Pasaje de Enrique Ruano

The Pasaje de Enrique Ruano, in the Goya neighbourhood, exits at Príncipe de Vergara 68, the same building where Ruano died. That closeness between the scene and the street that remembers it was no accident: the city council decided it that way, on purpose. Ruano, a militant of the Popular Liberation Front, was arrested on 17 January 1969. Three days later, three agents of the political police threw him from the seventh floor of the building. The regime filed the case as suicide. When the body was exhumed years later, an injury appeared matching a cylindrical, conical object, but the collarbone that would have clarified what happened had vanished from the corpse. The three agents ended up on trial in 1996, though the lack of conclusive evidence led to acquittal. Before Ruano, this passage honoured general Emilio Mola. The change was part of the 2017 removal of 52 Francoist street names, and the new plaque was unveiled on 20 January 2019, exactly on the fiftieth anniversary of Ruano’s death.