Basque Country Ta Askatasuna

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA; "Basque Country and Freedom" in Basque) was a Basque nationalist terrorist organization that proclaimed itself an independentist, abertzale, socialist and revolutionary. During its sixty-year history, between 1958 and 2018, different organizations with the same name emerged as a result of various splits, some of them coexisting on several occasions, of which only the one known as military ETA would survive..

Its main objective was the construction of a socialist State in Euskal Herria and its independence from Spain and France. Its members, called "ETARRAs", used murder, kidnapping and economic extortion to achieve this end. 95% of ETA murders took place after the death of Francisco Franco. Most of them took place in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Most of those killed were civil guards, police officers and soldiers, although 41% of their fatalities were civilians, including: judges, PSOE and PP politicians, journalists, businessmen and professors, most of them Basque, as well as other people whose death in attacks and explosions has been considered by ETA as collateral damage.

Throughout its history, it is estimated that the organization has caused the death of 864 people, including 22 children. It is estimated that the organization came to earn 120 million euros through robberies, kidnappings, drug trafficking weapons and economic extortion. He also raised money by placing money boxes in herriko tabernas (bars for supporters of the Abertzale left) and in some txosnas (booths at popular festivals). The organization extorted money from 10,000 people through the so-called "revolutionary tax", often with death threats. Thousands of people left: it is estimated that between 60,000 and 200,000 Basques (between 3 and 10% of the population) emigrated from the Country Basque between 1980 and 2000, although the difficulty in establishing specific figures is admitted. A 2018 publication states that ETA's activity had an economic cost of 25 billion euros between 1970 and 2003.

It was founded in 1958 after the expulsion of members of the youth of the Basque Nationalist Party. He committed his first violent action in July 1961, his first murder on June 7, 1968 and the last on March 16, 2010. Originally, he had the support of part of the Basque population, being considered part of opposition to Francoism. After the approval of the Spanish Constitution and the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country, he lost much of his support.

During the democratic period, he participated in Basque and Spanish politics through a network of various political parties, unions and associations, and especially through Herri Batasuna, a party that became second force in the elections to the Basque Parliament in 1980. ETA lost even more support in the 1980s and 1990s, especially after the assassination of Miguel Ángel Blanco, one of the most influential. After the approval in 2002 of the Organic Law of Political Parties, which provides for the outlawing of parties that repeatedly and seriously support violence and terrorism, the Batasuna, Basque Nationalist Action and Communist Party of the Basque Lands parties, among others, were outlawed by the Supreme Court for their links to ETA; the appeals presented by these parties were dismissed by the Constitutional Court and by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Since the 1980s, ETA declared and broke numerous truces and ceasefires, negotiating with the Government of Spain on several occasions. It announced the definitive cessation of its armed activity on October 20, 2011. Disarmed in April 2017, on May 3, 2018 it announced its dissolution.

Name

Grafiti who reproduced the anagram of ETA, created by Felix Likiniano, with the image of a snake rolled to an axe on the motto Bietan jarrai.

The members of ETA are usually called "etarras", a neologism created by the Spanish press from the name of the organization and the Basque suffix with which the demonyms are formed in Basque (at first, they were called "ethists"). In Basque, the name is etakideak, plural of etakide («member of ETA»), although this name is not used in Spanish.

Members and supporters of the organization often refer to themselves as "gudaris" (gudariak, in Basque), which means "warriors", "combatants" or "soldiers". This is the name given to the Basque nationalist fighters who fought against the rebels during the Civil War from 1936 to 1939. The romanticism of the term comes from the fact that during the Civil War the related press spread the idea that those fighters were fighting for Euskadi.

History

Background and origins

In the 1950s, the Franco dictatorship gained greater international recognition. Thus, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) was dispossessed of its central headquarters in Paris in 1951 and Franco signed a Concordat with the Catholic Church in 1953, failing the westernist strategy through diplomatic channels that the PNV had developed during those years.

Map of territory claimed by ETA for the creation of a Basque State. The three territories in the northeast are in France; the rest are in Spain.

In 1952, a university study group with the name Ekin («to undertake» in Basque) was organized in Bilbao. At first, Ekin organized clandestine talks and courses on Basque and history. Starting in 1953, and through the Basque Nationalist Party, the group made contact with its youth organization, Euzko Gaztedi Indarra (EGI). In 1956 both associations merged, writing a joint paper at the first World Basque Congress held that same year in Paris, in which, betting on generational change, they differed from the party's guidelines. In 1958, tensions were glimpsed within the association in confrontation with the senior leaders of the PNV, which led to the expulsion of Ekin's leaders and which led to the subsequent split in May of both groups since Ekin advocated a strategy of "direct action" and thus act as a Basque resistance movement, at a time when national liberation struggles abounded in the third world, such as the decolonization of Algeria.

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna was established in 1958. Initially, the name Aberri Ta Askatasuna ("Homeland and Freedom") was also considered, but it was discarded because its acronym ATA means "duck" in Basque from Gipuzkoa. For this reason, José Luis Álvarez Emparanza Txillardegi proposed the name Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), which was decided at a meeting between Benito del Valle, Julen Madariaga, Iñaki Larramendi and Txillardegi in Deva at the end of 1958. They used that name publicly for the first time in a letter addressed to to Jesús María Leizaola, Lendakari in exile, on July 31, 1959, the day on which both the feast of San Ignacio de Loyola and the 64th anniversary of the founding of the PNV were celebrated. In 1959 the organization had a collegiate board of directors made up of Eneko Irigarai, David López Dorronsoro, Txillardegi, Benito del Valle, José Manuel Agirre, Julen Madariaga, Alfonso Irigoien, Patxi Iturrioz, Iñaki Larramendi, Mikel Barandiarán, Rafael Albisu and Iñaki Gainzarain.

First assemblies and first attacks

Letter of 24 members of ETA detained in 1961.

On October 25, 1959, a homemade bomb exploded at the headquarters of the newspaper Alerta in Santander. The following month there were similar explosions at the Vitoria Civil Government and the Bilbao police headquarters. A confidential report from the US consulate in Bilbao, released in 2019, attributed these attacks to "Basque nationalists" whom he identified with ETA on December 7, 1959.

ETA committed its first confirmed violent action on July 17, 1961, when it attempted to derail a train carrying a group of Franco supporters traveling to San Sebastián to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the coup d'état of July 1936, which it marked the beginning of the Spanish civil war. The attack failed completely and resulted in the identification of ETA by the Political-Social Brigade and the arrest of around thirty suspects, seven of whom were sentenced to prison. thus she realized that she was not yet ready for violent action.

Some authors consider that the first fatality was the twenty-two-month-old girl, Begoña Urroz Ibarrola, who died on June 27, 1960 when a bomb exploded in a locker room at the Amara station in San Sebastián. The regime The Franco regime attributed the attack to "foreign elements, in cooperation with Basque separatists and Spanish communists" and later the Franco police pointed to the Directorio Revolucionario Ibérico de Liberación (DRIL) - a short-lived Spanish-Portuguese anti-Franco and anti-Salazarist group founded in 1959 - as the author of this attack. and other attacks that had taken place at that time. In 1992, the vicar general of the diocese of San Sebastián, José Antonio Pagola, based on the testimony of a catechist, attributed this attack to ETA. The former minister and professor Ernest Lluch picked up this version and in 2000 published an article in the newspaper El Correo, where he stated that there were indications that Begoña Urroz was the first victim of ETA. In 2010, the Congress of Deputies made this version official and declared June 27 as "Day of the victims of terrorism". However, as indicated by historians Santiago de Pablo, Iñaki Egaña, Gaizka Fernández Soldevilla, and the journalist Xavier Montanyà, who had access to the declassified police files, there are no reliable sources to ensure ETA's authorship, while everything seems to indicate that it was DRIL.

The First Assembly

His ideology, embodied in his First Assembly, held in the Benedictine monastery of Our Lady of Belloc de Urt (France) in May 1962, was based on:

• The independence of the Basque Country, including the Spanish and French territories of Álava, Guipúzcoa, Labort, Alta Navarra, Baja Navarra, Sola and Vizcaya.
• The definition of ETA as the Basque Revolutionary Movement of National Liberation, refusing its consideration as a mere political party.
• The defense of the Basque national identity as a defining element of the Basque national identity, surpassing the racial conception defended in his day by Sabino Arana.
• The defense of representative democracy, with express rejection of fascism and communism.
• The defense of the aconfessionality of the State, breaking also at this point with the Catholicism of traditional Basque nationalism.

The II Assembly

In 1962, the exiled ideologist Federico Krutwig, under the pseudonym "Fernando Sarrailh de Ihartza", in his work Vasconia defined ETA as a «Basque Revolutionary Movement of National Liberation, created in the patriotic resistance, and independent of any other party, organization or organism».

In the II Assembly, held in Capbreton in March 1963, the leftist character of the organization was defined, which defined itself as socialist. In this way it is moving away from the conservative and Catholic tradition of the PNV.

In 1964, the outlawed PNV shows its disassociation with ETA. For this, in order to deny certain rumors, he publicly declares "that the organization known by the acronym E.T.A. It is neither an activist core nor a terrorist section of our party, nor does it have any disciplinary ties with it », rejecting its violent methods.

The III Assembly

In the III Assembly, which was held in Bayonne between April and May 1964, the decision was made that armed struggle was the best way to achieve the proposed goals. The paper was later published under the title The insurrection in Euskadi. In addition, it was unanimously decided to break with the PNV, whose work ETA considered "contrary to the interests of national liberation."

IV Assembly: the three currents (1965)

Since the IV Assembly, some of the lines of fracture that will divide the members of the organization appear, which will be more evident in subsequent assemblies, giving rise to several splits. Summing up, on the one hand there is an ideological tension between those who give prominence to the more national or Basque aspects of ETA's activity and those who favor involvement in the workers' struggles that shook all of Spain in those years. On the other, there is a discussion about the degree of importance that the purely political struggles on one side and the armed activity on the other should have in the work of the organization. The IV Assembly began in August 1965 in the House of Spiritual Exercises of the Jesuits of Loyola in the Gipuzkoan town of Azpeitia and continued in a cabin in the fields of Urbía, a place near the Sanctuary of Aránzazu, when some delegates of the Assembly were surprised. exile on the way to the first headquarters. Three trends were marked in it:

• The “culturalists” or “ethnolinguists”, representing the most Basque sector, headed by José Luis Álvarez Enparantza Txillardegi.
• The "obrerists" of communist ideology, which called national liberation to class interests, and whose leader was Patxi Iturrioz.
• The “tercermundists” or “anticolonialists”, headed by José Luis Zalbide, who were another section of leftist and nationalist party to establish a link between the struggle for Basque independence and the national liberation struggles that were taking place in several countries of the Third World against the colonial powers.

In this assembly, the use of armed violence was definitively approved as one of the organization's usual forms of action. The use of violence to obtain economic funds was also approved. His first armed robbery took place in the Gipuzkoan town of Vergara on September 24, 1965.

V Assembly: ETA Berri and ETA Zaharra

The V Assembly gives rise to the first split. It was carried out in two phases, the first in December 1966 in the parish house of Gaztelu (Guipúzcoa). The second, in March 1967 in the house of spiritual exercises of the Society of Jesus of Guetaria (Guipúzcoa). In the assembly the divergences between workers and the two nationalist sectors formed in the IV Assembly broke out. The workers, branded as "Spanishists" for their claim to prioritize the alliance with left-wing groups throughout the Spanish territory, split into an organization they called ETA Berri (New ETA), while the other two sectors remained framed in the so-called ETA Zaharra (Old ETA), which would soon become plain ETA again. For its part, ETA Berri would renounce the struggle for acronyms, would be renamed Komunistak and would later become the Euskadiko Mugimendu Komunista (EMK), contributing to the creation of a Spanish-wide political party called the Communist Movement. (MC).

In ETA Zaharra, the Third World sector cornered and removed from power the culturalist sector of Txillardegi, who left the organization forming a collective grouped around the magazine Branka. In the V Assembly it was also decided to create the four fronts or internal working groups that the organization would maintain over the years: political, military, economic and cultural.

On June 7, 1968, the first assassination of ETA took place: that of the civil guard José Antonio Pardines Arcay at a roadblock. On August 2, two months later, ETA committed its first premeditated attack: the murder of Melitón Manzanas, head of the San Sebastián secret police and repressor of the opposition to the Franco dictatorship. In reaction, the state of emergency was declared in Guipúzcoa and the Movement's press began to spread a manipulated and alarmist image of the organization. Throughout 1968 there were a total of 434 detainees, 189 imprisoned, 75 deported and 38 exiled. In April 1969, a new wave of arrests left the organization without operational capacity and with its leadership dismantled.

The Burgos Process and the VI Assembly: ETA-V and ETA-VI

In December 1970, sixteen members of ETA were tried and six of them sentenced to death in the so-called Burgos Trial. Popular mobilizations in solidarity with the defendants and international pressure caused the death sentences to be commuted, as they had been before with two other ETA members. The repercussions of the trial provided great international publicity for the organization, which had just suffered a new split.

