Qualla: Killing of Lasa and Zabala

Killing of Lasa and Zabala: Introduction

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The two men were buried far from home, in the dry hills inland from Alicante, and their killers poured quicklime over the bodies to make sure they would never be found. For a long time the plan worked. The graves held two young Basques, Jose Antonio Lasa and Jose Ignacio Zabala - Joxean and Joxi to those who knew them - both from the town of Tolosa in Gipuzkoa, more than 500 kilometres to the north. In 1983 they were kidnapped, tortured, and shot dead in one of the first operations of the GAL, a death squad that later trials traced to figures inside the Spanish government itself. This is not a story Alicante tells about itself, but the hills above the city hold it all the same.

Killing of Lasa and Zabala: Two Men from Tolosa

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Joxean Lasa and Joxi Zabala came from Tolosa, a manufacturing town in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa. Spain in the early 1980s was a young democracy still shadowed by the armed campaign of ETA and by the state's brutal response to it. The two men were described as members of ETA...

Killing of Lasa and Zabala: Across the Border

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The men who took them wore no uniforms, but they were members of the Spanish police. Lasa and Zabala were seized in Bayonne, on French soil, and driven south across the border to San Sebastian. There they were locked in a government building known as La Cumbre, held in the hands ...

Killing of Lasa and Zabala: A Grave Near Alicante

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

To carry out the killing, their captors drove them the length of the country, to the province of Alicante. In a lonely spot in the hills the two men were forced to dig their own graves. Then they were shot. Their killers covered the bodies with quicklime, meaning to hasten their ...

Killing of Lasa and Zabala: The State on Trial

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The GAL, the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion, presented itself as a shadowy vigilante group. The courts found otherwise. Subsequent trials concluded that it had been organised by figures within the governing party of the day, and three men were convicted for the killing of L...