Juan Mari Jáuregui normally slept soundly, but on the night of 28 July 2000 he was disturbed by a nightmare. “I dreamed they killed me,” he told his wife the next morning, as he left his house in the village of Legorreta, in Spain’s verdant Basque Country, to meet a friend for coffee. She told him not to worry. It was just a dream.
Jáuregui was a big man – 6ft tall and 16 stone – with a voice and personality to match. He was 48, and between September 1994 and May 1996 he had been civil governor of Gipuzkoa, his wealthy home province, which lies in the north of Spain, on the border with France. “If he was in the room, you knew he was there, and not just because of his size,” said Xabier Maiza, a fellow local politician from the Socialist party.
