Friday, November 29, 2024, marks the 125-year annualannually of the formation of FC Barcelona.
To mark the future, The Athletic is operating a form of items, celebrating the society and the moments who’ve helped manufacture the membership what it’s lately.
Now we have informed you concerning the tale of Joan Gamper, the person who based the membership, and run via one of the vital most vital numbers in Barca’s historical past. Now, we have a look at the scarcely plausible tale of when their famous person striker, Quini, was once abducted in 1981…
“Quini’s wife called me at four o’clock in the morning. She told me he hadn’t come home that night and that she hadn’t heard anything from him.”
Former Barcelona president Joan Gaspart is speaking to The Athletic about one of the odd incidents within the membership’s historical past.
It was once Sunday, March 1, 1981, and Gaspart was once vice-president. Barca had overwhelmed Hercules 6-0 on the Camp Nou and Los angeles Liga’s lead scorer Quini had equipped two targets. Barca appeared not off course for the Spanish name — one thing that had now not came about since 1973-74, in Johan Cruyff’s enjoying days and when Quini was once scoring targets for Carrying Gijon rather.
There was once a way of euphoria within the town and a number of the gamers, who made up our minds to exit for dinner at a cafe alike the grassland.
It was once the eating place Can Fuste, a 15-minute progress from Camp Nou. Everybody was once looking forward to the upcoming 31-year-old famous person striker Quini, complete identify Enrique Castro Gonzalez — however he by no means arrived.
“There were seven or eight of us,” Carles Rexach — probably the most gamers within the squad tells The Athletic. “(Barca centre-back and Quini’s close friend Jose Ramon) Alexanko met us and said he didn’t know where he was or where he had gone.”
Quini was once considered one of Spanish soccer’s most famed gamers within the Eighties (FC Barcelona)
The ultimate any person had heard from Quini was once a TV interview through which he spoke about their then sport in opposition to Atletico Madrid. Atletico have been in first park, two issues forward of Barca and the sport was once a very powerful.
Mari Nieves, Quini’s spouse, had flown again from Gijon that afternoon together with her two kids, as she did on many weekends. Next the fit, her husband banned by way of the home to select up his issues earlier than stepping into his Ford Granada to move to Barcelona airport to select her up.
“His wife (when he did not appear at the airport) had called several hospitals, police stations or any place where they might know something,” Gaspart says. “He didn’t show up. Nobody knew anything. We went to his house at five or six o’clock in the morning thinking, ‘Where could he be?’”
Gaspart, then-Barca president Josep Lluis Nunez and Alexanko spent the night time at Nieves’ area and instantly known as the police.
The then occasion, the record of Quini’s disappearance become legitimate. The 3 males stayed with Nieves till she won a choice that started to offer her solutions.
The case brought about a stir around the nation. It was once reported in all of the main media shops and rumours started to unfold about whether or not the Basque separatist team ETA were concerned then terrorising Spain with plenty of assaults.
Nieves won the primary of 21 screams from her husband’s kidnappers. It was once now not ETA however 3 society without a legal document and negative jobs who had attempted to resolve their monetary issues by way of kidnapping probably the most nation’s largest soccer stars and critical a massive ransom.
“The news spread like wildfire all over Barcelona,” Josep Maria Minguella, a former agent and a determine who has been intently related to the membership over time, tells The Athletic.
“There was a lot of consternation. With ETA active, there were a lot of kidnappings at the time, but it had never happened to a player. It was reminiscent of what had happened to (Real Madrid legend Alfredo) Di Stefano a few years earlier (when he was kidnapped by Venezuelan guerrillas in 1963).”
As Rexach places it 43 years after, “At first we thought it was a joke because it was unimaginable.”
On his method house from the airport, Quini had banned to refill his automotive when the 3 males abruptly assaulted him and compelled him into the automobile at gunpoint. They after lonely the automobile and put Quini in a hood and picket crate in a van and drove to Zaragoza, round a four-hour power to the west of Barcelona.
There they transferred him to a hideout, the place he spent 23 days locked up.
Quini were lead scorer 5 instances in Los angeles Liga and had scored 73 targets throughout 4 seasons with Barcelona.
“He was one of the best players in Spain and was constantly in the media spotlight,” Rexach says. “They knew kidnapping him was going to have a big impact.”
“He was such a charismatic man and he was good to people,” Juan Carlos Perez Rojo, a participant who was once within the ‘B’ group however educated with Barca’s senior aspect, tells The Athletic. “They knew everyone was going to step up and give him the money he needed.” Rojo and Quini become pals at some point then the abduction and he’s into his forty sixth yr at Barca, the place he works as a scout.
“As a person he was very simple, a good person, kind,” says Minguella, who helped signal Quini from Carrying Gijon. “He didn’t deserve all the things that happened to him and his family. It’s one of those moments when you realise that life can be unfair.”
Quini with Nieves at the occasion of his let fall (Xavier Bonilla/NurPhoto by way of Getty Photographs)
It after emerged the abductors’ primary goal were the then-Barcelona schoolteacher Helenio Herrera. Once they came upon he had a chilly, they modified their plans as they feared he would possibly die all through the abduction.
Within the days that adopted, the police labored in secrecy.
“There was a lot of upheaval,” says Minguella. “The police controlled the situation and didn’t want too many people to intervene.”
“The police didn’t want people to get in the way, even if they wanted to help,” provides Rexach. “So they just let Alexanko be the one to help.”
Barcelona requested Los angeles Liga to put off the fit in opposition to Atletico that weekend. The Spanish lead aviation denied that request, Barca performed and misplaced 1-0 on the Vicente Calderon, Atletico’s former house. The German midfielder Bernd Schuster, who threatened to not play games, blamed Nunez and Herrera for the fit going forward.
