ABSTRACT
ETA committed killings, bombings, kidnappings, and economic extortion during its long history, while violence was simultaneously used by governments in the name of counterterrorism. The Basque armed organization has been officially labeled as a terrorist group by institutions such as the European Union and the US State Department.1 The dominant discourse in Spain argued that ETA was a pure terrorist problem to be dealt with exclusively by counterterrorist measures. According to this approach, crushing the insurgent group and putting their militants in jail would solve the problem. Yet, the phenomenon of ETA cannot be understood without politics. ETA was born with the objective of fighting for Basque independence, and it early adopted socialism as its ideology. It has never ceased to claim a Basque independent and socialist state. Its actions were carried out in order to influence politics. It claims to have been part of the Nationalist Left movement since the late 1970s, and the implicit support offered by the movement has given the armed group essential political oxygen. Although the allegiance to ETA and its methods within the Nationalist Left community has never been unanimous, the significant number of votes achieved by their political parties, election after election, has proved the political relevance of the issue. ETA would not have lasted as long as it did without the average 15 percent of votes received by Herri Batasuna (HB), Euskal Herritarrok (EH), and Batasuna. Furthermore, the Spanish and French states’ approaches to confronting ETA are also evidence of its political nature. For example, Basque prisoners have been treated with different standards in both penitentiary systems, most notably through their dispersion in prisons scattered all over the Spanish and French territories. In addition, civil organizations close to the Nationalist Left have been targeted by the Spanish judiciary for the sake of the fight against ETA. A purely criminal issue would not have needed such political measures. The existence of an unresolved dispute over the political status of the Basque territories is hardly questionable. On the one hand, more than half of the Basques in the Spanish state usually vote for Basque nationalist parties, which advocate for a greater degree of self-government, for the right to determine for themselves their political status, or directly for independence. On the other hand, the Spanish
legislation establishes Spain as an indivisible nation and forbids any referendum on secession. The major Spanish political parties refuse to reform these principles. Yet, the existence of a political conflict does not fully explain the existence of a group using violent methods. Each time ETA committed an attack, the political spokespersons of the Nationalist Left argued that it was a consequence of the conflict, as if the conflict in dispute required such violent actions. A parallel dispute on the political status of Catalonia is underway not far from the Basque Country, but the unquestionable political conflict has not provoked such an armed response from Catalan nationalists, with the exception of the Terra Lliure group in the 1980s.2 The eventual end of ETA’s campaign without having first resolved the political conflict is also an indication that, although ETA’s armed campaign was the consequence of a political conflict, it was not a necessary consequence but a choice made by a collective group and by individuals, following a specific strategy. In sum, any serious attempt to understand ETA should take into account the complex political reality of the Basque Country and its intricate relationship with the Spanish and French states. Basque territories are not sovereign. The larger and most populated part of the Basque land is within the boundaries of the Spanish state,3 nowadays structured into seventeen autonomous bodies. The southern, or peninsular, Basque Country is divided into two of these autonomous bodies: the officially named Basque Autonomous Community, which includes the territories of Araba, Bizkaia, and Gipuzkoa; and the Foral Community of Navarre. Both autonomous bodies are run by their own governments, which are elected by their own parliament, and they retain their own fiscal systems, with the capacity to collect taxes and manage public resources. The Basque Autonomous Community government has been ruled by the PNV-sometimes independently and sometimes in alliance with other forcessince its inception in 1980, with the sole exception of the 2009-12 term, when it was run by the Basque branch of the PSOE, in alliance with the PP. The Basque regional parliament has always had a Basque nationalist majority, except in 2009-12, as the banning of the Nationalist Left political parties enabled the proSpanish parties to obtain a majority. Over time, the Basque regional parliament has approved several initiatives claiming the right of the Basques to determine their political status for themselves,4 but the Spanish institutions and legislation have prevented them from being implemented. In Navarre, the regional government has been ruled by pro-Spanish political parties, either by the right-wing Union of the Navarrese People (UPN) or, back in the 1980s, by the Navarrese branch of the PSOE. Basque nationalists have been a minority since the first elections in the late 1970s, although in 2015 their support increased to 30 percent of the vote and, for the first time in history, a moderate Basque nationalist, Uxue Barkos, was appointed president of the government of Navarre, backed by a coalition of nationalist and non-nationalist forces.5
