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  • Interview.Fernando Grande-Marlaska: "You can be gay and right-wing"

It seems difficult that the scandal over the dismissal of the Civil Guard dome decreed this week by Minister Grande Marlaska (57 years old) would go from being the second most scandal in recent Civil Guard history. Much will have to branch out for the Pérez de los Cobos affair , as sordid as it may be, to create the social alarm generated by the revelation, escape and capture of Luis Roldánin the 90s, when corruption at the top of the Institute became the distorted mirror of the worst in Spain. Nor will it be easy for the current news to become, over the years, a 'dramatis personae' like that of the period 1994-1996, so full of contradictions and lives that are sometimes detestable and sometimes cause the deepest compassion.

Roldan's story is well told as a political / criminal chronicle and as a spy story, although there it only appears as a derivative of the life of Francisco Paesa , who today seems like a Greek 'daimon' who guided humans through the businesses of the gods but then left them in hell. And as an intimate portrait? As an intimate portrait, the obvious reference is 'The Song of Roldán' (Planeta, 2015) , the book that Fernando Sánchez Dragó wrote based on his access to Luis Roldán and his jail diaries.

It is not easy to reach a conclusion with 'The song of Roldán', among other things, because Dragó writes as he writes: the information appears interspersed with egotistical discourses that are sometimes very funny and sometimes make the most favorable reader impatient. There is a lot of Roldán in the book, but there is also a lot of Dragó, for good and bad. In addition, the Roldán that there is receives more compassion than reproach, so that the reader is required to have a complicated pact to read: the protagonist is a character with proven immoral behavior, but we are invited to see him with good eyes .

POISON IN YOUR LIFE

Does Roldán deserve that compassion? Yes, no, like everyone but different. There is a moment in 'The song of Roldán' in which the former director of the Civil Guard remembers the first envelope with a bonus he received in the delegation of the Government of Navarra. Seven million pesetas taken from the reserved funds, Roldán does not remember whether in cash or by check. In his story, the corrupt politician is like the poor good neighborhood boy who someone tries heroin one day. And that day, of course, is wonderful in his memory but it is evident that from there his downhill begins in the shot. "He inoculated that poison in my life" is the phrase that Roldán uses in the book of Dragó. The theory is simple: the bonus system was widespread and naturalized, had a vague justification for the toughness of the fight against terrorism, and in the end it was easier to accept the envelope than to reject it. Then, when gratification became a habit, his addicts began to cross moral boundaries: he went from the funds reserved to the collection of commissions, just as a heroin addict began to sell hashish at retail and ended up robbing his father's hardware store.

It does not matter: that is the most sterile debate of those that provokes 'The song of Roldán'. More interesting is trying to find out what is the essence of the personality of its protagonist. Dragó's idea of ​​him is that of an intelligent person, sensitive, demanding for culture (good reader, fond of classical music) and affectionate, but melancholic, little endowed with a sense of humor, sentimental, vain and, at the same time, full of complexes that were expressed preferably in his relationship with women. And it is these last two traits that accelerated the drama.

"WE GOT RICH"

Very briefly: Luis Roldán was the son of a taxi driver from Zaragoza who prospered modestly . Engineering started but did not finish the race. He joined the PSOE, found in politics a way of social promotion, and social promotion became another drug that led him to commit incomprehensible acts: he falsified his CV, he became fond of a sumptuous life ("tacky" is the word that he uses Sánchez Dragó, despite the sympathy with which he portrays him) and trusted his aspirations in his partners. That is why, in the foam of the days, Roldán married a younger, more beautiful and more refined woman, more sure of herself than he was: Blanca Rodríguez Porto . Despite his political success, Roldán was contemptuously called by his colleagues in power as 'El Algarrobo' and as 'El Botejara'. For those who do not remember: 'La España de los Botejara' was a Spanish Television series written and directed by Ignacio Amestoy that portrayed the access of a poor and uneducated family from Cáceres to the comforts and codes of the middle class.