In the VI Assembly, held in August 1970 in Itxassou, tensions resurfaced with force between a "militarist" sector in favor of the pre-eminence of terrorist activity and a sector called again "worker's party" that advocated the subordination of the armed struggle to the political struggle in alliance with the workers' organizations. This last sector was in the majority during the assembly. His decision to put a stop to armed activity caused the militarist sector to refuse to accept the resolutions of the assembly, creating a split that they will call ETA V Assembly Askatasuna ala hil ('Freedom or death& #39;) or ETA-V. For its part, the majority sector began to use the name ETA VI Assembly Iraultza ala hil ('Revolution or death') or, for short, ETA-VI.

However, ETA-V manages to gain control of the organization, which includes a sector of EGI (called EGI-Batasuna), the youth of the PNV, a supporter of the fight navy. ETA-VI, for its part, is divided into two groups, the majority (called the mayos) and the minority (minos). The first approved in 1973 to join the Spanish Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) party, which would later give rise to the Basque Iraultzailea Komunist League (LKI) party. The other sector, that of the minos, will be dissolved when its members integrate into other organizations such as the ORT and the PCE, or even into ETA-V itself (again simply called ETA).

The second VI Assembly: military ETA and political-military ETA

The VI Assembly of 1973 (since the faction that remains with the name of ETA does not recognize the previous VI Assembly) is the one that causes the last and most important splits to date. It is celebrated in two parts, the first in the Basque-French town of Hasparren in August 1973, and the second after the attack on Correo street in Madrid. In the first part, the tensions between militarists and workers resurface, which are reflected in two opposing sectors and with little communication between them. The militarists unilaterally decided to attack Carrero Blanco in December 1973, causing the split of the workerist sector, which would become Langile Abertzale Iraultzaileen Alderdia (LAIA), leaving ETA.

After the attack on the Rolando cafeteria, during the celebration of the second part of the assembly, the old discrepancy reappears between those who advocate the absolute priority of terrorist activity and those who wish to subordinate it to political struggles. This is how the “military” (milis, essentially from the Military Front) and the “political-military” (poli-milis, from the Workers' Front) emerged, who would split into two organizations: military ETA (ETA-m, ETA (m) or ETA mili) and political-military ETA (ETA-pm, ETA (pm) or ETA poli-mili i>), the latter being the majority.

On September 27, 1975, three members of the FRAP —José Humberto Baena, José Luis Sánchez Bravo and Ramón García Sanz— and two of the political-military ETA —Juan Paredes Manot and Ángel Otaegui— were shot. These executions, the last of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, shortly before his death, raised a wave of protests and condemnations against the Government of Spain, inside and outside the country, both at the official and popular level.

The democratic transition

ETA political-military

Therefore, when the transition to Spanish democracy begins, there is not one ETA but two. ETA-pm supported the founding of a political party that would represent the ideology of the organization before the general elections of 1977, Euskal Iraultzarako Alderdia ('Party for the Basque Revolution', EIA), which participated in said elections through the Euskadiko Ezkerra candidacy. ETA-pm maintained an interdependent relationship with EIA for years until the organization's militaristic drift (the assassination of two Basque leaders of the UCD in the late 1980s) led the party's leaders to take a critical stance towards terrorism. In 1982, the VII Assembly faction of ETA-pm accepted the amnesty granted by the Government of Spain to all ETA prisoners even if they had crimes of blood, abandoning violence and joining the political party Euskadiko Ezkerra ("left of the Basque Country", which in 1993 would merge with the Socialist Party of Euskadi, Basque federation of the PSOE). The abandonment of violence, decided by the leaders of the VII Assembly of ETA-pm, was contested by a large part of its militancy (the "milikis"), which joined ETA-m (hereinafter, became known simply as ETA again), especially the so-called bereziak (special) commandos, dedicated to the most important violent actions. Some of the leaders of what would now be the only ETA came from ETA-pm, such as Antxon or Pakito. The so-called Alternativa KAS (political framework program of the Koordinadora Abertzale Sozialista, a collective body of an important part of the abertzale left) is also due to people of this origin.

Military ETA

The military ETA, like the EHAS and LAIA parties, boycotted the 1977 general elections, maintaining that the minimum conditions for participation (democratic freedoms and general amnesty) had not been achieved. The terrorist organization tried to convince the PNV to join its abstentionist position during the so-called talks in Chiberta (French Basque Country), but the party refused, betting on the institutional route. The PNV also formed an Autonomous Front for the Senate with ESEI and the PSE-PSOE, the main non-nationalist Basque party.

ETA-m considered that with the constitutional system after 1978 things had not changed substantially, since it considered the nascent democracy as a continuation of the Franco dictatorship. In 1978, reinforced by the union of the berezis, a militaristic split of ETA-pm, ETA-m changed its strategy and adopted what is known as "negotiation" or "war of attrition," which consisted of assassinating members of the Army and State Security Forces and Bodies to put pressure on the Government and force it to accept the "KAS Alternative". On the other hand, in order not to leave the political field free for ETA-pm, it supported the creation of the Herri Batasuna (HB) coalition, which at first was an autonomous alliance of four political parties (HASI, LAIA, ESB and ANV). ESB and LAIA would leave HB in 1980 in disagreement with the predominant role of KAS within the coalition and its refusal to allow HB to participate in the institutions, which has been interpreted as ETA-m taking control of HB and managing to expel the critics.

Terrorist attacks increased in number and intensity. Of note is the kidnapping and murder of José María Ryan, chief engineer of the Lemóniz nuclear power plant in 1981, who was part of ETA-m's strategy to instrumentalize the autonomous social movements that had been emerging in the Basque Country. The first attack with car bomb in Madrid, in September 1985, resulted in one death and 16 wounded; in Madrid, a bomb in the Plaza de la República Dominicana killed 12 civil guards in July 1986 and injured 50; or the Hipercor attack, on June 19, 1987, when they planted a bomb in a shopping center in Barcelona, which caused the death of 21 people and injured 45. ETA explained in a statement that it had previously warned of the placement of the bomb and that the police did not evacuate the premises. However, the notices were confusing: they reported that the bomb would explode at 3:30 p.m. but did not warn that it was placed in a car. As no suspicious package was found and the appointed time had passed, it was considered unnecessary to evacuate the store. A few months later, ETA perpetrated an attack against the Zaragoza Civil Guard barracks, in which eleven people died (five of them them, girls).

During the Franco dictatorship, and much of the democracy, ETA enjoyed the tolerance of the French government, which allowed its members to move freely through its territory, believing in this way to contribute to the end of the Franco regime. There was then talk of the "French sanctuary" of ETA. In the last years of the terrorist group, France collaborates intensively with the Spanish authorities in the fight against ETA.

The dirty war against ETA

Between 1975 and 1980 various groups operated such as Alianza Apostólica Anticomunista (AAA or "Triple A"), ETA Antiterrorism (ATE), Spanish Armed Groups (GAE), Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey, Spanish Basque Battalion (BVE) and others of lesser resonance, such as the Anti-Marxist Commandos, all of them related to the Franco dictatorship.

After the socialist electoral victory of 1982, the Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups (GAL) emerged. From 1983 to 1987, they began their "dirty war" against ETA, attributing to them the murder of 27 people. These attacks and kidnappings were carried out mostly by French mercenaries hired by Spanish police, financed with reserved funds, and organized from the Ministry of the Interior itself, through those responsible for the fight against terrorism in the Basque Country.

According to the various sources, between 1960 and 1989 the total number of fatalities caused by the different parapolice or extreme right groups would range between 66 and 73 (only 2 of them from 1960 to 1975). Excluded from these figures are the 77 cases that need further investigation and are still not attributed or clarified.

For the kidnapping in 1983 of Segundo Marey, an office furniture salesman who was confused with Mikel Lujúa, then leader of ETA, the Supreme Court sentenced José Barrionuevo, minister of Inside; Rafael Vera, Secretary of State for Security; Ricardo García Damborenea, general secretary of the PSOE in Vizcaya; Francisco Álvarez, Head of the Antiterrorist Fight; Miguel Planchuelo, head of the Bilbao Information Brigade; José Amedo, deputy police commissioner; Julián Sancristóbal, civil governor of Vizcaya; for kidnapping and embezzlement of public funds, and Michel Domínguez, police officer. In September 1998 they were sent to prison and three months later, Vera and Barrionuevo, sentenced to ten years in prison, were released thanks to a partial pardon from the Government chaired by José María Aznar.

In March 1999, the National Court issued an indictment for kidnapping, injury and murder in relation to two members of ETA, José Antonio Lasa and José Ignacio Zabala, kidnapped in Bayonne (France) in 1983 and whose tortured corpses were discovered near Alicante, in southeastern Spain, in March 1995. In 2000, former Civil Guard general Enrique Rodríguez Galindo was sentenced by the Supreme Court to 75 years in prison. The former civil governor of Guipúzcoa, José Julián Elgorriaga Goyeneche, and the former commanders of the Civil Guard, Ángel Vaquero Hernández, Enrique Dorado Villalobos and Felipe Bayo Leal, were also sentenced for this case, as perpetrators, each of them, of two crimes unlawful detention and two counts of murder. Rodríguez Galindo spent only three years in prison and served the rest of the sentence under house arrest.

The PSOE has always denied any responsibility regarding the GAL, has verbally condemned their crimes and its then president, Felipe González, has never been judicially charged for these acts. González referred: "I think it cannot be said that it was state terrorism. I see it now with the historical perspective. If the State apparatus had decided to eliminate them, it could cause other problems, but it ends up eliminating them (Documentary "La Pelota Vasca"). Let's stop telling stories, because incidents like the ones that have occurred in Spain have occurred in all the countries where a terrorist activity has hit democracy (El País, 09/27/96)&# 3. 4;

During the years of the "dirty war" In addition to the attacks and kidnappings, there was strong tension in the Basque Country and Navarra and the ETA environment was boosted, together with the crisis derived from industrial reconversion, unemployment..., by what they considered evidence, then always denied by the authorities, that the socialist government was behind the GAL. For these sectors, ETA became a victim and its attacks a response to the actions of the Government.

In 1986, the Euskal Herria Gesture for Peace Coordinator was founded, which began to call silent demonstrations in all towns the day after each death caused by political violence related to the Basque Country, whether from ETA or the GAL. That same year, ETA murdered María Dolores González Katarain Yoyes in Ordicia, a former leader of the organization, who had decided to leave the armed struggle and had already reintegrated into society, accusing her of being a "deserter."

In November 2010, the former President of the Government, Felipe González, acknowledged in an interview with El País that it was in his hands at that time to eliminate the leadership of ETA and he decided not to do so These statements coincide in time with the ETA ceasefire of 2010.

The pacts between parties (1987)

The political reaction to the intensification of ETA attacks was the beginning of a new stage in which various pacts between parties were signed:

• Pact of Madrid: On November 5, 1987, the Spanish political parties PSOE, AP, CDS, CiU, PNV, PDP, PL, PCE and EE signed a joint declaration, known as the "Pacto de Madrid" for which they denounced the lack of legitimacy of ETA to express the will of the Basque People and, consequently, rejected their claim to negotiate the political problems of the Basque People, formally replaced the Basque people.leadership in the disappearance of violence and terrorism, and in the final achievement of peace"; these parties spoke in favour of the repeal of the anti-terrorist law.

• Ajuria Enea Pact: Another pact of great importance would be the so-called Enea Ajuria Pact, signed on January 12, 1988 by José Antonio Ardanza as lehendakari of the Basque Government and by all the parties represented in the Basque Parliament except Herri Batasuna: Euskadi-PSOE Socialist Party, Basque Nationalist Party, Eusko Alkartasuna, Euskadiko Ezkerra, Popular Alliance and Democratic Center. The agreement decided to promote in its integrity the Statute of Guernica and to intensify the relations of the Basque Autonomous Community with Navarra. They shared the need and importance of police action that would contribute to the eradication of terrorism, the protection of the principles of democratic coexistence and the prevention of attacks and the persecution of their perpetrators; they urged ETA to renounce the armed path and HB to resume its parliamentary activity by legitimizing itself as a political option; it supported the policies of reinsertion of the "repentant"

According to the leader of the PNV Xabier Arzalluz, these pacts responded to the strategy of the PSOE to get the support of the parties to the truce with ETA that was ready to take place.

In 1987 Txomin Iturbe Abasolo, number one of ETAs at that time, began directing the Algiers talks, which continued, after his death that same year, Antxonuntil its completion in 1989. After the death of Txomin in 1987, Josu Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea Josu Ternera took the reins of the organization, which he led until he was arrested in 1989. Francisco Mujika Garmendia Pakito he shared leadership with him, going to do so after his arrest with José Luis Álvarez Santacristina Txelis and Joseba Arregi Erostarbe Fiti (forming the so-called Artapalo collective).

On January 28, 1988, ETA announced a 60-day "high fire" which then extended several times, and an attempt was made to negotiate between ETA (represented by Eugenio Etxebeste Antxon) and the Government of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, called the Algiers Bureau, which ended in May without results, ending the ceasefire.

