Constitution Day in Tirajana: Lindosa, the Falangist who came fleeing from ETA

Constitution Day is celebrated with the memory of all the processes that the south of Gran Canaria has overcome and where non-Spanish residents are already a minority compared to foreigners and everyone lives in harmony. But at the beginning of democracy there were those who wanted to betray the Transition. It was Araña del Toro who, with the support of the democratic forces, ousted this sinister character from the leadership of local order. He was a professional abuser who in the south of Gran Canaria was received with open arms, everyone believing that he was a peninsular.

Antonio Lindosa Seibane (Sopuerta, Vizcaya, in 1936) in 2004 was a Falange candidate in the Peninsula for the Senate to get there before he had his own evolutionary process. He arrived in the south of Gran Canaria at the hands of Mayor Casteleiro, who never explained the matter of what the mayor of Baracaldo in the Basque Country recommended to this character. The legionnaire came to the south of Gran Canaria fleeing from ETA. So brave in Tirajana but so chicken in his land. He was chief of the Local Police of Portugalete and there he ended up being denounced by 16 agents for mistreatment of alleged terrorists. The mayor of the Basque municipality got rid of him with a letter of recommendation to Casteleiro signed by mayor José Manuel Esparza, according to the municipal archives consulted by Maspalomas24H.

Antonio Lindosa spent 12 years in the Army and during that period he became first corporal in the Legion. Between 1957 and 1960 he was an agent of the Barakaldo Municipal Police. After that period he joined the Armed Police. In 1968, a Jesuit priest, Luis María Esparza, who was chaplain of the Santa Marina sanatorium and brother of the mayor, helped him become an agent in the Municipal Police of Portugalete. In 1970 he took possession of the square and in 1971 he was appointed corporal. His friendship with the clergy did not last long. 12 priests from Portugalete published a letter against Lindosa in 'Gaceta del Norte. On May 24, 1971, 54 people sent a letter to the mayor asking him to open an investigation into Lindosa's behavior and citing several testimonies from victims of his alleged abuse. We talked about how at that time Franco was in charge and it was the Basque Country. With that, they went to the press to attack Lindosa's methods. 335 neighbors joined the complaint. But Franco signed a pardon for Lindosa in September 1971.

However, 16 municipal agents on June 1, 1972 returned to the charge against Lindosa's ways. In October 1972, the Minister General of the Movement granted Lindosa entry into the Order of Cisneros with the category of gold medal. That 1972 he got involved again in Portugalete and in July 1974 Lindosa achieved, after threats from ETA, a six-month voluntary leave of absence for personal matters. In the same month the mayor wrote to his namesake of San Bartolomé de Tirajana a letter recommending him as “a great friend and collaborator in the tasks of maintaining public order.” On September 20, 1978, the investigating judge of Telde (Gran Canaria) issued a prison order against Lindosa for obstructing judicial action in the investigations being carried out against him and six other former corporals of the San Bartolomé Municipal Police.