Spain and ETA

Gone fishing

More high-level captures point to a systematic weakening of ETA

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Readers' comments



Make no mistake, Basque nationalism (even of the non-violent sort) is adamantly unrepentant with respect to its well-documented racist roots. Nationalists have repeatedly failed to take advantage of any of the numerous occasions available to revisit their founding principles. The fact the very founder of the mainstream nationalist PNV went on later in his life to support the creation of a Spanish-loyalist party is carefully avoided by nationalist imagery.

As for their terrorist brethren (ETA sprouted from the mainstream nationalist PNV youth branch), not one voice has been raised against violence based on a matter of principle. Witness the persistent, unsubstantiated, accusations of no less than fascism to anyone daring to stand up against the resort to routine bombing, kidnapping, beatings and extortion.

No political progress has been achieved after years of restraintful handling of terrorist violence. The death penalty has been abolished in Spain for over three decades now. Life inprisonment is not contemplated in the Spanish criminal code. Repression is so lenient, that an ETA hit-man convicted on no less than 25 accounts of murder was famously released in 2008, after serving a mere 18 years in jail.

Is should be observed that the nationalist solution of choice, that is, an independence referendum, may not be as clean democratic as one would think. Leaving aside the merit of encouraging bearers of violence in 21st-century Europe by yielding to their whim, nationalists appear to overlook merrily the circumstances in which any such referendum would be conducted.

Should the 10% of Basques exiled by nationalist terror (as opposed to just emigrated) be allowed to vote?
Should pro-Spain campaigners trust ETA to forgo violence during the campaign? What about right after the campaign?
What about the province of Alava, where independence may or may not reach even 25% of the vote? Should it be forced to leave Spain and join an independent Basque Country, regardless?
Should Navarre, an adjacent, yet so far non-Basque, province with overwhelming pro-Spain electorate be forced to participate in the poll?
Should democrat-minded people trust ETA would not revert to violence in case the referendum result was contrary to their stance? And should ETA, or a splinter group, be trusted not to resort to violence for any further, or related, reasons?

As long as mainstream nationalists stay racist, ETA men remain impregnable to the ethic scruples of others about political killings, and their proposed solution is simply that others yield, Spain should be forgiven for shrugging its shoulders and carrying on with good old police investigative work. Lack of results could very well prove to be a great incentive to overhaul nationalist ethics.

Don Pinpón

This article is too biased. What about the interest of Spanish Government in stopping all initiatives taken by the former Lehendakari (Bask President) leading to ask Madrid Parliment a referendum to know what people want. This led to approve a new law in Madrid parliment forbidding any political party that do not condemn ETA (isn't this against the Human Rights? ) The issue about the banned lists of Batasuna and the "polluted" concept are clearly fascist, as the PP party who hasn't condemned Franco's dictatorship yet (as an European politician said, "a placid time"). They still dream of a Great Spain, with no other language but the Spanish. They fear the referendum because they know there's an nationalist majority. But nobody can stop it. All this sheet about the 300.000 fled people is an offense for the peaceful bask people. I lived outside Euskadi, and maybe I'm one of them without knowing it myself ! ;-)


I regret to read always the search for an agreed solution to ETA. Nobody favours such a method to fight Al Qaeda. If police work (especially French police) or Guardia Civil (if no obstacle from the Government is put) works fine, then forget about giving in to assassins and their supporters who harass victims' families long after their beloved ones have been killed.
The behaviour of Batasuna and lookalikes is similar to SA members in the 30s in Germany. One should never agree on anything with such positions that endanger democracy.


The separatist problems could really get nasty for France and Spain when the National Endowment for Democracy get into their usual mischievous acts .

Johnny Martin

The Economist should designate things by their real names.

By clasifying ETA as a separatist group (instead of naming them "terrorist group", as they really are), The Economist seems to justify ETA´s actions, to a certain degree.

What would The Economist think if other european media would refer to IRA organization as a "separatist group"?


Good article!.
If you want to see the roots of the basque natonalism please check about his founder Sabino Arana in wikipedia. I am going to write one of his many racist sentences: "A great number of them (is refering to the people of the rest of Spanish) seem to be undeniable testimony of Darwin's theory, since rather than men they resemble apes, rather less beastly than gorillas: do not search in their faces for the expresion of human intelligence nor any virtue; their eyes only reveal idiocy and brutishness". Bizkaitarra 27.
........This man is still consider a hero for the basque nationalist, after that one can understand, that the more radicals of the nationalist can create a terrorist group.
Is getting more clear that the only solution for this madness is a police solution.

O Paco

Aljarak, you are repeating yourself, it is the same post from you every time an article on the Basque is published. That is all old news.

Those numbers were simply an invention. A manipulation for Spanish radio and TV 'tertulia' consumption in which everybody that moved outside of the basque country for whatever reason was counted as an political exile. It was counting by default. It includes me, and thousands of basque that live in other countries or other regions (such as normal workers and students) and that happily vote for nationalist parties (the majority of the basques - when they can) when it matters. Just beating that drum is not going to make it true.

As for Savater, the award was for the platform Basta Ya! You have to give him that he is one of the few in the platform that did not get or asked political favors for attacking everything and anything basque. Not that that did not served him well to become a national popular figure in the media at the time. But maybe now that we can see the true colors of some of some of them (e.g. Rosa Diez or Jon Juaristi), he wishes he had not be part of that crowd.


Sadly, one of the worst effects from ETA has been the persecution of so many people with the tacit agreement of all the Basque nationalists.

Thousands of people cannot freely express themselves in the Basque country if they do not agree with nationalist ideas. Since 1985 about 200.000 people have left the Basque Country due to this persecution. Among them, Fernando Savater, a philosophy professor famous for his opposition to Franco and recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament.

Bill Featherstone

I wish you were right and peace would be at hand if Batasuna would condemn violence. But that’s a big if, and it will not happen. Batasuna cannot break away from ETA as they are substantially the same. It has to be the people, not the organisations who stand up and condemn violence altogether. Unfortunately that’s still somewhere away in the future.



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