• Plan Ardanza: In none of the previous covenants that advocated the dialogue had been counted with ETA or its environment, the MLNV, so the then lehendakari, José Antonio Ardanza, argued that the real possibilities of ending the violence were limited. For this reason, on 17 March 1998, making his personal interpretation of the above-mentioned agreements, he presented to the Bureau of Ajuria Enea the so-called "Plan Ardanza", a document proposing a dialogue "without preconditions and without results limits" and exclusively between parties, after the absence of ETA violence and once there was unequivocal evidence that ETA wanted to abandon the violence. The document was supported by the parties members of the Bureau except the Socialist Party of Euskadi-PSOE and the Popular Alliance, who did not accept that the Basque representatives could, on their own, adopt amendments to the Spanish Constitution. The plan, considered the political will of Ardanza that was withdrawn from politics, was very criticized in its day being subsequently praised for its moderation^{[chuckles]required]} and consisted of a reflection on the situation of ETA and HB at that time, he considered that the police road had not achieved any results and the political path did not work if HB was isolated, so he proposed a way of solving the "conflict":

• Leave the conflict resolution in the hands of the representative parties of Basque society
• Make own the agreements that those can reach in Basque institutions
• Incorporate the agreements into the legal system so that they may be operational.

The plan was presented to the members of the Ajuria Enea Bureau but, without agreement the negotiation with ETA, did not get the backing of the rest of the parties.

• Pact of Navarre: Very soon the divergences arose between the signatories of Ajuria Enea and another document was drafted on October 7, 1988, which was neither signed by the PNV, nor by EA, known as "Pacto de Navarra", which contained the ideas of Ajuria Enea, and thus rejected in this agreement, any possibility that ETA, policies or any organization that were supported by Navarre, could be declared free, The lack of agreement, according to Arzalluz, was motivated by the PP opposition to the PSOE policy of negotiating with ETA. Precisely in Navarre, in June 1990, there were the events of the Foz de Lumbier, which ended with two terrorists and a civilian guard killed and disarticulation de facto of Nafarroa Command.

In the attack on the Vic barracks in May 1991, perpetrated by the Barcelona commando in Vich (Barcelona), ten people died, including an elderly woman and three girls.

In 1992, the entire leadership of ETA (Pakito, Txelis and Fiti) is arrested in Bidart (in Labort, France), which forced the change of address. After a two-month truce, they adopt more radical postulates, the main consequence of this change of direction being the supposed creation of the "Y commandos", made up of young people (generally minors) dedicated to the so-called kale borroka ("street fighting" in Basque), whose activities would include burning buses and street furniture, and throwing Molotov cocktails. Its appearance was attributed to a hypothetical weakness of ETA, which would force them to resort to minors to maintain or increase their impact on society after important arrests of their militants, including their military leadership. Councilors from non-Basque nationalist political parties also began to be threatened. However, within the so-called Basque National Liberation Movement, the existence of the Y Commandos is denied, and it is stated that their description is a maneuver to impose a greater prison sentence on those who carry out these actions. ETA's role as organizer of the kale borroka has been considered proven by the National Court; on the other hand, from different political sectors of the left (mainly from the abertzale left) this role is denied.

In 1995, the organization launched a series of demands on the Government of Spain as a condition for the cessation of violence. The so-called Democratic Alternative updated and came to replace the KAS alternative as a minimum proposal for the recognition of Euskal Herria. From the recognition by the Government of Spain of Basque territoriality, that sovereignty resides in the Basque people and that they have the right to self-determination, the total cessation of ETA's armed activities would result. The Government of Spain rejected ETA's demands, tried to silence its broadcasting, and the courts prosecuted the HB national board for trying to broadcast them by taking advantage of free electoral advertising spaces to add some images taken from an ETA video to their ad.

The political fronts

On April 19, 1995, a car bomb attack failed against the then main opposition leader José María Aznar, who would soon be elected president of the Government with the support of the PNV; Also, according to the security forces, the assassination of King Juan Carlos I was aborted. Likewise, on January 8, 1996, an attack against Juan María Atutxa, leader of the PNV and Minister of the Interior of the Basque Government, was dismantled and in February ETA assassinates Fernando Múgica and Francisco Tomás y Valiente. That same month, representative members of the ETA environment such as Idígoras and Floren Aoiz were arrested. On March 3, 1996, Aznar won the general elections and Ramón Doral Trabadelo, one of those responsible for the Ertzaintza in the fight against terrorism, was assassinated; In April, José María Aldaya was released after a 341-day kidnapping. In June ETA suspends its activities for a week, shortly after restarting its terrorist actions. During 1996, 50 PNV headquarters, 26 of the PSOE, 8 of the PP and EA and 4 of the IU were attacked.

ETA begins a tactic of "socialization of violence" carrying out actions of great media impact and cruelty, while the government strives to try a negotiation with ETA. On June 30, 1997, Cosme Delclaux, who had been kidnapped for 232 days, was released. On the same day, after confirming Delclaux's release, the Civil Guard released prison officer José Antonio Ortega Lara after 532 days of kidnapping. On July 10, 1997, ETA kidnapped Miguel Ángel Blanco, a Popular Party councilor in Ermua, threatening to kill him if the government did not give in to his demands. Massive solidarity demonstrations were held to demand his release, but, after two days, ETA carried out its threat by assassinating the councilor, which once again triggered massive demonstrations of rejection. This citizen reaction was called the "Ermua spirit". Although ETA had previously assassinated militants of the Popular Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party of greater political relevance, such as Gregorio Ordóñez and Fernando Múgica, the assassination of Blanco marked the beginning of a long series of murders of modest councilors and mayors of small Basque and Navarrese towns. The campaign, which would last for years, would make it difficult for non-nationalist Basque and Navarrese citizens to exercise their right to vote, both active and passive.

After the social and political shock that these terrorist actions would cause, a new political time began that would move the relations between the parties and the strategy against ETA. At a very early stage, the possibility of creating a union of all the parties against ETA was considered, but very shortly after, two political fronts were created, clearly differentiated by their position in relation to anti-terrorism policy, reflecting this tension especially in Arrigorriaga on 21 July, after councilors from the PNV, PSOE, IU, EA and PP supported a proposal by HB against the dispersion:

• Thus, on the one hand the PP government, with the support of the opposition of the PSOE, formed the so-called "constitutionalist front", following what was called "Ermua Spirit" and promulgated the severe and full application of police and judicial measures against ETA and its environment.
• On the other hand, the front "nationalist""consecrated with the signing of the Pact of Estella, signed on 12 September 1998 by PNV, EA, HB, IU-EB, EKA, Batzarre, Zutik, seven trade unions and nine social organizations and promulgated the dialogue and political negotiation as the only solution to the "conflict", invoking as a reference the Holy Friday Agreement or Stormont Agreement in Northern Ireland in April 1998.

On November 29, 1997, the Supreme Court handed down a conviction against the national board of Herri Batasuna for ceding its electoral space to ETA in the 1996 elections.

In January 1998, the gang heard that the French police had everything prepared to carry out a very important police operation against the organization. ETA communicates its willingness to start talks through international intermediaries and, faced with the refusal of the popular government, assassinates a PP councilor in Zarauz. By order of Judge Baltasar Garzón, the newspaper Egin is closed.

The truce and the Pact of Estella (1998)

ETA's agreements with PNV and EA

After the rejection of the negotiation between the government and ETA, on the one hand, and the opposition of the Popular Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) to the "Plan Ardanza", on the other, in August 1998 ETA presents a proposal to the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and Eusko Alkartasuna (EA) in search of a general agreement. The text included four points that can be summarized in three basic proposals:

• The impulse to create a unique institutional structure for all territories of Euskal Herria, fostering dynamics and agreements between the Basque nationalist forces.
• Breakdown of relations between the democratic nationalist forces with the PSOE and the PP.
• Statement by ETA of an "high indefinite fire" (although with an initial period of four months, after which ETA would evaluate the degree of compliance of the agreements by EA and PNV).

This truce was preceded by an agreement signed a month earlier by the terrorist organization ETA itself, and the political parties PNV and EA, in which all parties undertook to seek the integration of the six territories into a single and sovereign, and PNV and EA promised to "leave their agreements with the parties whose objective is the destruction of Euskal Herria and the construction of Spain (PP and PSOE)". For its part, ETA undertook to announce an "indefinite ceasefire".

The PNV offered a counterproposal, in which they qualified or specified the points proposed by ETA:

1. Regarding the first, respect and specify the pace and steps to take.
2. On the second, do not close the door to other political forces to achieve the stability of institutions.
3. On the ceasefire, specify that respect for the human rights of all persons was required.
4. Finally, it called for a commitment not to make the agreements unilaterally public.

This pact is mentioned much later by ETA in a letter to the PNV, in which ETA disagrees with the counterproposal made by the PNV, accusing it of having shown more interest in peace than sovereignty, while qualifying the agreement as appropriate and important because it is a step in search of the sovereignty of Euskal Herria.

The signing of the Pact of Estella and the beginning of the indefinite truce

The text of this historical document is found in Wikisource: Estella's covenant.

On September 12 of that same 1998, four days before the official announcement of a truce by ETA, an agreement was signed in the Navarrese town of Estella between the Basque Nationalist Party, Herri Batasuna, Eusko Alkartasuna, Ezker Batua -Berdeak, the LAB union, and other organizations in which the situation in Northern Ireland was analyzed and an attempt was made to project the peace process followed there in the case of the Basque Country. The signatories declared the process that should be followed for the "political resolution of the conflict." This method was based on political negotiation, in the absence of violence, to respond to "the tradition and sovereignty aspirations of the citizens of Euskal Herria". The agreement became known as the Estella Pact or the Lizarra Agreement.

According to Vázquez Montalbán, the signatories of Estella were «convinced of the political paralysis that affected the PP and the PSOE in dealing with the Basque problem and that the PP depended on aid from the PNV in the Spanish Parliament, Lizarra's signatories forced the nut of sovereignty and clearly stated the objective of self-determination and a political negotiation with ETA».

On September 16, 1998, ETA declared an "indefinite and unconditional truce" which would enter into force two days after its announcement. ETA said in its statement that "Basque citizens are subjugated under two strong states. Both States use all their armed, political, economic and cultural instruments to avoid the possibilities that Euskal Herria had, a free people in the future". But ETA warned that the objective of this step was not "pacification", and that it would be deceiving society to say that this step leads to "normalisation", "the consolidation of the current framework and a peace without anything changing". Regarding the institutions, they recalled their objective of creating a single and sovereign institution that integrates all the territories they claim, and that it was time to put an end to the parties, institutional and repressive structures whose objective is the construction of Spain and France, and the disappearance of Euskal Herria".

Lastly, his statement qualified the suspension of his activities, acknowledging that he would continue to carry out the supply work, maintenance of his structures and his "right of defense in hypothetical confrontations", and warned of the possibility revocation of the indefinite truce, conditioning it to future events.

Autonomous elections and government talks with ETA

Once the truce had begun, that same month of September, contacts began between the Popular Party government and the ETA entourage; three members of the José María Aznar government met secretly with Arnaldo Otegi and other Herri leaders Batasuna in a chalet in the Juarros region, in Burgos During this period, the Popular Party showed signs of goodwill, softening its position and its statements and bringing 135 ETA prisoners closer to prisons near the Basque Country, all in compliance with of the provisions of the Spanish Congress of Deputies, which approved in November 1998 a motion of the IU to which the PP joined, and was approved unanimously, on the rapprochement of the prisoners by which the Government was urged to put into practice «a new orientation, agreed upon, dynamic and flexible, of penitentiary policy in the way that best promotes the end of violence.

In October 1998, Herri Batasuna reached an electoral agreement with other signatory forces of the Estella Pact, such as Zutik and Batzarre, becoming part of the new Euskal Herritarrok (EH) group. Shortly after and in a theoretical situation of "absence of violence", although the violence called "low intensity" continued to harass all the political parties and to a greater extent the PP and PSOE, regional elections were held in the Basque Autonomous Community, in which the PNV again won in votes, although the political extremes PP and EH achieved a considerable increase in their votes. The Popular Party won in Álava and won 100,000 votes, becoming the second force displacing the PSOE, and EH won in Guipúzcoa and obtained 223,264 votes. In San Sebastián, however, the PP was the party with the most votes (25.7%) and EH was the second (19.3%).

In January 1999, the jelzale Juan José Ibarretxe was sworn in as lehendakari for the first time after the breakdown of negotiations between the PNV and PSOE and in March 1999 a legislature agreement was signed with EH. In said agreement EH renounced the armed route for the benefit of politics and therefore said agreement expressed:

"We reiterate our unequivocal commitment to the exclusively political and democratic pathways for the solution of the political conflict in Euskal Herria"

This meant, for some political leaders, that through this pact "the nationalist leaders are tied hand and foot to the policy of the PNV".

These agreements culminated in a secret meeting between PP and ETA in Zurich in May 1999. This meeting was intended to be a first contact for ETA for a series of meetings in which political issues were addressed, but for the government It was intended as a way of trying to verify first-hand whether the gang was willing to definitively cease its criminal activities and the meeting did not bear fruit.

However, the talks were unsuccessful and 390 street terrorist actions were recorded in 1999. A sector of the PP, headed by Mayor Oreja, president of the Basque PP, was suspicious of the truce, considering it an ETA strategy to reorganize and rearm, calling it “truce-trap”, interpreting the content of an internal communication from ETA intercepted to the person in charge of the operational commands José Javier Arizkuren Ruiz Kantauri, in which he was informed that there would be a truce, but that it would be a matter of a short time. Shortly after the meeting with the Government, two of the interlocutors were arrested. Parliament never carried out the 1998 rapprochement motion.

