Yesterday, the 20th of December, was a day of celebration. It was the anniversary of spain’s most memorable feats in recent memory, and one I remember every time it comes up. So gather ‘round, children, as I tell you all of the time the basques sent a man to the moon using nothing but their wit and 80kgs¹ of stolen government explosives.

Our story starts with a man named Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator of spain between the years 1938 until his (unfortunately natural) death in 1975. Franco was a brutal dictator who ran a christian-first government under his rule, and who hated the basques. His second in command was a man named Luis Carrero Blanco, a general fuckhead and our soon-to-be astronaut. Carrero Blanco was seen as being the only person who could actually keep Franco’s brutal ideology going as Franco’s health and general involvement in politics was winding down. As such (and in response to a recent execution of nine basques), a group of basque people decided that it was now or never - Carrero Blanco had to go down before he could take power.

Carrero Blanco was a religious man who regularly went to mass at his local church. So, to this local church these men went, and started digging. They went to the church’s underground section and started creating a pocket underneath the church’s parking area, and when questioned by the landlord as to why they were ripping out parts of a wall in the basement of a church, they said they were student sculptors working on their next project, an excuse I still cannot believe worked for them.

They laid their explosives and anxiously waited for morningcome.

On December 20th 1973, Luis Carrero Blanco went to his church. At 9:36 AM, he and his valet arrive at the church and begin parking. Seconds after that, a spark is lit.

The bastard’s car is sent flying through the air, over the 5 floor church building, and lands on someone’s balcony on a different street. Carrero blanco somehow survives this, but dies of his injuries in the hospital.

God bless the basques, and fuck Franco and Blanco, the fascist pieces of shit. May they rot in hell.