My parents, both biological and political, who have been close to my life, have lived intensely and firsthand the 1976 strikes in Vitoria-Gasteiz. I have always been highlighted by two characteristics of the months' strike movement, which are intimately linked. One, a form of organization based on assembly: that promotes participation and direct democracy, where the representative of the assembly could be removed at any time by the assembly itself. The other is the procedural nature of the strike, of a process of politicization. The vast majority of the people who ignited Vitoria-Gasteiz in three months was a political formation and without militant experience, submissive and contented with power. However, gradually this multitude was developing its own voice: the individual voice, to share among equals in the assemblies; the collective voice, to disobey the elders. An “anticapitalist school”, after all, as one of the workers who appeared in the images of the time of the film pointed out to me a long time ago (the film interspersed real images of that time, appropriately).

Lost option

The form and process are, in my view, the most substantial political treasure of that struggle; and there is no trace of those treasures in the film. Some organizational model, especially at the time of the initial assembly. Almost nothing about the process. The authors of the film miss a great opportunity. The events take place around the loving relationship of a young couple and the middle class family of the young woman: stories that bring nothing to the film. Why not take advantage of other stories for this winding work? A family living for rent could be accommodated in a single floor room for parents and children, as, for example, it was a common situation among the workers at the time. Or why, even in the case of a couple, during the strikes did not change the experiences of two of these men and women from more interesting values and attitudes?

March 3 shows the cover of the Vitoria-Gasteiz strikes: there were strikes; there was massive follow-up at a certain point; the police committed a massacre – an incarnate and well-represented massacre –; there has been no recognition, reparation or justice in the future. An important cover that we must continue to demand and remember, no doubt. But the (Po)ethics beauty and the deeper political potential of the struggle has been forgotten.

Beyond the trenches gained

An unjust massacre, five deaths, impunity for power. The trenches of the story that not only in Álava, but also in Euskal Herria, which almost nobody questions. Earnings derived from years of struggle. The film picks up all of that. Those who have won are many, but those who we have to win are not few. And the film does nothing, it does not risk anything about the keys that are being disputed today or that are not acceptable to power.

The feminism of Vitoria-Gasteiz is striving to make visible the participation of women in the strike movement and has managed to increase its visibility in recent years. From time to time, they also ask the mother to relate her experiences, until then only to her father. This year, a book has just been presented, which includes the testimonies of women. Even if it suggests something, the film does not do justice to those struggles then and today.

According to the film, the drivers of the March 3 massacre are the Franco military in Madrid, nostalgic of the dictatorship. However, it was a group of Vitorian businessmen who went to Madrid to ask that the strikers feel more tight than before. Forjas Alavesas President, Pedro Luis Aguirre. The killing took place three days later.

In the film, the position within the power to “change some things so nothing changes” is defeated on March 3 in front of the unadaptable Francoists. But be careful. On 3 March it does not reflect the position of the dictatorship of the past, but that of today’s democracy. Those who led the transition set the red limit for the new democratic scenario through the killings, not those who were against the transition on the right. Martin Villa said: “Five people had to be killed to tie the rest in short chain.”

Martin Villa and Manuel Fraga

Can the film and its authors be asked to take risks in these trenches without winning? This is the question I ask myself. And I think so, because the authors have sought and found, and not infrequently, help, protection and legitimacy in some of the Vitorian popular movements that are struggling to win those trenches. Symbol of Association 3 of March. In this sense, I found it painful and ugly not to make any direct mention of Martín Villa and Manuel Fraga. Perhaps the main political leaders of the massacre, and especially hated in Vitoria. It should be remembered that several associations of the Spanish State, including the Association 3 of March, are involved in the campaign to try Martín Villa. As for the frigate, which was represented in the premiere of the film, played by a Galician actor, why have you decided to remove it from the film?

The movie you have to watch, yes. From a critical point of view and valuing the ones it shows. The film can serve to reinforce the trenches won. But in the story and soul of Gasteiz’s strikes, we still have to look and create elsewhere what we have to win.