Breaking the truce

In August 1999, ETA proposed to the PNV and EA to sign an update of the commitment acquired the previous year, in which they sought to materialize the objectives set, by holding elections throughout the Basque Country (both the part Spanish and French) to choose a parliament in charge of drafting a Constitution for the new State. ETA conditioned the definitive cessation of its terrorist activities to "strength and stability" of the new parliament. This new agreement was rejected by the signatories of the previous pact and therefore it was not formalized.

On November 28, ETA announced the breaking of the truce maintained for a year. In his statement, he recalled the pact signed with PNV and EA and the approaches of the Estella Pact, and alluded as reasons for the resumption of his criminal activities, the pressure exerted by the governments of Spain and France and the claim of the Government of &# 34;that from being a national construction process it would become a peace process without content, trying to drown the Abertzale left in political «normality» and with the obstinate and malign intention that the «provisional» interruption of ETA's actions will become "definitive" and irreversible". He also complained that PNV and EA had not responded to his pact update proposal. The date of December 3 was announced as the date chosen for the return to violence.

ETA declared the end of the ceasefire on December 2, 1999. The PNV made an institutional declaration that same day in which it reproached ETA for its attitude of trying to protect the process, accusing it of harming Basque nationalism and, in turn, encouraged HB to democratically defend her proposals by inviting her to dialogue.

On December 20, 1999, the Civil Guard intercepted near Calatayud (Zaragoza) a van loaded with 950 kilograms of explosives; two days later, in Alhama de Aragón, near Calatayud, a second van was found abandoned, loaded with some 730 kilograms of explosives. ETA intended to take them to Madrid and blow them up at the same time, which would have caused one of the most important attacks in its history, which is why it was known as the caravan of death.

On January 21, 2000, ETA exploded a car bomb loaded with 20 kg of dynamite in the Virgen del Puerto neighborhood of Madrid, killing Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Antonio Blanco. This murder forced Ibarretxe to suspend his legislature pact with EH. It was not, however, until after the assassination by ETA of the Alava socialist leader Fernando Buesa and his escort, the ertzaina Jorge Díez (February 22, 2000), when the pact was broken. definitely. The breakdown of the parliamentary agreement and the subsequent abandonment of the Chamber by EH in September (which announced that it would only return to the Parliament of Vitoria on "specific occasions") left the PNV-EA government in a parliamentary minority.

For its part, ETA disclosed to the public opinion on April 30, 2000, the texts of the 1998 and 1999 negotiations between the PNV and ETA, by means of its publication in the newspaper Gara. and acknowledged that the truce had actually been a “truce-trap”. In the year 2000 ETA killed 23 people, including among its victims judges, journalists and one of the founders of the Ermua Forum.

There were also major splits in the Euskal Herritarrok, first with the abandonment of Zutik and Batzarre, independent political groups opposed to armed forces, and later with the formation of the new Aralar political party. Patxi Zabaleta, a founding member and former leader of HB and EH who had already led a critical position within these organizations since the late eighties, condemning the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco and demanding the disappearance of ETA, became the coordinator of Aralar.

First acknowledgments to the victims

On October 8, 1999, the Law of Solidarity with the victims of terrorism was approved in Spain, which aims to "provide testimony of honor and recognition to those who have suffered terrorist acts and, in Considering this, assume the payment of the compensation that is owed by the perpetrators and others responsible for such acts". Two months later, on December 23, another Royal Decree was approved in which the regulations of the Royal Order of Civil Recognition for victims of terrorism were approved.

Anti-terrorism policy after the truce

Reparation of the Valmaseda Court after a bomb in 2006.

After the breakdown of the negotiations, the Popular Party government, with the support of the PSOE, continued the harassment that had already begun in 1998, not only of ETA, but also of its entourage, through all possible democratic means, almost all of which still exist today. In addition, the offensive at the judicial and police level was resumed.

The general elections of March 12, 2000 granted an absolute majority to the Aznar government, which developed an anti-terrorist policy without the need to have the support of the nationalists, unlike the previous legislature. Among the actions carried out, the following stand out:

• The "Agreement for Freedoms and Against Terrorism" was a new anti-terrorist pact signed by PP and PSOE on 12 December 2000.
• Reform of the Party Law for which it obtained the illegalization of political parties related to the organization (Batasuna, Euskal Herritarrok and HB). Their supporters attempted to run for elections through the formation of local electorate groups, which in many cases were also banned.
• Resolution of the National Hearing that considered the Jarrai, Haika and Segi collectives as members of an illegal non-terrorist association. Later, the Supreme Court would amend that judgement on 19 January 2007 by declaring that Jarrai, Haika and Segi were part of the ETA structure and increasing the penalties imposed on their 24 leaders.
• Inclusion of the above in international lists as terrorists.
• Judicial proceedings against the so-called "ETA environment" ("process 18/98").
• Closure of the newspaper Egin, its station and several linked companies.
• Closure of the newspaper Egunkaria in 2003. Although the prosecutor withdrew the indictment in 2006 on the grounds that there was no indication that it belonged to the ETA structure.
• Dispersion policy for ETA prisoners.
• Reform of the Criminal Code and impulse of case law changes with the aim of achieving full compliance with sentences imposed on terrorists and the elimination of prison benefits ("Doctrina Parot"). Although on 10 July 2012, the European Court of Human Rights based in Strasbourg ruled that the so-called "doctrina Parot", established by the Spanish Supreme Court in 2006 and endorsed by the Constitutional Court in 2012, violated articles 7 and 5.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
• No grant of the third degree of prison to ETA members.
• The acts of "kale borroka" would be prosecuted at the National Court of Madrid, even if they were committed by minors.
• Impulse of police action by holding multiple commands of the organization and leaders of the organization (Iñaki de Rentería, Asier Oiartzabal, Mikel Antza...). In 2001, 135 persons linked to the organization were arrested.
• Support for associations of victims of terrorism and anti-terrorist civic organizations.
• During this popular legislature, the Courts ruled that already mentioned "dirty war"of the GALs that took place during the socialist governments in the 1980s, although they pardoned or excarced the condemned.

On November 21, 2000, ETA assassinated the Catalan socialist politician Ernest Lluch, former Minister of Health in the first government of Felipe González, a fact that produced a tremendous impact because he was a person prone to dialogue. A few days later, on December 12 of that same year, the two main Spanish political parties, Partido Popular and Partido Socialista Obrero Español, signed the so-called Agreement for freedoms and against Terrorism after ETA's abandonment of the "truce" of 1998 and once it was revealed, according to the text of the agreement, "the failure of the strategy of the Basque Nationalist Party and Eusko Alkartasuna, which abandoned the Ajuria Enea Pact to, in agreement with ETA and EH, put a political price for abandoning violence. That price consisted of the imposition of self-determination to achieve the independence of the Basque Country."

In this agreement, the PP and PSOE agreed that it was the responsibility of the Government to lead the fight against terrorism and they promised to abandon policies to end terrorism from the sphere of legitimate political or electoral confrontation. They also promised to work so that any attempt to legitimize violence would disappear and publicly affirmed that no political advantage or profit will be obtained from terrorist violence. Likewise, it was said that the prison policy would be applied ensuring the most complete and severe punishment for those convicted of terrorist acts, although it would contemplate the forms of reinsertion of those who leave the organization and show unequivocal attitudes of repentance and desire for re-socialization. The victims become, after this agreement, the main concern, and urge young people to rebel against violence. The objective of the pact is to jointly promote freedoms and the policy against terrorism, and requires, according to its signatories, a permanent collaboration between the PP and the PSOE that implies the exchange of information, the concerted updating of legislative reforms, prison policy, international cooperation, citizen mobilization and institutions, and the search for common positions on this issue.

After several months of precariousness in the Basque parliament, due to the active opposition of socialists and popular groups and the impossibility of approving laws due to the lack of parliamentary support (the 2001 budgets could not be approved and those of the previous year had to be extended, the Basque Government announced early elections for May 13, 2001. The legislature that ended had been the shortest in the Basque Parliament since the advent of democracy, and ended with high degrees of political tension and a renewed offensive by the terrorist organization ETA, that in the year 2000 killed 23 people.

It was in this scenario that the 2001 elections were held, posed as a plebiscite between "nationalism" and "constitutionalism", in which the PNV-EA coalition almost tripled the significant increase in votes for the PP, while the radical nationalism represented by Euskal Herritarrok (EH) suffered a serious setback since, after the rupture After the ETA truce, it lost half of its 14 seats and almost 80,000 votes, going from 17.9% in 1998 to 10.1%. Barely a month later, Herri Batasuna culminated his re-foundation process, begun after EH, with the creation of Batasuna, a new party with a presence throughout the Basque Country.

International institutions after 9/11 2001

The day after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the UN Security Council approved a resolution in which, in addition to unequivocally condemning them, it urged the international community to redouble its efforts to prevent and suppress the attacks. acts of terrorism in full compliance with international conventions.

On September 21, 2001, it was the Council of Europe that approved the «Conclusions and action plan of the extraordinary European Council of September 21, 2001» in which the action plan of the European policy of combating against terrorism. His main points were:

• Strengthening police and judicial cooperation.
• Develop international legal instruments.
• Terminate the financing of terrorism.
• Strengthening air safety.
• Coordinate the overall action of the European Union.

On September 28, 2001, the United Nations Security Council approved its resolution 1373 deciding that all member states should freeze the funds and other financial resources of terrorist individuals and groups, as well as that they should refrain from provide them with all kinds of support, active or passive, and deny them shelter. It also required ensuring the prosecution of any person who participates in the financing, planning or commission of acts of terrorism or lends support to these acts. A specific Committee was created within the Council to monitor compliance with this resolution.

Irish nationalist wall in Belfast, showing solidarity with Basque nationalism. A map of Euskal Herria can be seen on the same.

This Council resolution inspired many of the policies adopted in the most diverse public institutions in order to combat all types of terrorism. Many member countries, as well as supranational organizations such as the European Union, took note of this resolution to toughen the measures in the fight against terrorism, especially with regard to financing.

Thus, on December 27, 2001, the European Council modified the previous list of specific measures in order to fight terrorism. In the common position of the Council, terrorist individuals or groups were defined in such a way that a terrorist act was understood to be "an intentional act that, by its nature or its context, could seriously harm a country or an international organization". criminalized under national law”, and committed in order to, inter alia, seriously intimidate a population, compel governments to do or refrain from doing something, seriously destabilize or destroy fundamental political structures, attacks against life or physical integrity, the taking of hostages, causing massive destruction of public facilities, the direction or financing of terrorist groups, etc.

Attached to this common position was a list of terrorist organizations and individuals, including many members of ETA and the ETA organization as such.

ETA on the US list of terrorist organizations

On February 26, 2002, the United States government issued an order adding ETA to its list of terrorists and terrorist organizations, as well as some terrorists from this organization. the names of the people included in this list to specify some actions that they had carried out.

The list also considered and included, as ETA aliases, Askatasuna, Gestoras Pro Amnistía (which it considered to be Askatasuna's predecessor), Batasuna, Ekin, Euskal Herritarrok, Herri Batasuna, Jarrai-Haika-Segi (considered as a block), KAS and Xaki.

The outlawing of Batasuna

The Spanish Supreme Court illegalized Batasuna in 2003 as part of the ETA structure.

On April 19, 2002, the Council of Ministers approved the referral to the Cortes of the draft new Law on Political Parties, after favorable reports from the General Council of the Judiciary and the Council of State.

The law, approved on June 27 of that same year, sought to outlaw political parties that belonged to a terrorist network. This law, which modified the previous law on political parties, prior to the Spanish Constitution, establishes that parties must have a democratic operation and activities, and that only the judicial authority may outlaw a political party, in accordance with the law. In this way, a party would be outlawed when it pursued "deteriorating or destroying the regime of freedoms or making impossible or eliminating the democratic system". Among the actions that are considered intended for this purpose is "giving express or tacit political support to terrorism, legitimizing terrorist actions to achieve political ends outside of peaceful and democratic channels, or exculpating and minimizing their meaning and the violation of fundamental rights that it entails."

After the approval of the Political Parties Law, judicial institutions tried to enforce the new law. Thus, the judge of the National Court, Baltasar Garzón, decreed in an order dated August 26, 2002, the total suspension of Batasuna's activities, as well as the closure of its headquarters and its website, with the express prohibition of carrying out any political act or propaganda.

With the approval of the law and this suspension, the government, through the State Attorney, filed a lawsuit before the Supreme Court for the outlawing of Batasuna. Likewise, the prosecutor's office also filed a lawsuit before the courts motivating a similar request.

After studying these two demands, on March 27, 2003 the Supreme Court in a ruling ruled to outlaw Batasuna after considering it proven that the creation of this political party was an instrumental act on the part of the terrorist band ETA, and that is part of it.

The list of terrorist organizations in the EU (2003)

At the European Council meeting on June 5, 2003, it was agreed to expand the list of terrorist organizations and individuals. In this extension, Batasuna was included (and as aliases Herri Batasuna and Euskal Herritarrok), and Jarrai-Haika-Segi, considered as a common bloc, and some other organizations of the left nationalist movement, all of them considered by the EU as part of "the terrorist group ETA".

