ABSTRACT
The transition to democracy in the Basque Country was a process marked by political violence. The terrorist organisation ETA was responsible for the majority of the victims that faced this violence during those years. For this it was assisted by a powerful social and political body gathered around the Herri Batasuna electoral coalition. However, during that period, other groups and terrorist organisations also operated in the opposite direction. Most of these groups acted under the protection of the apparatus of the state that was trying to adapt to democratic practices during the first years of the transition, but where structures and dynamics that originated from the Franco dictatorship still pervaded. The situation was further complicated by the existence of numerous cases of disproportionate interventions by the police resulting in numerous fatalities. The confluence of all these phenomena contributed to create a situation where radical Basque nationalism successfully disseminated the image of a ‘conflict between two warring factions’. The chapter attempts to explore this question and to dismantle the lack of rigor of that statement with reasoning.
