When Fernández Vara Unraveled the Mysteries of the Puerto Hurraco Massacre: “They Were Seeking Destruction”

We are talking about the most famous crime in our country in the 1990s. A tragedy that is still being talked about more than thirty years later and that has returned to the present this week after Vara, following the downfall of the Socialists in Extremadura. You could lose power in your community. If the People’s Party (PP) and Vox agree, they could achieve an absolute majority with their 33 seats. The man who served as regional president for three terms has announced he will stand at the inauguration and “try to govern”, but if not elected he will give up politics.

As he has commented, he has already applied to be reinstated in his position as a forensic doctor at the Institute of Forensic Medicine of Badajoz. However, as the provincial secretary of the PSOE, Rafael Lemus, announced in the wake of the general elections announced by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, “this request will not be carried out immediately”. We are talking about the position he already held when the brothers Antonio and Emilio Izquierdo, Aged 53 and 58 respectively, murdered nine of her neighbors and injured 12 others as a result of personal disputes. Some of them remained paraplegic for the rest of their lives. Also among the fatalities were two girls, aged 13 and 14, who the assassins shot at point-blank range as they were playing quietly in the town square.

Vara was responsible for preparing the Izquierdo brothers’ psychiatric reports – including the two sisters, who stayed at home while they went “turtle dove hunting,” as they touted – and advising the court on whether they should go to jail or into a psychiatric hospital. As the politician later confessed, working with the killers made him realize “that they were aware of the consequences of their actions” and that they were not “mindless” people, although the cold-bloodedness with which they acted and explained did happen sei would indicate something else.

decade of confrontation

“We shot in August because I’m very cold […] And in winter my fingers get stiff and I don’t aim,” Emilio Izquierdo told the police upon his arrest. He also showed no remorse at the trial four years later, although the defense tried to prove that the brothers acted under estrangement: “I can rest now because the mother has been avenged,” he explained. But Vara, after the relevant investigations, came to the conclusion that the family had been planning the massacre for some time.

The four Izquierdo brothers, known as “los patas pelás”, had been at odds with the Cabanillas clan “los Amadeos” since 1967. The dispute began over a minor conflict that had simmered over the years. Amadeo Cabanillas, the Patriarch, entered Manuel Izquierdo’s land with his plow that year. What could have ended as a simple argument turned sour when the former began an affair with Luciana Izquierdo and later turned her down. This angered his family, which led to their older brother Jerónimo Izquierdo murdering Amadeo.

While serving a 14-year sentence in prison, the Izquierdo brothers’ mother died in a fire at her home, for which the Izquierdos were quick to blame Antonio Cabanillas, Amadeo’s brother, although police investigations found no culprit. Jerónimo didn’t believe this and when he was released and taken back to Puerto Hurraco, he swore revenge and tried to kill Antonio with a knife. Although he seriously injured him, he did not succeed. This time he was admitted to a psychiatric facility on August 8, 1986, although he died just nine days later.

The slaughter

There was only four years of peace between the two families, until that dreadful August 9, 1986, when Emilio and Antonio Izquierdo arrived in Puerto Hurraco at 10:30 p.m. armed with 12-gauge bolt-action rifles. They hid in an alley in town. near where the rival family was having a party. Once in front of them, they began shooting at all the cabanillas at point-blank range. At first they were just looking for Antonio, but then they got angry and attacked anyone who accidentally crossed their path.

Over the next nine hours, as the nine bodies lay on the streets of Puerto Hurraco, a Civil Guard team began traversing the mountains in search of the killers. They found her first thing in the morning, resting under a tree, and from the first moment they showed no regrets. They even went so far as to claim that they were waiting to go into town on Cemetery Day to murder more people. In the 1994 trial, Emilio and Antonio were each sentenced to 350 years in prison while their sisters were incarcerated as inducers in a Mérida psychiatric facility.

The judge, after hearing Fernández Vara, stated: “The defendants devised a plan to exterminate the greatest possible number of residents of the city of Puerto Hurraco.” They chose the alley and the night because they knew the customs of their neighbors and knew that they were entitled to that they could kill more people in that time and place” and that they “possessed a cultural primitivism and an affective impoverishment that define the contempt for human life.”

The Rise of Fernández Vara

Since those years, and despite his three legislatures at the head of the Extremaduran government, the name of Guillermo Fernández Vara has always been linked to this terrible crime that left a great wound in the collective memory of the people of Extremadura. “It did a lot of damage because it had nothing to do with the real Extremadura,” the president explained years later, recalling all the cases he handled during his time as coroner.

Until then, the career of the current President of Extremadura was very distinguished. Number one in his promotion, he received the prestigious Cross of the Order of San Raimundo de Peñafort from the Ministry of Justice when he was less than 30 years old. At the same time he taught at various universities and in 1988 was appointed President of the National Association of Forensic Doctors. A year later, as director of the Badajoz medical-forensic clinic, his time came when the Puerto Hurraco massacre occurred.

Fernández Vara played a crucial role in getting Emilio and Antonio Izquierdo convicted and their sisters Luciana and Ángela being committed to the psychiatric hospital as perpetrators. The President also intervened in the autopsies of the victims and in the subsequent monitoring of the aftermath of the injured victims. As he admitted in recent interviews, he avoided speaking on the subject for years because for decades everything he needed to live “hurt a lot” and because it gave Extremadura an image.

Five years after the massacre and a year after the trial, the famous coroner finally got involved in politics and was appointed director-general for public health and consumption of the Junta de Extremadura, before becoming president of the municipality a decade later. For her part, Luciana Izquierdo passed away in 2005. Ángela died ten months later. His brother Emilio died in 2006 at the age of 72. In 2010, Antonio hanged himself in his prison cell in Badajoz when his release was denied due to the application of the Parot doctrine. None had offspring.