The Truce in Catalonia (2004)

On January 26, 2004, the newspaper ABC published that the then «conseller en cap» of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira, had met «recently» «in a place in the south of France» with ETA leaders, and that he supposedly finalized a pact with the terrorist group according to which the latter would agree not to attack Catalonia in exchange for the leader of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya proclaiming an independence declaration in favor of the right of self-determination of the peoples. The same day, and after the publication of the information on ABC, Carod-Rovira himself confirmed the meeting, although he assured that, despite having talked about politics, he had not reached any "agreement, nor no agreement or any consideration, because he did not speak on behalf of any government". He apologized to the Generalitat for not having informed and for doing so when he was the number two of the same, after which he presented his resignation, which was accepted by the president of the Generalitat, Pasqual Maragall, remaining as director without portfolio until the 3rd February 4, 2004. On February 4, ETA denied through Gara that it had reached any agreement with Carod-Rovira.

On February 18, ETA announced a truce only for the territory of Catalonia with the "desire to unite the ties between the Basque and Catalan people". then president of the government, José María Aznar, declared that this announcement was ETA's contribution to "this repulsive strategy, promoted by Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya". The leader of the PSOE, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, would be of the opinion that "the content of the statement establishing a truce in Catalonia is absolutely reprehensible and inadmissible and, of course, must have political consequences". President of the Generalitat, Pasqual Maragall would say "That they say that they will not kill in Catalonia outrages us even more because of its perversion. We do not want ETA's pardon. It disgusts us". For his part, Carod-Rovira insisted that no kind of agreement was reached at his meeting, while he asked for its extension to the rest of Spain, the abandonment of the weapons and to stop killing.

March 11, 2004

On March 11, 2004, there were attacks in Madrid by means of ten bomb explosions in passenger trains. At first, the attack was attributed to ETA, due to the fact that on Christmas Eve 2003 the National Police arrested two ETA members in San Sebastián and Hernani who had left dynamite in a wagon presumably prepared to explode at the Chamartín station in Madrid.; and on March 1, 2004, the Civil Guard stopped a van with 536 kg of explosives in the province of Cuenca, preventing an attack in the Spanish capital.

The representatives of Batasuna denied this hypothesis; Likewise, a person who spoke on behalf of ETA called the Basque public television (ETB) and denied all responsibility for the 11-M attacks. This statement was credible since the voice of the interlocutor was very similar to the one that announced the truce. of ETA in Catalonia.

On the same day of the attacks of March 11, 2004, when the Popular Party government indicated that ETA was responsible (see Political reactions to the attacks of March 11, 2004), at the meeting of the Council of United Nations Security Council approved a resolution condemning the attacks in the strongest terms. Under pressure from the Spanish representative, they agreed to attribute the attacks to the terrorist group ETA.

The 11-M attacks had great repercussions inside and outside Spain, affecting various policies against terrorism.

On March 25, 2004, the European Council issued a "Declaration on the fight against terrorism" in which they recalled the provisions of the United Nations Charter, resolution 1373 of 2001 of the Security Council, already mentioned, to affirm that there is no room for weakness or compromise of any kind when dealing with terrorists, that support for victims is paramount and that it is essential for an effective fight against terrorism that Member States apply in their all the measures adopted by the Council. Within this framework, it established a review of the strategic objectives of the European Union in the fight against terrorism:

• Strengthen international consensus and intensify international efforts to combat terrorism.
• Restrict the access of terrorists to financial resources and other economic resources.
• To maximize the capacity within EU bodies and member States to discover, investigate and prosecute terrorists and prevent terrorist attacks.
• Safeguard the safety of international transport and ensure effective border control systems.
• Strengthen the capacity of the European Union and member States to address the consequences of a terrorist attack.
• Respond to factors that support terrorism and the capture of potential terrorists.
• Focus actions, within the framework of EU external relations, on third priority countries in which counter-terrorism capacity or counter-terrorism commitment need to be improved.

The attached solidarity declaration establishes that the Member States will act in a spirit of solidarity in the event that one of them is the victim of a terrorist attack, mobilizing all the instruments at their disposal, including military means to prevent the terrorist threat, protect democratic institutions and the civilian population, and provide assistance to the State if its political authorities so request.

On October 8, 2004, the Security Council recalled that "criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury or to take hostages with the purpose of provoking a state of terror in the population in general, in a group of people or in a certain person, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to carry out an act, or to refrain from carrying out an act, which constitute crimes defined in the conventions, the international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism and included in its scope, do not allow justification under any circumstances for considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other similar nature and urges all States to prevent them and, if they occur, to make sure that they are sanctioned with penalties compatible with their serious nature".

The investigating judge on the attacks of March 11, 2004 in Madrid, Juan del Olmo, however, found no indication of the alleged participation of ETA in them.

An ideological sector, mainly linked to the Popular Party, supported the participation, whether logistical or direct, of ETA in 11-M and its decisive influence on the outcome of the subsequent elections that gave the PSOE the presidency of the Government. This hypothesis was widely supported by some media such as El Mundo and Libertad Digital and journalists Luis del Pino, Pedro J. Ramírez and Hermann Tertsch, among others.

Judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez, in his ruling on the attack, denied any type of link between 11-M and ETA.

Anoeta's proposal

In the elections of March 14, 2004, after the attacks of March 11 in Madrid, contrary to forecast and due in part to the feeling that the Popular Party government had mismanaged the crisis after the attacks, the PSOE reached the Government. The new president Rodríguez Zapatero announced a change of "temporary" in his politics and especially in anti-terrorism matters. The active opposition carried out by the Popular Party continually harassed the Government, which is why the PSOE and the PNV recovered the harmony of the late 1980s, basing their anti-terrorist policy on dialogue but without annulling the measures previously adopted by the popular ones.

On October 4, 2004, the French police launched an operation against ETA's logistics apparatus in which 20 arrests were made. Among them were Mikel Albizu Iriarte Mikel Antza, and his sentimental partner, Soledad Iparragirre Anboto, top managers of the gang, along with other prominent leaders. Four zulos were discovered with a large amount of weapons, far superior to what was estimated to be in their possession; material with information on ETA was also intervened and the printing press with which the internal bulletin was published was requisitioned, although no significant sum of money was located. The operation was described as the most important since the arrests in Bidart in 1992. In media related to ETA, the events were downplayed, pointing out that the ETA leadership would shortly have new people in charge. Spain requested the extradition of Mikel Antza and Anboto through a Eurowarrant.

ETA did not commit murders from May 30, 2003 to December 30, 2006, although countless acts of "low intensity violence" took place during that period. During 2004, more than 130 people were arrested between Spain and France for their links to ETA and the organization seemed to be showing signs of being at its lowest moments, also taking into account the international rejection caused by the attacks by radical Islamist groups. The Madrid massacre and the national and international rejection of the Islamist attacks in London or New York gave rise to certain voices in the organization's environment that were opposed to continuing with terrorist practices so reviled worldwide.

On November 14, 2004, Batasuna organized a massive political event at the Anoeta velodrome, which its spokesman, Arnaldo Otegi, presented as "an illegal act by an illegal organization." In that act, his proposal to "overcome the conflict" was formalized, which would also be assumed by ETA and a large part of the nationalist left, in which he bet "for peace" and "for the use of exclusively political and democratic ways” to resolve “the Basque conflict”. This proposal was based on the establishment of two dialogue tables. The first between the government and ETA to deal with the issue of cessation of terrorist activities, and the second table, made up of all the political parties, but outside the Basque Parliament, to debate the political issue.

Just a few hours later, two bombs exploded in Navarra, followed by others that did not cause casualties and Batasuna did not condemn the attacks.

Resolution in the congress for dialogue (2005)

After multiple frustrated attempted attacks by the police and the civil guard, the ETA gang proposed a truce shortly before the April 17, 2005 elections to the Basque Parliament. The government's response was a request to ETA to lay down its arms as a condition of any negotiations. Among all the Spanish political forces in the Cortes (Basque political parties included) there was a consensus that the State would not make political concessions to the terrorist band.

On May 17, 2005, a PSOE resolution was approved in Congress authorizing dialogue with ETA if the right conditions for a dialogue end to the violence were produced, as a clear will to end to it and unequivocal attitudes that can lead to that conviction. That resolution, which had the support of all the political groups except the Popular Party (192 votes in favor and 142 against), explicitly stated that "political issues should be resolved only through legitimate representatives of the popular will. Violence has no political price and Spanish democracy will never accept blackmail."

A month later, on June 19, ETA announced that it was suspending its terrorist actions against elected political officials from June 1, taking into account what, in its opinion, had been the failure of the anti-terrorist pact. This truce was qualified a few days later to clarify that the State Authorities and those who have government responsibilities are excluded from this measure and therefore they can suffer attacks.

Until March 2006, ETA continued to place bombs at the facilities of public entities, companies in the Basque Country, and in communication routes. However, it flagged most of the bombs planted throughout 2005 and 2006 with notices such as "Bomb Danger". Thus, in July 2005, he placed four devices in the facilities of the Boroa thermal power plant, when it was undergoing tests, causing little material damage.

2006 ceasefire

The text of this historical document is found in Wikisource: ETA message to the Basque people.

On March 22, 2006, ETA announced, through a statement sent to the Basque public broadcaster EITB and the Basque-language newspaper Berria, a "permanent ceasefire" as of March 24 of 2006 with the intention of promoting a process that culminated in a new political framework. In this statement, he urged Spain and France to cease the "repression" of them. On the part of some analysts, it was highlighted that in said statement the concept of "permanent ceasefire" was the same one used by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) when it took the first step that helped to initiate the final peace process in Northern Ireland., which, according to his interpretation, allowed us to be optimistic about the end of the violence.

The following day, ETA issued another statement clarifying that the political change seeks to overcome the current framework, which is one of "denial, partition and imposition".

On June 29, 2006, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, then President of the Government, informed the media in an institutional statement in the lobby of the Congress of Deputies of the start of the dialogue with ETA after the ceasefire.

The "Loyola Accords" (2006)

During the truce, contacts began between representatives of the socialist government and those around ETA, but that summer irreconcilable differences arose that resulted in the blocking of the situation and, on the part of ETA, on August 18, 2006, the a statement to that effect. Both parties promised to turn the situation around by inviting the PNV to participate in these contacts.

Finally, between the months of September and November 2006, eleven meetings were held at the Jesuit retreat house in Loyola (Azpeitia, Guipúzcoa) according to the newspaper Deia, the result of the The newspapers Deia and El Mundo themselves maintained that a preliminary agreement was drawn up in October 2006, called "Bases for dialogue and political agreement" and better known as the "Loyola Accords", which would later be submitted to the consideration of the rest of the parties and institutions, in which it was expressed in summary:

• Recognition of the identity of the Basque people (Euskal Herria).
• State respect for democratic decisions and decisions taken in the absence of violence by Basque citizenship.
• Recognition of euskera as an official language in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (CAPV) and Navarra.
• Creation of an inter-agency body between CAPV and Navarra, following the voluntary accession of the citizens of these territories.
• To install and support the creation of a Basque euroregion within the framework of the European Union (EU).
• This agreement would eventually be ratified in a referendum.
• A schedule of work would be established to publicize and discuss the agreement, and a peace conference would be held in San Sebastian on 2 December 2006.
• The maritime agreement would be deposited in the Vatican.

Return to terror (2007)

Finally, the agreement was broken, and the parties involved blamed each other for it, according to the abertzale Gara newspaper, and on June 5, 2007, ETA announced in a statement sent to said newspaper and to Berria that the ceasefire that began on March 24, 2006 was terminated and that the return to arms would become effective as of 0:00 on June 6.

Vistal Real Club Marítimo de Guecho (Vizcaya) following the explosion of an ETA bomb on 19 May 2008.

President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said in an appearance at the Moncloa Palace that "ETA is wrong again" and requested the "unanimous support of the Democrats for the Government" while the then leader of the opposition Mariano Rajoy asked the Government to rectify its anti-terrorist policy. ETA leaves behind 439 days of truce with this statement.

Previously, on December 30, 2006, the explosion of a van bomb at the Barajas airport marked the de facto end of the permanent ceasefire, at which point the Government declared finished the negotiation process with ETA. Two Ecuadorian citizens died in this attack (Diego Armado Estacio, 19, and Carlos Alonso Palate, 35).

Since then, he has murdered several more people: the two civil guards Fernando Trapero, 23, and Raúl Centeno, 24 (December 1, 2007); March 2008, two days before the general elections); the civil guard Juan Manuel Piñuel, on May 14, 2008, in an attack perpetrated at the Villarreal de Álava barracks, in Álava.

On May 20, 2008, in a joint operation between the Civil Guard and the French Gendarmerie, four members of the ETA leadership were arrested in Bordeaux, including number one Francisco Javier López Peña, alias & #34;Thierry".

