Spain: Is Basque terrorism really history?

“Spanish democracy has triumphed,” said the Madrid El País in an editorial. After more than 50 years of bombings and killings, the Basque separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom, announced last week that it was giving up violence. Increasingly isolated from mainstream Basque political sentiment, the group has been under siege in recent years because of the combined efforts of Spanish, French, and local Basque police. Hundreds of ETA terrorists are in prison, and by some accounts there now remain just a few dozen active members. ETA tried to spin its decision as a magnanimous gesture, but make no mistake: This is a capitulation. No concessions were made. Instead, the terrorists finally realized that the ethnic Basque people they claimed to be fighting for had been co-opted by the Spanish democratic process. For example, last spring a Basque pro-independence party was allowed to contest elections after it renounced violence and condemned ETA. The “fanatical sect” simply gave up once it realized that democracy would not yield. “The nightmare is over.”

Now we can take some time to remember the more than 800 victims, said the Barcelona La Vanguardia. Over a bloody half-century, ETA has killed soldiers, police, guards, politicians, judges, civilians, and its own dissenting members. Thousands have been wounded or orphaned. The very first person murdered by ETA was a baby, Begoña Urroz, who was killed in 1960 when a bomb went off at a train station. Then there was Adm. Luis Carrero Blanco, a former confidante of the dictator Francisco Franco who had just become prime minister when he was blown up in 1973. The 1980s “was the group’s deadly apogee, with numerous attacks of extreme cruelty,” including a car bombing that killed several children. In 1997, it murdered a Basque town councilman. And in 2006, it abandoned a cease-fire and planted bombs in the Madrid airport, killing two and injuring 52.

These victims remind us that this was never an “armed conflict,” as ETA claimed, said Ángel Fermoselle in the Madrid El Mundo. Nobody was fighting ETA. There were never two armed groups in opposition. Instead, there were the terrorist murderers, and there were their innocent victims. As for the cease-fire, well, “we’ve heard that before.” To take this latest terrorist pronouncement seriously, we need to hear more: ETA will have to “seek forgiveness, surrender its weapons, and clarify the unresolved attacks” attributed to it over the years but not proven. Declaring a “permanent cessation of violence” is a fine first step. “But it’s not nearly enough.”

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To get ETA to disband fully, said the Financial Times, the Spanish government will have to avoid gloating. Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero brought ETA down with a combination of tough policing and relaxed electoral laws that allowed nonviolent Basque separatist parties to supplant it. Yet the next government is likely to be formed by the conservative Popular Party, which has always taken a tougher line against separatist sentiment. It will have to avoid the temptation to criminalize “legitimate expressions of Basque opinion.” ETA is all but dead, but “misguided political posturing” could bring it back to life.