“There were people who didn’t want to play until they found him and there was a bit of a struggle because the coach thought we had to play even if he wasn’t there,” says Rexach. “It was complicated.”
Barca performed two extra video games with Quini nonetheless lacking, shedding 2-1 to Salamanca and drawing 0-0 with Actual Zaragoza. They’d end 4 issues in the back of champions Actual Sociedad in 5th park.
“That year we didn’t win La Liga because we spent those three weeks just thinking about Quini,” Rexach says.
In the meantime, the police persisted to do their activity. As screams from the abductors have been comprised of telephone subjects, they requested Telefonica, Spain’s well-known telecoms corporate which owned them, to cooperate.
“The kidnappers went completely unnoticed,” Juan Martinez Ruiz, probably the most 20 officials in control of the case, after informed Spanish magazine Libero. “That was the main reason it took so long to locate them. They had never broken a dish, they had no previous convictions, they were not related to criminals… They were absolutely normal.”
The police issued a commentary interesting for the folk to assistance and needed to offer with an avalanche of fraudelant leads. Telefonica had bother figuring out the foundation of the screams.
In considered one of their screams, the abductors informed Nieves they have been fearful as a result of how a lot Quini ate, given they not had enough quantity cash to shop for sandwiches. They have been challenging 100 million pesetas for his ransom (usefulness round €600,000 lately), a determine that had risen from the unedited 70 million pesetas.
In probably the most makes an attempt to pay the abductors, the police requested Alexanko to exit to Los angeles Jonquera, a Catalan the city near to the French border, with a briefcase stuffed with banknotes. The abductors requested him to pass the border, however the police refused for the reason that French government would have arrested him at the spot.
On March 20, the 3 males requested the cash to be paid right into a Credit score Suisse storage account.
“Barca were looking for solutions because the kidnappers were very absent-minded,” Minguella says. “Those who kidnapped him did not have very clear ideas about what ransom they wanted to ask for and were changing their strategy.
“Nunez’s secretary called me to find out if I had any way of getting money in Switzerland, where the kidnappers asked for the money to be deposited. I was doing business in Luxembourg and Switzerland and I had money there. I said yes and agreed to help with the payment.”
The storage account was once within the identify of probably the most kidnappers, Victor Miguel Diaz Esteban. The Swiss police labored intently with their Spanish opposite numbers to trace him indisposed. Diaz Esteban was at Switzerland to draw out 1,000,000 pesetas in U.S. greenbacks on March 24; inside of 18 hours, the police had arrested him then discovering the lodge the place he was once staying and following his steps when he left for the airport to catch a airplane to Paris. He was once interrogated and confessed to protecting Quini in a basement in Zaragoza.
In not up to a occasion, the police immune him and arrested a 2d kidnapper.
Quini after informed pals this was once when he was once maximum afraid as a result of he heard a bundle of noise and idea the abductors would shoot him. However at the night time of March 25, radios throughout Spain introduced he were freed.
When he arrived in Barcelona, a abundance population was once looking forward to him on the police station — Quini needed to exit out to greet them.
The striker prepares to offer a press convention then his let fall (FC Barcelona)
“When he came out he was in a very bad state, you could see it,” Rexach says. “All I know is that I gave him a hug. He was hidden in a place with no light for 23 days. It’s something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.”
“He wanted to play and get back to normal as soon as possible,” Rojo says. “They gave him psychological support, I heard about it from team-mates some time later.”
Quini returned for the ultimate 4 video games of the Los angeles Liga season, enjoying once more slightly a era then his let fall, and was once won with complete honours at each and every grassland he performed at. He performed 90 mins in each and every of his first 3 league video games then his go back — scoring two times in a 5-2 win in opposition to Almeria — and nonetheless completed as Los angeles Liga’s lead scorer with 20 targets. He additionally scored in each legs of the Copa del Rey semi-final and two times within the last in opposition to his boyhood aspect Carrying Gijon within the last as Barca lifted Spain’s nationwide cup.
“On every pitch, when they said Quini’s name, there was five minutes of applause,” Rojo says. “He had a spectacular reception.”
The 3 kidnappers have been sentenced to ten years in jail and given a 5 million peseta superb.
“They were simple people, without great possibilities,” Quini informed a press convention then his let fall. “They fed me with sandwiches because they couldn’t afford any more.”
“There were team-mates who made jokes after that,” Rojo says. “Sometimes, when we were in hotels after dinner when you go to the room, there were team-mates who would go into his wardrobe to scare him when he arrived.”
Quini spent 3 extra seasons at Barcelona, completing with 73 targets in 141 appearances for the Catalans. He upcoming returned to Carrying Gijon in 1984, the place he spent the ultimate 3 years of his enjoying occupation. He labored as a schoolteacher, group delegate and director of institutional members of the family for them.
The abduction had an overly actual have an effect on on Quini, who died of a center assault elderly 68 in 2018. He was once given an emotional tribute by way of the Camp Nou, with a abundance tifo unfurled that learn ‘Quini, sempre recordat’ — Quini, at all times remembered.
The Camp Nou tribute to Quini then his loss of life (Xavier Bonilla/NurPhoto by way of Getty Photographs)
“This affected him a lot throughout his life,” Rexach says. “He spent many days locked underground in a very small cell. He didn’t want to talk about it because every time he did, he relived the trauma.
“He did tell me that when he was fed by the kidnappers he sometimes kept (the food) to himself. He thought that if they hunted them down and killed them, it would be impossible for anyone to find him there and he would starve to death.
“He had those 23 days in his head until the day he died. People think he forgot it quickly, but he didn’t. When someone would ask him a question (about it), you’d see him change the subject very quickly.
“It’s the most unbelievable thing that has happened to Barca in its history.”
(Govern pictures: Getty Photographs; design: Eamonn Dalton)