In mid-September 2008, various organizations such as Gestoras Pro Amnistía and its successor Askatasuna were considered terrorists, due to their links to ETA; On the following weekend, ETA attacked the headquarters of the Ertzaintza (Basque regional police) in Ondárroa, the new headquarters of Caja Vital in Vitoria, and the Virgen del Puerto de Santoña Military Board, in Cantabria, with three car bombs, killing in this last attack on September 22 against the Luis Conde de la Cruz artillery brigade.

At the end of 2008, the leadership of ETA fell twice in just three weeks: on November 17 the police forces arrested Mikel Garikoitz Aspiazu Txeroki and on December 8 they did the same with Aitzol Iriondo. This arrest was followed by two other ETA members who were going to accompany him; Eneko Zarrabeitia and Aitor Artetxe. In the Gipuzkoan town of Irún, that same day three other ETA members were arrested, who were the ones who took Eneko Zarrabeitia and Aitor Artetxe to meet with Aitzol Iriondo; several searches were carried out in Guecho, resulting in the arrest of two suspected terrorists in Guecho and Berango. On the morning of December 15 to 16, four "legal" from ETA in Guipúzcoa, three in San Sebastián and another in Pasajes; Arkaitz Landaberea, June Villarrubia, Julen Etxaniz and Saioa Urbistazu.

Attempted against the Cuartel House of the Guardia Civil in Burgos in 2009.

However, on December 3, 2008, ETA assassinated businessman Ignacio Uría Mendizábal in Azpeitia after being shot on his way to a restaurant. On December 31, he places a bomb at the headquarters of the public radio and television channel Euskal Irrati Telebista (EiTB) in Bilbao, in a building that EiTB shares with the Vizcaya Provincial Treasury, the insurance company Lagun Aro and other media outlets. such as Antena 3, Onda Cero, Deia, El Mundo, Marca and Expansión.

On June 19, 2009, he assassinated Eduardo Antonio Puelles García, chief inspector of the Special Surveillance Group of the Information Brigade of the National Police, with a sticky bomb.

The media agree that fifty years after its creation, ETA is now structurally weakened and isolated in the face of a society fed up with violence and growing social rejection.

In the early morning of July 29, 2009, a van exploded without prior warning next to the Burgos Civil Guard barracks, loaded with 200 kilos of explosives, causing 65 minor injuries. The attack could end in a massacre, since 117 people were sleeping in the building, including 41 children. At 11:34 p.m., shortly before 2:00 p.m. on July 30, Diego Salva Lezaun, from 27 years old, and Carlos Sáenz de Tejada García, 28, next to the Palma Nova barracks, in the Majorcan municipality of Calviá, by placing a sticky bomb in their police vehicle. On Sunday, August 9, 2009, they exploded in Palma from Mallorca four explosive devices. Three of them exploded in two restaurants near the Portitxol promenade, in front of the Can Pere Antoni beach. The room exploded in the underground of the Plaza Mayor. ETA reported the placement of the artifacts to a taxi radio station in the Basque Country. This made the chief prosecutor of the Balearic Islands think that an ETA commando persisted in Mallorca; with which the hypothesis that the ETA members who perpetrated the sticky bomb that caused the death of two civil guards on July 30 were still on the island gained strength.

At the end of August 2009, a new joint police operation between France and Spain led to the arrest in the south of the French country of three ETA members (one of them, Aitzol Etxaburu, among the most wanted) and the location of of 13 zulos with abundant explosive material related to the attacks in Burgos and Palma de Mallorca, a total of more than 900 kilograms.

On March 16, 2010, for the first and only time in its history, ETA assassinated a French gendarme during a shootout, when he was chasing an ETA member commando who had carried out a vehicle theft in Dammarie-les-Lys, near Paris.

2010 ceasefire

Following the request by various international mediators in March 2010 and by Eusko Alkartasuna (EA) and Batasuna (which continued to be legal and active in France) on September 3, 2010 within the agreement signed by both organizations of a ceasefire, on September 5, 2010, ETA announced it in a statement to the British television channel BBC without specifying its scope. In the statement, he first noted that:

[...] The struggle of years has sown new political conditions. Exhausted the autonomous framework, the Basque people has come to realize the political change, the time to build for Euskal Herria the democratic framework, following the desire of the majority of Basque citizenship.

Later, he declared himself in favor of an independence project through dialogue and negotiation:

It is time to assume responsibilities and take firm steps: in the articulation of the independence project; in the way of creating the conditions for building the democratic process; in the response to repression and in the firm defense of civil and political rights. Political change is possible. But on that road there are no shortcuts. The path of freedom must be walked step by step, even if it is with flexibility. But, necessarily, we must fight and make the effort at the level of the objective that is pursued. Without confrontation you cannot overcome the denial and the lock. In that effort it has been and is the hand of ETA stained, always. ETA reaffirms its commitment to a democratic solution, in its commitment to a democratic solution so that, through dialogue and negotiation, Basque citizens can decide our future freely and democratically.

He also pointed out that he needed the necessary negotiating will of the Government of Spain "to agree on the democratic minimums" to undertake the process, noting that it had thus been sent to the "international community" for him to "take part". The ceasefire was noted at the end of the statement:

ETA makes it known that it has already made a decision several months ago not to carry out offensive armed actions. ETA wants to reiterate the call to act responsibly on the Basque political, social and trade union agents. To reach the stage of a democratic process it is essential to take firm steps as a People. It is necessary to set the process to give the Word to the People. Because it will be when the rights of the Basque people are recognized and guaranteed when the door of the true solution to the conflict is opened. In conclusion, we want to appeal to the whole of the Basque citizens to be involved and to continue the struggle. Each in its own sphere, offered each one its level of commitment, so that with the riad composed of the drops of all we can ruin the wall of denial and take irreversible steps on the path of freedom.

Previously, on Friday, September 3, 2010, the then Minister of the Interior Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba had declared his skepticism regarding the rumors that existed about this truce. For its part, the PP had previously expressed that a possible truce was nothing more than "a strategy of the hard core of the gang" to be able to stand in the municipal and foral elections of 2011.

On January 10, 2011, ETA declared that the ceasefire declared in September 2010 would be permanent, general, and verifiable by international observers.

Definitive cessation of armed activity

ETA support banner at the 2011 Gudari Eguna.

On the afternoon of Thursday, October 20, 2011, three days after the San Sebastián International Peace Conference was held, and appealing to its conclusions, ETA announced "the definitive cessation of its armed activity& #3. 4; through a statement published in the digital editions of the newspapers Gara and Berria, also disseminated in video and audio in Spanish and Basque.

In the statement, ETA stated that it had a "clear, firm and definitive commitment" to "overcome the armed confrontation", while asking the governments of Spain and France for "direct dialogue" in order to reach a solution of "the consequences of the conflict".

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero appeared an hour after ETA's statement, stressing that it was a "definitive and unconditional" triumph of the rule of law. He emphasized the French collaboration in the fight against the gang, and thanked the work of the various Interior Ministers and "the tenacious and effective action of the State security forces and bodies." He ended his appearance by recalling that "the memory of the victims will always accompany future Spanish generations."

The Socialist candidate for the November 2011 general elections, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, said that it was "a day to celebrate the great victory of democracy". The opposition leader and PP candidate for the presidency, Mariano Rajoy, considered the announcement great news "because there has not been any type of political concession". Some associations of victims of terrorism, who described it as a "fraud", such as the State security forces, waiting for that "they make themselves available to Justice and hand over their weapons", they welcomed the ETA statement with great skepticism and suspicion.

Unilateral and unconditional disarmament and dissolution announcement

On March 17, 2017, ETA announced its definitive disarmament unilaterally and without conditions. This occurred on the morning of Saturday, April 8 of that same year in the city of Bayonne, in the French Basque Country, when Civil intermediaries communicated to the French judicial authorities the location of eight zulos of the gang to proceed with their disarmament, seizing 118 weapons, 25,000 cartridges and almost three tons of explosives.

After submitting to a vote among its militants a document that stated its end as an organization in terms of "dissolution", "disappearance" or "demobilization", ETA finally communicated by letter to institutions and political agents its decision to "consider finished its historical cycle" and confirmed the dissolution of all its structures on May 3, 2018.

On May 2, 2018, a letter from ETA sent to various Basque organizations and agents was released, dated April 16 of the same year, in which it communicated its decision to "completely dissolve all its structures and considered finished its political initiative". The letter precedes the event organized on May 4 in the French city of Cambo, with the presence of representatives of different political and social organizations as well as international experts, to stage the end of the organization. A few days before, ETA had published a statement in which it asked for "pardon" from part of the victims. In the letter of April 18, he stated that "the conflict that the Basque Country maintains with Spain and France" is still open and he assumed his part of the responsibility for not having been able to reach agreements, neither between ETA and the Government, nor between the Basque agents, while acknowledging the suffering caused as a result of their fight.

On May 3, 2018, the final statement of dissolution by ETA was released. Even so, the Spanish government stated that the nearly one hundred former members of ETA who are hiding in hiding must pay for their crimes and they will continue to be sought by the authorities for their detention.

Features

Symbols

ETA Emblem.

Seal used by the organization, together with the emblem, in letters and communiqués.

ETA's motto was bietan jarrai ("continue in both", that is, with the strength of the ax and the cunning of the snake) and its emblem consisted of a snake wrapped around an ax, which was created by Félix Likiniano, an anti-Franco veteran exiled in France. This emblem inspired a symbol used on the seal of the Liberation Anti-Terrorist Groups (GAL): an ax and a snake with its head severed.

Mottos

During the demonstrations in favor of the band, and the approach of the ETA prisoners to the prisons of Euskal Herria, chants such as "gora Euskal Herria askatuta", "gora ETA militarra" or "Jotake irabazi arte" were often heard. In addition to that, in all these concentrations the Eusko Gudariak was sung, a very popular song in the field of Basque nationalism, almost considered a hymn.

Organization

ETA was frequently linked to the so-called Basque National Liberation Movement (MLNV), made up of various Basque independence organizations illegalized in Spain such as the Batasuna, Euskal Herritarrok and Herri Batasuna electoral groups and parties, the Segi youth movements, Haika and Jarrai, the LAB union, the Pro Amnesty Managers and others, who assume common principles, within what they call the abertzale left (ezker abertzalea in Basque, which would be translated as "patriotic left")). Its ideological postulates were summed up in the KAS Alternative. Although many members of organizations considered to be affiliated with the MLNV did not support the armed struggle, ETA was considered to have a central influence as the main organization and reference of the MLNV. In court instructions issued by Judge Baltasar Garzón, several of these organizations and companies were considered to be part of ETA. In 2005, the trial began against several representatives of this type of organization, within Summary 18/98 and following.

It was organized into different “commandos” with the aim of attacking a specific geographical area, coordinated by a leadership or “military leadership”. It also had networks of shelters or "safe houses" and zulos (Spanish for "zulo", "hole" in Basque), hidden places to hide weapons and explosives. Among its members were distinguished among the "legal", members not registered by the Police; the "liberated", refugees in France; and the "burned", those who were released after being arrested. Some ex-militants moved to Latin American countries, calling themselves political refugees.

Many members of the organization died due to various circumstances, mainly in armed confrontations with the Police.

Leaders

After the announcement in October 2011 of the definitive cessation of its armed activity, the Spanish Police considered that David Pla, Josu Urrutikoetxea and Iratxe Sorzabal were the most responsible of ETA. Since 1986 these have been some of its leaders, with their positions within the organization and their date of arrest:

Methods

Paraking Terminal 4 of Madrid-Barajas Airport following an ETA attack on 30 December 2006.

The intimidation tactics used by ETA included:

• The attack, usually using the car bomb method, the backpack or the short-distance shooting, usually known as shooting in the back of the neck (although not always headed to that part of the body).
• The violence of persecution in the form of anonymous threats, posters and painted (which forced escorts of the threatened, especially in the Basque Country and Navarra).
• The extortion through the collection of the call for it “revolutionary tax”.
• Kidnapping (often aggravated as a "punishment" for not paying the "revolutionary tax").

He carried out a large part of his attacks in the Basque Country and Navarra, although his activity frequently spread to other areas of Spain. He also attacked different areas of France, in addition to the French Basque Country. In the past, it had contacts with groups such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC-EP) and, especially, the Provisional IRA, and many of its members received training in countries such as Algeria, Libya, Lebanon and Nicaragua.

Murders and property damage

Murders committed by ETA

Data	Body		Deaths
Military/ Police	Guardia Civil	203	486 (58.62%)
	National Police	146
	Armed Forces	98
	Local police	24
	Autonomous Police	14
	Gendarmerie	1
Civil			343 (41.38%)
Deadly casualties			829
Regions	Basque CountryBasque Country		551
	Community of MadridCommunity of Madrid		123
	CataloniaCatalonia		55
	NavarraNavarra		40
	AragonAragon		16
	AndalusiaAndalusia		14
	Valencian CommunityValencian Community		9
	CantabriaCantabria		5
	La RiojaLa Rioja		4
	Castilla-La ManchaCastilla-La Mancha		3
	Castilla y LeónCastilla y León		3
	France		3
	Balearic IslandsBalearic Islands		2
	Region of MurciaRegion of Murcia		1
Ref:

In its last internal bulletin Zutabe, dated April 2018, ETA claimed responsibility for 2,604 attacks, which caused a total of 758 fatalities since it took up armed activity in 1968. However, the Ministry of the Interior and the victims' associations are credited with the murder of 829 people, of whom 486 were military and police officers (58.62%) and 343 civilians (41.38%). 66.46% of all attacks were committed in the Basque Country. It can also be seen that, of the 623 fatalities between 1978, the year the current Spanish Constitution was approved, and 1995, only 10 were politicians, 1.6%, while, since 1995, of the 93 murders perpetrated, 26 were personalities political, 27.96% (16 councillors, 5 leaders or former leaders of non-nationalist parties and 5 institutional positions). From this it can be deduced that since the mid-1990s ETA bet more on the assassination of political figures than other sectors. In 2018 a study by the AVT estimated that 307 unsolved ETA murders

A list of gang murders can be seen at:

• ETA murders between 1968 and 1975, during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
• Murders committed by ETA since 1975, during the Transition and Democracy in Spain.

