Operation Garzón is the name given to the arrest of 45 Catalan nationalists and the search of the headquarters of Catalan newspapers and pro-independence organizations in 1992, prior to the 1992 Summer Olympics held in Barcelona, Catalonia's capital city. Over 30 people were arrested between 29 June and 14 July 1992, including two journalists, the mayor of Ribera d'Urgellet and activists in the Catalan independence movement, and more were arrested some days later. The arrested were claimed to be members of the armed Catalan pro-independence organisation Terra Lliure, often with no real proof besides their involvement in the pro-independence movement. Even though Terra Lliure had already announced its dissolution the previous year, the Operation was carried out under the official reason of preventing a possible attack during the 1992 Summer Olympics. However, those who were arrested believe it was done to scare Catalan independentists from using the widely followed event as a platform for their political movement. The operation is named after the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who was its main director.
In 1995, 25 of the detainees were tried and, of these, 18 were convicted of belonging to Terra Lliure using the confession many of them had allegedly been forced to memorize during torture, when the police threatened them and their families if they did not declare this. 17 of the detainees alleged that they had been tortured, but judge Baltazar Garzón refused to investigate it despite the bruises in the detainees' bodies. This ended up in the European Court of Human Rights in 2004 which condemned the Spanish State for refusing to investigate the torture allegations.
Torture testimony
Judge Baltazar Garzón ordered that 25 of the arrested be kept in solitary confinement. 17 out of these 25 denounced suffering torture at the hands of the Spanish police as well as threats of violence and rape to them and their families, Catalanophobic insults, and at least one of them reached the point of attempting suicide.
Below are the testimonies given in July 1992, after being released, by those who denounced having been tortured.
Marcel Dalmau i Brunet
The threats, torture and harassment of all kinds were inflicted on me at the 'Directorate General of the Civil Guard' in Madrid. In the Girona barracks, despite the climate of intimidation that reigned there, I was treated with a certain correctness.
I entered the 'Dirección General' on Sunday 5th of July in the early morning. They took me out to the hospital the next morning. The torture sessions they subjected me to basically consisted of making me spend hours and hours on my knees on the floor where there were some kind of splinters that stuck into my flesh. As a result, the skin was torn from my knees. They placed my hands behind my back and a plastic bag over my head that one or two torturers tightened around my neck causing me to suffocate in agony. Meanwhile, other torturers, from five to eight, beat me hard all over my body (in the head, stomach, testicles...). They were kicks, punches and also hits with objects, with a book. In other words, while they were suffocating me with the plastic bag, I received a veritable barrage of blows and screams. Among the shouts were constant insults against Catalonia and Catalans with a racist and sexist content. During the torture my head was covered in sweat. Sometimes they would blow smoke into my bag before tightening it, they would also burn the inside end of the bag with a cigarette so that it would suck the smoke from the burning plastic. This torture was repeatedly inflicted on me over endless sessions.
The very terror caused by feeling the officers enjoying suffocating you and beating you is part of this torture. They also forced me to put an electric wire with three ends on my testicles. They spent a very long time intimidating me and saying sadistic things about sexual topics to me. During this torture the vexations of all kinds and the terror were endless, allow me to spare myself from describing it in more detail because when I remember it the effects of this terrible experience are reproduced for me.
Between sessions, when they stopped to rest, they locked me in a cell. These intervals never exceeded twenty minutes.