The three families of Colonel Ortiz
I am writing these lines in the middle of the October 12 holiday. And I suppose that one never thinks of writing an obituary about one's own father, but having both collaborated in this excellent media loudspeaker called Atalayar, I did not want to miss the opportunity to pay my small tribute despite the summer months that have passed since his sad and unexpected departure.
A task that in the days after his death was emotionally unattainable, where family and friends are the best refuge. Although the biological family was not his only family. The colonel of the Civil Guard, Miguel Ángel Ortiz Asín, had more.
One that he always carried in his battered heart, the great Saharawi family. Those he watched grow up and who saw him grow for no less than ten years of his life and career in numerous geographical points of the then Spanish colony. He knew the terrain, its social structure and tribal composition in depth.
He was one of the Spanish officials who carried out the civil registration of the population. To do so, he went through the whole territory centimeter by centimeter, jaima by jaima. A registry from which the famous 1974 census was later taken. His experiences and anecdotes in the ten years he spent in the Sahara would be enough to write a book, which he was never able to do despite our insistence. He preferred conversation and short distances, a real social animal.
As a good friend said when he gave his condolences "when he spoke, everyone listened", she could not have described him better. Fortunately there are still people left to tell those stories, and it will be up to me to collect them in his memory. Although there are a couple that describe very well how he was and how loved he was in those parts.
Hach Ahmed Bericalla, president of the Saharawi Movement for Peace, said that "when I was very young I worked with him in the summers, as an assistant in his office in the government office to earn money to continue studying. One of the clearest memories I have is seeing him in his office, an open office, dealing daily with groups of Saharawis as they arrived and others joined them.
Even as the commotion increased, it was striking that he did not feel overwhelmed surrounded by so many people, each with their daily problems, while he did his best to help them solve them. But best of all, the most prodigious thing is that, among so many existing tribes, fractions, sub-fractions, etc., he was able to identify them all tribally one by one, and not only that, but he also befriended and transmitted closeness with each one of them, treating them as equals.
The other anecdote, which corroborates the previous one, has its origin in a beautiful story that the translator Jedna Malainine often tells me about my father's relationship with his family. According to the story, shortly after arriving in the Sahara, a then young Lieutenant Ortiz was sent by the government delegate to meet a very important personality, Chej Maminna Uld Sidati, grandson of the great Saint Chej Maelainine, being very well received by him and his son Hasena, father of Jedna himself. When decades later he met the latter in Dakhla and introduced him to his daughters, he suddenly realized something: "Jedna! by meeting them I have already met four generations of your great Malainine family".
Undoubtedly precious memories of the knowledge he had of the families during his stay in the territory. That is why it hurt him so much to see these families fractured years later and until the day of his death, and that is why he turned in his last years through the foundation of the Canary Saharawi Forum, in order to help them looking for a realistic and humanitarian solution that he found in the proposal of Moroccan autonomy. His affection for them was reciprocated on the day of his death. Countless calls and messages came from all parts of Spain and Morocco, in particular from his beloved adopted land. There was a common denominator in those coming from the people of the Sahara: "we have lost someone who was like a father to us".
His other great family, the one that occupied his entire professional life, was that of the Civil Guard. He devoted himself body and soul to it, almost literally, as he came very close to leaving widows and orphans during his next assignment after the Sahara: nothing less than San Sebastian during the years of ETA's leaden years. If talking about the Sahara brought back many smiles and good memories, talking about that dark passage of our history made his voice crack and his eyes water.
He hardly told anything: that booby trap that fate did not want to be for him but for a subordinate, a traumatic memory that never left him. Or any other day with constant threats or services from which he did not know if he would return. In 1980 alone there were a hundred ETA murders, many of whom were his colleagues.
He never left the corps, although the corps did leave him somewhat abandoned on the day of his farewell at the morgue in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: I still observe with perplexity and indignation how on that Friday in June no one, no officer or responsible of the Civil Guard Command of Las Palmas, came to pay their respects to his widow and family, not even a phone call or flowers.
Colonel Miguel Ortiz, between assignments and retirement, had spent almost a third of his life on the island, he felt like another Gran Canarian. I guess you don't choose when you die, but it seems that doing so on a Friday morning on the eve of the weekend means being ignored by those who should honor their veterans. In these turbulent times of "titos Berni" and various compadreos, the institution of the Guardia Civil at the insular level is not in a position to allow such disdain. Especially to a colleague who was Captain of the Traffic Subsector and Commander 2nd Chief in the 80s. And who never spared a single October 12 the traditional offering to the patron saint in the Command despite the years he had been retired.
Those who did not fail, essence and heart of the corps, were the civil guards, with capital letters. Those who showed their respects in person or by telephone wherever they were, especially their classmates. Those are the ones who keep alive the flame of what once was and what -as some said seeing that institutional vacuum- is perhaps ceasing to be.
And of course there is also his biological family, us. A good part of it could hardly enjoy his company for a long time after so many decades away from his native Zaragoza, where his ashes await. The uprooting derived from his dedication to his uniform took its toll, although he always carried with pride his Aragonese condition wherever he went. That family is the same that lives between the sadness of his departure and the consolation of seeing that, although every man dies, not everyone really lives and gives himself as he did wherever he went and with anyone who asked him, because above all he was a good person whose life we will always be proud to have been part of.
I hope that time will alleviate the anguish of grief, and the deep pride of having offered an incomparable sacrifice, on a day like today, October 12, at the altar of the Virgen del Pilar. Your triple patroness: civil guard, Zaragozan and Spanish. An altar where death is not the end.