On 31 January 1980, several students from the University of San Carlos advised a k'iche' peasant group who wanted to let the world know about their precarious situation; when the country's newspapers did not dare to publish their demands, and after all legal avenues to be heard had been exhausted, the group decided to take the premises of the Embassy of Spain and use it as a platform for their demands. The reaction of the government of general Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia was strong and direct: police surrounded the premises of the embassy and after several hours of siege, the situation ended with the burning of the room where all the people who were inside the embassy had taken refuge, including almost the entire Embassy staff and some random visitors, including former vice president of Guatemala, Eduardo Cáceres Lehnhoff and former Foreign Affairs Minister, Adolfo Molina Orantes. The only two survivors were Ambassador Máximo Cajal López and peasant Gregorio Yuja Xona, who were taken to the Private Hospital Herrera Llerandi. Yuja was kidnapped there and a group tried to kidnap the ambassador, but he was taken from the hospital just in time by the ambassador of Costa Rica in Guatemala; Cajal left the country that night. Yuja, meanwhile, was tortured and his body thrown off the premises of the president mansion at the University of San Carlos. His body was buried in the Heroes and Martyrs Plaza on Central Campus.