Roldán y las mujeres is the front that is opening at this moment: the theory of some of the journalists who know her case the best is that this second woman of Roldán was a kind of Queen Margot, ambitious and cold, demanding more from her husband luxury, more social advancement, more escapes to Paris, like the one in which the scandal surprised them. And that this pressure was fatal on the way to the self-reduction of the director of the Civil Guard. However, Luis Roldán denies that version in the pages of Sánchez Dragó's book and desperately tries to protect his ex-wife (to the point that he forces him to appear with a fictitious name, despite the fact that his identity has always been public. ). In addition, he swears that his wife ignored his crimes. Does anyone remember the character of Rosa María Sardá in 'The Butterfly Effect', by Fernando Colomo, when he said "I saw that we were getting rich, but just like our friends. I thought Spain was getting rich"? Something like that. In those pages, it is easy to feel moved with that sentimental, fragile and loyal Roldán.

So the orgy? In the most scandalous moment of Roldán's hunt, some photos of him in boxer shorts and company and a carefree attitude appeared in the magazine 'Interviú': "The director of the most veteran institution of Spanish security had fun like a shoddy satyr and alternated with a reputed Colombian drug trafficker, "the magazine wrote in a summary. The version that Roldán tells in Sánchez Dragó's book is different: there was no orgy but a trip to Mallorca with two pairs of friends and a woman that he dated for a short period between his first and second marriage. They had a storm during a walk and they had to change when they got to the apartment. At that time the photographs were taken, cruel flash. What was interpreted to be cocaine was a package of tissues.

Roldán also maintains that the legend of the orgy was a confusion created by José María Ruiz Mateos , who was a relative of the author of the photos and who was part of a State project aimed at making him the sinner who was to bear all the blame of felipism. Every reader make their judgment.

WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR BOOTY?

In his book, Sánchez Dragó refers to other writers who have portrayed great villains and invokes them as the swimmer who is relieved to step foot in the pool. He refers to Arthur Koestler and his Rubashov, Hannah Arendt and his Eichmann, Emmanuel Carrére and his Limonov ... He also speaks of classical Russian literature, with the excuse that the current couple of Roldán is Russian and with the idea of that his life has the same themes as any Dostoevsky's book: crime, hypocrisy, love, punishment, redemption ... It is not badly brought. There is one more book that could have served Dragó in his research. It's called 'A Spy Among Friends' (Review) and it's the biography Ben MacIntyre wrote of another untouchable in history, KGB spy Kim Philby . As in the case of Roldán, social class was a key element, only that Philby was protected and Roldán was destroyed. The two went through years of excruciating loneliness at the end of their getaway. The English took refuge in the drink and the Aragonese, in the support of a Jesuit priest. Philby died protected by the generosity of the USSR for his heroes; Roldán grows old in poverty. Apparently, his loot was kept by Francisco Paesa. With the distance, both are ceasing to be infamous characters and we begin to see them with curiosity.

Depressive and sexually unrepentant

One of the images that all Spaniards keep of Luis Roldán is that of the then director of the Civil Guard in underpants, playing with an inflatable pool doll and accompanied by a half-naked woman and several friends. According to the most famous prisoner of his time, the photographs belonged to a trip to Mallorca in 1988, when he had been in his post for five months, he had abandoned his first wife, Angela, but had not yet met the second, Blanca. His companion was "an unimportant rollete, one of those who arrive and leave", according to what he tells in 'La song de Roldán', which, in reality, came to be judged in his case. Her name was Elisa Rodríguez and it was for her that she decided to ask for her first divorce. "Women like power. They see it as a trait of manhood. The opposite happens to men. They are scared," Roldán tells Dragó, who also portrays him as depressive and sexually inappetent.

The guy who dazzled the Felipe González government

It is not clear when Felipe González met Luis Roldán, but there is an account of his political rise. Roldán joined the PSOE in 1976, he was a councilor in Zaragoza with responsibility in the Treasury area. He had a reputation for being tough and, therefore, when Rafael Vera, director of state security, opened a 'casting' to find a government delegate in Navarra, he was recommended to pay attention to him. Ramón Sainz de Varanda, mayor of Zaragoza at that time, endorsed it. By 1988, his fame had grown so much that Minister Corcuera chose him as the first civilian to lead the Civil Guard. His arrival at the Benemérita was well received. The first thing Roldán did was change the image of the body: it was tricorn. The conditions of the barracks houses also improved. Then he led the Civil Guard to the most embarrassing episode in its history.

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