‘It was true. We all turned around and the first thing we saw was one of the secret police’s Seat 1430s about a hundred and fifty metres behind us, and at that moment the driver and the officer beside him realized we’d recognized them and put the flashing light on the roof of the car and turned on the siren. What do we do? asked Gordo. Speed up, said Zarco. Although on that stretch the highway was narrow and curved, Gordo floored it and in the blink of an eye we’d overtaken a pick-up truck and a couple of cars, but the police car easily replicated Gordo’s manoeuvre and was back on our tail. It was then that the real chase began. Gordo drove the 124 as fast as its engine would go, the cars in front of us and oncoming traffic started to get out of our way, the police car got close enough to bang into our bumper and twice pulled up next to us and sideswiped us trying to push us into the ditch. Before they could try for a third time, Gordo took the next exit, which turned out to be a dirt track full of potholes that we started jolting along into a little pine forest with the police not very far behind, and at some moment the first shot was fired, and then the second and the third, and before I knew it we were in the middle of a full-scale shootout, with bullets coming through the back windscreen and whistling between us and going out through the front windscreen while Zarco and Tere leaned out the side windows and began to shoot back at our pursuers and Gordo tried to dodge the shots by zigzagging through the pines and driving off the track and back onto it and I cringed in the passenger seat, petrified with fear, incapable of using my sawn-off shotgun, silently imploring that we might get out of that trap, something that actually happened right at the moment it appeared they were going to catch us, when the track ended all of a sudden and we went down an embankment with great difficulty and landed on a sort of semi-paved forest floor while the secret police’s 1430 tried to get there faster than us from behind and halfway down the embankment flipped over spectacularly to the euphoric delight of Zarco and Tere, and also Gordo, who was watching the tumbles our pursuers were taking in the rear-view mirror and took advantage to accelerate through a network of empty streets and get us out of that ghost town or half-built housing development we’d ended up in.
‘The frustrated robbery of the gas station in Sils had at least two consequences. The first was that, although nobody made any comments on my behaviour that afternoon (or I didn’t hear any), I felt ashamed of my cowardice and swore that it wouldn’t happen again; at least not in front of Tere. The second was that Zarco decided to change objectives, and the consequence of that consequence was that from then on we stopped robbing shops and gas stations and started robbing banks, because, according to Zarco — and it was all he said to justify his decision — robbing a bank was less dangerous than robbing a gas station or a shop, aside from being more lucrative. The comment didn’t strike me as nonsense, and much later I understood that back then, before the epidemic of bank robberies that later swept the country had started, maybe it wasn’t, or not entirely, but the truth is it still astonishes me that it never even occurred to me to somehow try to put the brakes on that hell-bent scheme. It’s also significant that no one asked any questions or had any qualms about this change in strategy; significant because it reveals again our absolute trust in Zarco: one day he simply tells us we’re going to rob a bank and a few days later, after planning the job and watching a branch of the Banca Catalana beside the port in Palamós for several mornings in a row, we robbed it.
‘We met mid-morning on the chosen day, had something to drink in La Font and on the way out of the district we stole a Seat 124 station wagon. On the way to Palamós Zarco went over the plan one last time and divided up the roles: he and Tere would go into the branch — Tere with one sawn-off shotgun and him with the other — I would wait for them on the street with the Star, guarding the entrance, and Gordo would wait for us at the wheel of the car, ready to take off. We listened to the instructions and assignments without complaint, but I spent the trip digesting a decision I’d been chewing over since Zarco had suggested the bank hold-up. So, just after we arrived in Palamós and parked in a little square, with the Banca Catalana branch on our left and the sea on our right, I broke the silence in the car as we watched people coming in and out of the bank. What I said was: I’ll go in. To my surprise, the phrase didn’t sound like an announcement or an offer but almost like an order, and maybe that’s why no one said anything, as if no one entirely believed what they’d just heard. I looked away from the entrance to the bank and looked for Zarco’s eyes in the rear-view mirror; finding them I explained, emboldened by my own words: You and I’ll go in. Tere stays outside. Zarco held my gaze. Don’t talk rubbish, Gafitas, said Tere. It’s not rubbish, said Gordo. Girls are easier to recognize than guys. And I have to drive. Gafitas should go in. Zarco and I were still looking at each other in the rear-view mirror while Tere and Gordo got involved in the beginning of an argument, until Zarco asked me: Are you sure? Tere and Gordo shut up. Yeah, I answered, and I said again, more for myself than for him: You and I’ll go in. I turned around and looked at him directly, as if trying to make it clear that I had no doubts, and Zarco nodded his assent so slightly that it almost looked like a nod of capitulation. OK, he said to everyone. Gafitas and I’ll go in. Then he added: You stay outside, Tere. Give the shotgun and nylons to Gafitas.
‘Tere gave me the stocking and the shotgun, I gave her the Star, we both looked at each other for a second and during that second I saw a mixture of pride and astonishment in Tere’s eyes and felt invulnerable. Then Zarco went over the plan again and, when there were only a few minutes left before two o’clock, which was closing time for banks, Gordo switched on the engine of the 124, drove around the little square and parked on the pavement on the other side, right in front of the entrance to the branch. Zarco, Tere and I all got out of the car at once. While Tere stationed herself by the door holding the pistol at her waist, under her T-shirt and handbag, Zarco and I pulled the nylons over our heads, walked into the bank and pointed the guns at the two customers and three employees — three men and two women — who were there at that moment. What happened next was easier than we’d expected. As soon as they heard us shout at them to lie down on the floor, the customers and employees obeyed, frightened to death. After that only Zarco spoke, with an unexpectedly slow and deliberate voice or at least unexpectedly slow and deliberate for me, who was still pointing at the three men and two women with the sawn-off shotgun, sweating and forcing myself not to tremble while he tried to calm everybody down saying in his strange unhurried voice that nobody wanted to hurt them and that nothing was going to happen to them if they did what he told them to. Then Zarco asked who the manager was, and when he identified himself ordered him to hand over the money they kept in the branch; the manager — an almost completely bald man in his sixties with a double chin — obeyed immediately, filled a plastic bag with several bundles of notes and handed it to Zarco without looking at him, as if fearing he’d recognize his face disfigured though it was by the nylon. Zarco didn’t even open the bag and, as we backed away towards the door, he simply thanked everyone for their co-operation and advised them not to move for ten minutes after we left.