Family of young man seeks answers 48 years after death

The tragic execution of the Catalan anarchist Salvador Puig Antich is not the only death at the hands of the Franco dictatorship that is commemorated every year in the days of March.

On Sunday, the family of Juan Gabriel Rodrigo Knafo, a 19-year-old man who died after a demonstration in Tarragona on March 5, 1976, held an annual commemoration in central Tarragona, located 60 kilometers south of Barcelona.

At the gathering, the family called for Juan Gabriel Rodrigo’s body to be exhumed in order to draw “real conclusions” about his death.

According to official records, Rodrigo fell from a rooftop and died of his injuries as he was trying to escape the police, and the incident was never investigated.

The family, however, suspects that he was killed by two armed police officers who then threw his dead body from a balcony to stage his death.

José Antonio Giménez, the brother-in-law and spokesperson for the family told the Catalan News Agency that “Knafo fell like a dead weight because he was already dead up there, and that’s the conclusion that the family has come to.”

He hopes that the exhumation of the body will reveal “any detail that would show” that Rodrigo did not fall to his death.

On the day of his death, Rodrigo was participating in a protest over the deaths of five workers in the Basque city of Vitoria-Gasteiz.

The goal of the family is to resolve the matter before the 50th anniversary of Rodrigo’s death in 2026, and they are seeking the help of the Tarragona City Council.

Present at the commemoration was the Councillor for Democratic Memory of Tarragona, Sandra Ramos, who said that the City Council would “advise and give all the possible support” to the family, though adding that the department “does not have the competency” in the matter.

Ramos, however, stressed that the family’s fight was “very just.”

Tuesday, March 5th will be the 48th anniversary of the death of Juan Gabriel Rodrigo Knafo.