Among the famous personalities assassinated by ETA are:

• The President of the Government of the Franco dictatorship: Luis Carrero Blanco (1973).
• Parliamentarians, councillors and members of various political parties, whether of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) as Fernando Buesa, Juan María Jáuregui, Ernest Lluch, of the Union of Democratic Center (UCD) as Ramón Baglietto, or of the Popular Party (PP), such as Miguel Ángel Blanco, Alberto Jiménez-Becerril, Gregorio Ordóñez or Tomás Caballero.
• Judges and prosecutors, such as the former president of the Constitutional Court Francisco Tomás y Valiente, the judges of the Supreme Court Rafael Martínez Emperador and José Francisco Querol Lombardero, or the chief prosecutor of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia, Luis Portero.
• Entrepreneurs, such as Javier de Ybarra and Bergé, Ignacio Uría or José Antonio Santamaría.
• Prison and judicial officers, such as Máximo Casado Carrera.
• Philosophers and intellectuals.
• Journalists, such as José Luis López de Lacalle, José María Portell Manso or Jaime Bilbao Iglesias.
• Social and religious groups.
• Engineers such as José María Ryan Estrada or Ángel Pascual Mugica.
• Professionals who worked for the state, such as the chef Ramón Díaz García (already on January 26, 2001, at the San Sebastian Marine Command).
• Drug dealers.
• Former members of ETA, like Dolores González Catarain Yoyes.

Many members of the Spanish Army and the security forces of Spain and France, whether they were from the Civil Guard, the National Police, the French Gendarmerie, or regional or local police, such as the Ertzaintza or the Mozos de Escuadra, They were killed while serving as bodyguards for different authorities.

In indiscriminate bomb attacks, ETA also killed children and the elderly (attack on the "Hipercor" shopping center in June 1987, killing 21 people and wounding 45), foreign tourists and relatives of targets terrorists, mainly relatives of civil guards who were in the barracks against which they attacked (the Zaragoza barracks on December 11, 1987, which caused 11 victims, or the Vich one, on May 29, 1991, which caused the death of 10 people). It generally gave advance notice of bomb attacks against civilian targets, not doing so in the case of military targets. On some occasions there were failures in the notification system used, causing numerous victims, as in the case of the attack against the aforementioned shopping center in which finally, by court ruling, the responsibility of the State was recognized for the delay in evacuating said center as it was considered a false alarm, ETA having warned 35 minutes before the tragic explosion occurred.

The following graph shows the evolution of the number of murders committed by ETA each year from 1968 to its last deadly attack in 2010.

The year 1980 was the year in which there were more fatalities, totaling 93 murdered. ETA kidnapped a total of 86 people, of whom it executed 12. It is estimated that the material damage caused by ETA to the Spanish State in the last 20 years could amount to around 25,000 million euros, of which three quarters They would only be in the Basque Country, 20.1% of its GDP, according to estimates made by Mikel Buesa, a professor at the Complutense University.

Financing and Procurement

In 2002, it was estimated that ETA's annual budget was around two million euros, and at that time it had around 500 active militants.

One of its best-known financing methods, which in 2002 could account for 75% of the band's income, was the so-called "revolutionary tax", for which ETA forces businessmen and qualified professionals to pay. from Euskal Herria (especially from the Spanish Basque Country, but sometimes also from the French Basque Country) under threats of murder, kidnapping and property damage. He has also collected ransoms for kidnappings. Part of the material used was obtained through theft. Car thefts that were later used as car bombs or to flee the scene of an attack were frequent. He also occasionally robbed explosives warehouses. Less frequently, they stole cash, punching machines, and material to counterfeit license plates. In their early years, they also stole printing material to disseminate their writings.

Between 2004 and 2007, investigations were carried out into possible 296 financial operations linked to the financing of ETA.

In 2004, at least two surface-to-air missiles were discovered in arms caches in France, which arms dealers possibly related to the IRA had sold to ETA in 1999, during one of the ceasefires declared by the terrorist group. In 2001, ETA attempted to attack the life of the then Prime Minister, José María Aznar, with missiles three times, but the missiles failed to launch.

According to the writer Roberto Saviano, she was also related to drug trafficking and did business with Italian troublemakers.

Anti-terrorism and prison policy

During the Franco dictatorship, ETA prisoners remained in military prisons. Some of its members were sentenced to death, executing various sentences. Since the transition, they have been held in civilian prisons.

The current Spanish anti-terrorist law dates its origins from the pre-constitutional stage since the Permanent Deputation of Congress validated, on February 6, 1979, the Decree-Law on citizen security of June of the previous year (known as the «anti-terrorist law») with the opposition of socialists, communists, the Catalan Minority and the Basque Nationalist Party, who asked for its repeal as they considered it unconstitutional; by virtue of it and its numerous subsequent reforms, the situation of detainees suspected of terrorist activities is governed by special legislation from the moment of their arrest restrictive of various rights recognized to other detainees, being a source of controversy and opposition by political parties and human rights organizations. Among many other specificities, ETA prisoners could remain incommunicado for up to 13 days, being the secret cause for their defense lawyers who cannot be appointed by the detainee and cannot meet with the prisoner. private lawyer; Likewise, its subsequent prosecution is not the responsibility of the Investigating Courts of each judicial district, but of the National Court, which is located in Madrid and was created in 1977.

Alleging the need to prevent ETA from coercively preventing the reinsertion of its prisoners, previously grouped in prisons in the Basque Country and Navarre, the Government decided to disperse ETA prisoners throughout prisons throughout the country. This anti-terrorist measure was politically justified as a way of avoiding the formation of a pressure group in Basque prisons that would act on each individual inmate. However, in addition to the fact that the results of this measure were scarce, its legal nature was questioned from nationalist sectors and pacifist organizations. Gesto por la Paz described the measure as "an extra-penitentiary, discretionary and arbitrary punishment" and harshly criticized, not so much the dispersion of the prisoners among themselves, but their removal from the Basque Country, considering that this was also punishing their families and environment. In a sociological study carried out by the University of the Basque Country in 1999 in the Basque Country, 80% of those surveyed were in favor of such an approach being carried out and 9% against, considering in a similar percentage that said measure would facilitate pacification, as well as the disappearance of street terrorism and threats.

In mid-2005, the Directorate of Penitentiary Institutions of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior estimated that there were 544 members or collaborators of ETA in Spanish prisons, of which 24 would be in the Basque Country. The association of relatives of ETA prisoners, Etxerat, reduced the number of ETA members imprisoned in Spain to 507, of which only 14 would be found in centers in the Basque Country. An important part of the ETA inmates are in the six prisons of the Community of Madrid, among them, the majority of those who have pending trials, since the processes for terrorism are held in the National Court. According to Etxerat there were about 110 ETA members in these six prisons. The rest were spread over other prisons in Spain.

In France, according to Etxerat, there were 153 ETA members imprisoned, spread across 30 prisons, 109 of whom were in the nine prisons in the Paris district, partly because that is where the central courts are located who judge these types of cases. No ETA member is incarcerated in prisons in the French Basque Country; In addition, there were five ETA prisoners in two prisons in Mexico and one in the United Kingdom.

In 2008, with 670, the highest number of ETA prisoners incarcerated in Spain was reached —which meant an increase of 35% compared to 2006— of which 413 were serving sentences and 201 were in preventive detention, the rest He was in prisons outside of Spain. José María Sagardui, "Gatza", imprisoned in 1980, is the prisoner who had been incarcerated the longest.

According to the aforementioned organization Etxerat, the number rose to 762 prisoners spread over 85 detention centers that were an average of 630 kilometers away from their homes, 14 of them being in prisons in the Basque Country and Navarra. 157 would be spread over 33 French centers.

In 2008, the National Court, the judicial body based in Madrid in charge of prosecuting terrorist crimes in Spain, tried 81 ETA members in 45 trials, in which 21 defendants were acquitted.

The following graph shows the evolution of the number of ETA prisoners since 1978. Data from Etxerat and EPPK.^{[citation required]}

The question of the ETA prisoners was the subject of negotiations in the ten times that ETA decided to suspend its actions and negotiations with the Government of Spain, like this during the truce of 1999 the Government of the Popular Party chaired by José María Aznar brought 135 ETA prisoners to prisons near the Basque Country and Navarra and granted 42 third degrees in compliance with the provisions of the Spanish Congress of Deputies, which approved in November 1998 a motion by Izquierda Unida to which the Party joined. Popular, and it was unanimously approved, on the rapprochement of the prisoners by which the Government was urged to put into practice "a new orientation, agreed upon, dynamic and flexible, of the penitentiary policy in the way that best promotes the end of the violence », although after the breakdown of the negotiations this policy was never carried out. The only opposition to this measure came from the Association of Victims of Terrorism, which harshly criticized the position of the PP, considering dispersal as the best anti-terrorist measure.

At the end of 2008, the PSOE government, in response to information published in the press, stated that some of the gang's prisoners had been brought to their homes and others kept away, requesting discretion for security reasons, and Rubalcaba stressed that the policy The penitentiary was "another instrument in the fight against terrorism".

In the same sense, during 2009, historical leaders of ETA such as Santiago Arróspide Sarasola, "Santi Potros", with a prison sentence until 2030 after being convicted of the aforementioned attack against Hipercor and who rejected the armed struggle were approached from Cádiz to Zaragoza, while other prisoners from ETA and its satellite organizations were sent to the south of the peninsula.

The media used the reinserted prisoners or those who condemned the violence to erode ETA and for its part the organization made great efforts to control and unite the opinions of this group. In 2010, a hundred or more of the more than 600 ETA prisoners held in Spain had already broken with ETA. Some of them signed a document in which they lamented "the damage caused to people, all innocent, to their families and to society". Although this optimism is not reflected in all the writings of experts who deal with the subject.

According to the report on human rights violations commissioned by the Basque Government and presented in June 2013, the total number of people arrested from 1960 to 2013 for belonging to or collaborating with ETA was &&&&&&&&&&040000.&&&&&040,000, although, finally, and according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, less than &&&&&&&&&&010000.&&&&&010,000 of them were indicted for their relationship with the organization.

Social support

Opinion of Basque citizenship about the performance of ETA, between the years 1981 and 2010.

Public opinion of Basque citizenship before ETA.

ETA had some social support during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, a period in which it assassinated Luis Carrero Blanco, but the transition to democracy made it lose support. This became especially evident with the kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco, which would generate great social rejection. His loss of sympathizers was so great that the Euskal Herritarrok platform lost half of its voters after the truce of 1998-1999 was broken.

In his last years of activity, his social support ended up being a minority. According to the Euskobarómetro (sociological study carried out by a team of professors from the University of the Basque Country) of November 2005, more than 60% of the Basques totally rejected ETA. 17% thought that in the past their violence had been justified, but at the time of the survey it was not. 12% shared their aims, but not their violent methods. 3% partially justified the ETA action, criticizing its errors, while only 0.4% fully supported it.

The data from this study in May 2009 confirmed the trend of increasing social rejection: 64% of Basques totally rejected ETA; 13% believed that in the past their violence had been justified, but at the time of the survey it was not; 10% shared their goals, but not their violent methods. Those who partially justified the ETA action, criticizing its errors, remained at 3%, while those who fully supported it rose to 1%.

Allegations of torture

The acts of ETA were condemned and described as terrorist by the vast majority of political and social forces as well as by foreign states and international organizations such as the European Union and the United Nations. However, organizations such as Amnesty International continued to condemn the actions of ETA, or serious abuses against human rights. They were also critical of the anti-terrorist policy of the Government of Spain, in particular the solitary confinement regime, which, according to this organization, would make it possible for prisoners to be mistreated or tortured, but without qualifying it as systematic.

The debate on torture in Spain is deeply linked to the history of ETA. The torture that some detainees suffered by the Spanish police forces, mainly during the Franco dictatorship, contributed to the deterioration of the image of the Spanish administration, to the radicalization of ETA, and to its recruitment of members. And, conversely, the escalation in the adoption by ETA and other groups of violent methods allows measures to be maintained even after the transition, such as the power to hold a detainee incommunicado for five days without allowing him to contact his defense or his family. Precisely, one of the first assassinated by ETA was Melitón Manzanas who, as head of the San Sebastián Political-Social Brigade, had tortured numerous opponents of the Franco regime.

