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Retired Valencia official came to Ukraine to repay debt from Franco’s time. Russia has held him since 2022, and now his Kherson apartment has burned
Fire has destroyed the Kherson apartment of Mariano García Calatayud, the Spanish volunteer, who was abducted by Russian forces during the occupation of the city in 2022. His partner, Tetiana Marina, told ZMINA she received two videos from neighbors that morning, the first showing her apartment alight and the second showing the fire spreading through the building.
Calatayud is one case in a system of civilian captivity that Russia does not acknowledge. Ukraine's ombudsman estimates Russia holds up to 20,000 Ukrainian civilians, with confirmed identities for only a fraction. Russia has never charged Calatayud with a crime, never allowed him a lawyer or contact with his family, and for more than three and a half years has declined to confirm it holds him at all.
The building stands at the start of Yevropeiska Street, formerly Suvorova, roughly 500 to 700 meters from the Dnipro, Marina said. Police have recorded the damage. She does not know what caused the fire and suspects a Russian drone.
The videos showed the fire spreading
"In the first, I saw clearly that only my apartment was engulfed. In the second, I saw that all the apartments in the video had burned," Marina said.
She is still trying to reach a neighbor, Iryna, who had been sleeping in a bomb shelter because of the shelling.
- "I still do not know what happened, but everything burned. It does look like a drone," she said.
A moral debt brought him to Ukraine
Calatayud ran the road construction department at Valencia city hall before retiring. He moved to Ukraine in 2014, collected humanitarian aid from several countries and delivered it to Marinka and Krasnohorivka in Donetsk Oblast, and worked with orphanages.
Marina explained his reason to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Under Franco, many children of repressed Spaniards were sent to Ukraine, to Odesa. His mother's family was among the repressed.
"That is why he went to Ukraine in 2014, to, as he put it, repay a debt to Ukraine," she said.
When Russian forces took Kherson, he stayed. He could have left for Spain, but did not.
Russia stopped acknowledging him
On 19 March 2022, Calatayud attended a pro-Ukrainian rally. Two men in balaclavas seized him at his own entrance, handcuffed him, put him in a dark blue minibus, and drove him to the occupation administration, Marina said.
He was held in Simferopol pre-trial detention center No. 2. According to other civilian hostages, he was beaten and subjected to electric shocks while in detention. They also described inhumane conditions and a lack of proper medical care. He suffered a heart attack in custody.
In December 2023, Russia reported Calatayud's transfer to Kherson Oblast, the Media Initiative for Human Rights reported. Spain proposed exchanging him for a Russian prisoner of war, and Russia refused. The Red Cross is searching for him in penal colonies, including in Siberia.
Russian military bloggers listed him in a database of foreign fighters, claiming he had joined Kherson's territorial defense. He never carried a weapon in the city, his wife said.
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