10 years ago ETA stopped its armed struggle

Exactly 10 years ago, on October 20, 2011, the Basque separatist organization ETA announced the “definitive cessation of its armed activity”, after more than 40 years of violence in which it caused more than 850 deaths. A key date in the Basque Country, which continues to try to heal the wounds of this bloody past.

“It’s time to see the future with hope. It is also time to act with responsibility and courage ”. With these words the organization, classified as a terrorist by the European Union, announced that it was renouncing violence.

“With this historic decision, ETA shows its firm and definitive commitment” to “build a scenario of peace and freedom,” said the statement, published by the Basque newspaper Gara and read on camera by three militants with white hoods and raised fists with the emblem of the band, a snake coiled around an ax, in the background.

The declaration, which ended the last armed insurrection in Western Europe, marked a “major change” for the independence movement, according to Rafael Leonisio Calvo, political science researcher and author of ETA, terror and terrorism.

Founded in 1959 under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, País Vasco y Libertad) claimed the use of violence, committing numerous attacks, assassinations, since the first in 1968, and kidnappings. More than 850 deaths are attributed to him in four decades.

For this reason, his statement a decade ago was “a surprise, especially because it was a unilateral decision, without political counterparts,” says Rafael Leonisio Calvo. “But in reality, it was the result of a long process,” he says.

Weeks earlier, secret negotiations had taken place with the authorities, through intermediaries. The principle “had been agreed with the socialist government of (José Luis Rodríguez) Zapatero,” said one of the historical leaders of ETA, Josu Ternera, in a recent interview with AFP.

These negotiations led to an international peace conference, on October 17, 2011, at the Aiete Palace in San Sebastián, with the participation of former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, in which ETA was asked to abandon the armed struggle to “Promote reconciliation.”

At that time, the Basque organization was very weak. Many of its leaders had been arrested and their weapons warehouses discovered by the authorities.

“ETA was at a dead end, both in the military and in the political sphere,” estimates Eguzki Urteaga, a professor at the University of the Basque Country, who highlights the great social pressure on the gang to “change strategy.”

“During the Franco regime, ETA benefited from the support of a part of the population opposed to the regime. But later the rejection of the armed struggle did not stop increasing, especially after 1995, when ETA decided to extend its objectives to members of civil society ”, he explains.

An analysis shared by Rafael Leonisio Calvo, for whom ETA was in a “dead end”.

The end of the armed struggle, one year after the last death attributed to the organization (a French policeman killed in 2010), therefore seemed inevitable.

From then on, ETA carried out a pacification process that led it to surrender its weapons on April 8, 2017, apologize to the victims in April 2018, and announce its final dissolution on May 3, 2018.

But three years after his disappearance, the resentments are still alive, which was demonstrated last September, when a demonstration, finally called off, to ask for the release of ETA Henri Parot, convicted of 39 murders, caused great controversy and mobilizations against.

“In these ten years we have made progress (…) although there are still wounds that must heal,” acknowledged on Sunday the regional president of the Basque Country, the moderate nationalist Iñigo Urkullu, who demanded “a clear and shared assessment of the injustice of the violence ”from ETA.

On Monday, the heirs of the political arm of ETA unambiguously recognized “the pain” caused to the victims by the Basque separatist organization, something that “should never have happened.”

A message received with caution this Tuesday by the government of the socialist Pedro Sánchez. “This is an insufficient step”, judged the spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, who called on the separatist left to “condemn” the tributes to the exetarras when they leave prison.

From arms to the use of votes in congress

Meanwhile, the considered political branch of the group, Bildu, has been gaining space in Congress, in part because its votes can help the current government.

In this context, statements by the leader of the Basque separatists about voting in favor of the budgets in exchange for the release of former ETA militants ignited the controversy in Spain just this Wednesday.

“We have 200 (prisoners) inside. And those have to get out of jail. And if for that we have to vote the budgets, well we will vote them (…) without any problem ”, declared Arnaldo Otegi on Monday during a meeting with his coalition colleagues, according to a video released this Wednesday by a Basque media.

His statements sparked a heated debate in the Congress of Deputies this Wednesday, with ‘darts’ targeting President Pedro Sánchez.

“Are you going to get 200 terrorists out of jail to support the budgets as (…) Otegi has said? Answer, yes or no? ”, Launched the leader of the right-wing opposition, Pablo Casado of the Popular Party (PP), to the president of the government, the socialist Sánchez.

“It is a resounding no,” replied Sánchez, who in the past benefited from the support in Parliament of the five Basque separatist deputies from Bildu, who voted in favor of the previous state budgets.

At the head of a minority left-wing government, Sánchez must win the support of numerous small formations to approve the budgets, giving rise to political haggling.

“The law has been applied, is being applied and will be applied at all times,” underlined the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, a former judge who has instructed numerous cases related to ETA, ruling out any release agreement. (I)