotions
- The motivations behind the letters
- Private and public response: letters and demonstrations
- Letters written by minors
- The language used to refer to ETA
- Letters from mother to mother
- Faith in the public response
- Presence of objects: poems, drawings and offerings
- Personal stories in the letters
- References to the media
- TV as a witness
María Jiménez Ramos
Principal Investigator
Antonio Martínez Illán
Lucía Gastón Lorente
Aurken Sierra Iso
Roncesvalles Labiano Juangarcía
Beatriz Gómez Baceiredo
Borja Guinea
COLLABORATING INSTITUTIONS
file General of the University of Navarra
Foundation Victims of Terrorism (FVT)
Miguel Ángel Blanco Foundation