The complaints of torture did not stop with the Constitution of 1978, from the Government of Spain it was affirmed that the complaints were false and that they were due to a slogan from ETA to its militants. Sources close to the terrorist organization denounced the death of several ETA militants and other detainees due to torture received while incommunicado. The detainees accused of belonging to ETA alleged in many cases that they had received torture that did not leave lasting injuries (suffocation, sexual assaults, blows or pressure on the genitals, blows with blunt objects, electric shocks, exposure to cold, threats). When the defendants showed signs of injuries at the end of the solitary confinement, the security forces alleged that the detainees had inflicted them on themselves or that they were the result of falls or struggles in which the agents had limited themselves to defend yourself.

In the Spanish Congress, during the first legislature, an investigation committee was opened on torture in Euskal Herria, which began on December 28, 1979, as part of the agreement for the release of Javier Rupérez, in the hands of ETA (pm). He extended his work until the PSOE came to power in 1982. An undetermined number of tortured testified, among whom were, according to various testimonies, Tomás Linaza and Txema Rojo. The sessions were recorded, at least on audio, and a report was drawn up with conclusions that were never debated in plenary. A document on ill-treatment in Euskal Herria that is still locked up in the archives of the Congress that insists on not revealing any information about it.

The associations of the so-called nationalist left used to be the most active in denouncing the practice of torture against their sympathizers, giving them credit. On the contrary, the PP, PSOE and the police unions deny that torture was a widespread practice, recognizing only the cases confirmed by judicial sentence (although, since the approval of the Criminal Code of 1995, there has been no conviction of a police officer for mistreatment, which generates accusations of impunity for the perpetrators).

On the part of the latter, it was pointed out that the denunciations of torture were an ETA strategy, having found ETA instruction manuals, intervened by the police during certain arrests, in which their members were advised to denounce torture if they were detained; Thus, in January 2008, a manual entitled Atxiloketari Aurre Eginez, 2º zkia (Making facing arrest, second volume), in which the members of the terrorist group are informed: "Be smart, you will not be sent back to the police station (...) The worst is over past. Therefore, tell the coroner to write that you have been tortured both physically and psychologically". After leaving the police premises and being taken to the National Court, "the nightmare has ended", they will not be returned to "enemy hands". At that time they must communicate that: "Everything declared in police stations is a lie. They are statements made under torture". Even knowing these instructions in advance, Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba stressed that all the complaints were investigated, since "the first interested parties in these investigations being carry out" they are the Government and the Civil Guard. However, from the nationalist left, it is emphasized that on the few occasions in which there has been an investigation and subsequent demonstrative trial of torture, the defendants have finally been acquitted or sentenced to ridiculous sentences and over time they were decorated or promoted, citing the death under torture of Joxe Arregi as an example. Likewise, what the minister said contrasts with the multiple sentences (up to eight by the European Court of Human Rights) against the Spanish state for part of international organizations due to the lack of investigation of the same. Amnesty International has asked President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to put into practice a "National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture", to adapt to the commitment acquired by Spain when ratifying the Optional Protocol for the prevention of Torture. In the same statement, he called for the elimination of solitary confinement and the "establishment by law of rigorous and effective investigations into complaints of torture and ill-treatment at the hands of state agents, preventing them from going unpunished."

The United Nations Organization sent Theo van Boven and Martin Scheinin to Spain on several occasions, as rapporteurs against torture. During his last visit (in May 2008), Scheinin (in his provisional assessments) asked the Spanish authorities to repeal the incommunicado regime for detainees and to reform the special regime of the National Court since, in his opinion " rights are violated and it creates structural deficiencies – it does not allow the possibility of appealing before a higher court – in the democratic functioning of Justice”. In addition, Scheinin warned about the tendency of the Spanish judicial system to classify as "terrorism" crimes that are not, stating that "when you start to fall down that slope you run the risk of violating many rights."

Other entities, such as Human Rights Watch, did not confirm the torture, although they considered that the guarantees could be improved to prevent it. #34;does not believe that ill-treatment at the hands of Spanish law enforcement officials is commonplace, based on its investigations the organization disagrees with the statement that they constitute isolated acts, for the commission of which only those responsible can be held responsible. a few rogue police officers." In the same report "Amnesty International presents some recommendations to the Spanish authorities that the organization believes would help prevent ill-treatment and put an end to the impunity of officials in charge of enforcing the law responsible for such acts". Gesture for the Peace of Euskal Herria, and political parties such as IU, PNV or EA maintained their reservations about the ma majority of the complaints, although they gave credibility to some cases, even without a final sentence, when the detainee left the period of incommunicado detention with injuries that were a source of great controversy for public opinion (as in the case of Unai Romano, whose injury report It was carried out by the prestigious forensic anthropologist Francisco Etxeberria, a specialist who speaks harshly about the Spanish judicial bodies and their relationship with torture and the, in his opinion, evident impunity that exists in this serious matter) or when the victim had broad social prestige (as in the case of Martxelo Otamendi, director of the newspaper Euskaldunon Egunkaria, closed by the Civil Guard; although this last case was also endorsed by a condemnatory sentence against the Spanish state by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, for not investigating the complaint of torture).

In this regard, in 2006 the Basque Government agreed to Amnesty International's requests and announced that the Ertzaintza would videotape the periods of incommunicado detention of the detainees. After three years without any complaint of torture to this body, in 2009 the Ertzaintza applied solitary confinement for the first time in that period to the detainee Manex Castro, who denounced torture, the family also, since they did not receive information on the state and whereabouts of the detainee He denounced that the Ertzaintza had not complied with its own protocol. Basque government spokeswoman Miren Azkarate confirmed that the period of solitary confinement had been recorded, however these recordings have not been made public.

On September 28, 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Spanish state to compensate the ETA prisoner Mikel San Argimiro Isasa, for "the absence of an effective investigation" in response to a complaint of the alleged ill-treatment that would have suffered during his detention, clarifying that "the elements at his disposal do not allow him to establish beyond all reasonable doubt" the plaintiff's allegations. On December 30 of that same year, four members of the Civil Guard were sentenced to prison for torture the ETA members Igor Portu and Mattin Sarasola, perpetrators of the attack against the T4 terminal of the Barajas airport, during the five days that the detainees spent incommunicado at the police station, although the Supreme Court annulled the 2010 ruling of the Audiencia de Guipúzcoa and the four civil guards were finally acquitted. This sentence did not prevent Portu and Sarasola from being sentenced for belonging to ETA and possession of weapons, although they were n acquitted of the accusation of conspiracy to commit terrorist havoc.

In March 2011, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg condemned the Spanish State for not investigating the complaint of torture filed by Aritz Beristain in 2002, despite the existence of medical reports that confirmed injuries. Among other things, the man from San Sebastian explained that the civil guards inserted an object into his anus.

Similarly, in March 2011, the Civil Guard carried out a raid in Vizcaya that ended with very serious allegations of torture. The one against Beatriz Etxebarria stood out, which included a rape in the dungeons. In May 2013, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), a body of the Council of Europe, included this case in a report on the visit to the Spanish State that it held two months after the events, placing the testimony as "credible and consistent", like nine others. In October 2014 the European Court of Human Rights finally condemned the Spanish State for not investigating the allegations of torture of Beatriz Etxebarria, arrested in the aforementioned raid of March 2011, and of Oihan Ataun, arrested in November 2008 in Zizur Mayor.

On May 31, 2013, the Human Rights Committee made official the opinion concluding that María Atxabal was tortured in police stations after being detained by the Civil Guard in 1996 and establishing that the Spanish State should repair the damage caused, to open a "precise and objective" investigation of the events that occurred during the solitary confinement and to provide free medical assistance to Atxabal to treat the post-traumatic stress that he suffered due to the ill-treatment he received. In addition, it urged the Spanish authorities to put an end to the incommunicado regime and to ensure the prisoner's free choice of lawyer.

On May 5, 2015, the European Court of Human Rights once again condemned the Spanish State, ruling that it violated article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights by not investigating the complaint of torture filed by Patxi Arratibel after his death. He passed through the Civil Guard offices in January 2011. The following year and for the same reasons, said court once again condemned Spain for not investigating the complaints of Xabier Beortegi, also arrested in January 2011 for his alleged links to the apartment ETA politician.

In February 2018, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Spain for considering the "inhuman and degrading treatment" suffered by Igor Portu and Mattin Sarasola during their arrest in 2008 for the T4 attack to be proven.

ETA in art

At the movies

Although television fiction series, including police ones, tend to shy away from the issue of ETA, various films, both documentaries and fiction, have dealt with the issue of ETA in the cinema either directly or tangentially:

On TV

• 2009, A bullet for the KingPablo Barrera.
• 2010, Chuck.. Chapter "Chuck against the Honeymoon" by Robert Duncan McNeill.
• 2011, The Murder of Carrero BlancoMiguel Bardem.
• 2011, The price of freedomAna Murugarren.
• 2014, Aupa JosuBorja Cobeaga.
• 2014, Chronicle of Castes. Chapter 5, “The Basque”, by Jimena Gallardo. Daniel Jiménez Cacho's address.
• 2015, Narcos. Chapter 6, “Explosive”.
• 2016, Nit i dia (Night and day)Manuel Huerga and Oriol Paulo. Emitted by TV3.
• 2016, The father of Cainfrom Salvador Calvo.
• 2018, Guilty suspectby Javier Holgad, Josep Cister and Aitor Montánchez. Emitted by Antena 3.
• 2020, The invisible lineMariano Barroso. Emitted by Movistar+.
• 2020, HomelandAitor Gabilondo. Emitted by HBO.
• 2020, The Challenge: ETA by Hugo Stuven Casasnovas. Emitted in Prime Video.

In theater

• 2011, Burundanga. The end of a bandJordi Galceran.
• 2015, The look of the otherChani Martin.

In a novel

The issue of ETA has also been dealt with in novels such as:

• 1974, Operation OgreEva Forest.
• 1976, Ehun metro (Cien meters)Ramon Saizarbitoria.
• 1976, Unusual reading of 'The Capital'of Raúl Guerra Garrido (Nol 1976 Award)
• 1981, And God on the last beachfrom Cristóbal Zaragoza.
• 1981, The habit of dying of Raúl Guerra Garrido
• 1981, Gálvez en Euskadiby Jorge Martínez Reverte.
• 1988, ExkixuJosé Luis Álvarez Enparantza.
• 1990 The letter of Raúl Guerra Garrido
• 1991, Galíndez, by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, in the first chapter of his work on the Basque exile killed during the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo.
• 1991, Etorriko haiz nirekin?Mikel Hernandez Abaitua.
• 1991, Turbo waterAingeru Epaltza.
• 1993, A man aloneBernardo Atxaga.
• 1995 Zeru horiekBernardo Atxaga.
• 1995 Hamaika Pauso (The Uncountable Steps)Ramon Saizarbitoria.
• 1996, KontaktuaLuistxo Fernandez.
• 1997 PlenilunioAntonio Muñoz Molina.
• 1998, The red notebookArantxa Urretabizkaia.
• 1999 Euri kontuakJose Luis Otamendi.
• 2001, A convulsed beautyJosé Manuel Fajardo.
• 2003, Soinujolearen semea (El hijo del accordonista)Bernardo Atxaga.
• 2003, Denboraren izerdiaXabier Montoia.
• 2003, LetargoJokin Muñoz.
• 2004, The impossible bagsJuanjo Olasagarre.
• 2005, Gudari Gálvezby Jorge Martínez Reverte.
• 2006, The fish of bitternessFernando Aramburu.
• 2009, Eyes that don't seeby José Ángel González Sainz.
• 2010, The armed friendRaul Zelik.
• 2011, TwistHarkaitz Cano, inspired by the Lasa and Zabala case.
• 2012, Ayax, the silence seekerby Enrique de Rodrigo.
• 2012, The woman in the caveFrancis Letamendia.
• 2012, MartuteneRamon Saizarbitoria.
• 2014, L'homme qui a vu l'homme (The man who saw the man)Marin Ledun, inspired by the disappearance of Jon Anza.
• 2016, HomelandFernando Aramburu.
• 2017, The shelter of the canalsJohn Bas.
• 2017, Better absenceEdurne Portela.
• 2017, The front lineAixa de la Cruz.
• 2017, Unhooked touristsKatixa Agirre.
• 2018, Patria, the graphic novel , by Toni Fezjula based on the novel by Fernando Aramburu.

In video games

• In the video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive the player can choose to play on the maps "Inferno" and "Italy" as the terrorist faction "Separatists", inspired by the terrorist group ETA.
• The game for mobile phones 13 Minutes Ago places the player minutes before an ETA attack occurs, with the possibility of choosing the outcome.

In contemporary art

The artist Omar Jerez carried out a performance against ETA on May 2, 2013, pretending to carry a corpse in his arms after having suffered an attack and thus walking along Calle Juan de Bilbao in San Sebastián, a place where there are several bars frequented by sympathizers of the abertzale left.

Additional bibliography

• Marrodán Ciordia, Javier (2014). Lead stories: history of terrorism in Navarre. Government of Navarra. Publications Fund. ISBN 978-84-235-3376-3.
• Jiménez Ramos, María - Marrodán Ciordia, Javier (2019). The Survivors of Terrorism in Spain. The Book Sphere. ISBN 978-84-9164-520-7.