According to Cubillo in later interviews, he went to the hospital on his own, arriving in a timely manner because street traffic was light due to an important football match. He also relates that the then President of Algeria, Houari Boumédiène, was personally concerned about the matter and ordered the arrest without further cause of all the Spaniards who were in the capital and the withholding of their passports; that was how Cubillo recognized his attackers. The police chief came to the conclusion that they were Spaniards because "If they have not insulted him while stabbing him it is because they were not Algerians." Cubillo, once he returned to Madrid, would blame the operation on interior minister Rodolfo Martín Villa.
