A Brief History of ETA
Nick Hallett traces the 50 year history of one of the world's most famous terrorist groups ETA.
18 Oct 2011, 18:30
An ETA press conference
ETA have been fighting for independence for the Basque Country, a region that covers part of northern Spain and southern France, since the 1960s. Their name is an acronym that stands for Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Country and Freedom); in the Basque language the word ‘eta’ also means ‘and’.
ETA were originally founded in 1952 as a student discussion group within of the then outlawed Basque Nationalist Party. In the early 1960s they became more radical and broke from the Basque Nationalist Party over what they perceived to be its passive attitude towards Franco’s dictatorship, and decided to take up “direct action”.
They performed their fist killing in 1968, when Txabi Etxebarrieta shot dead Civil Guard José Pardines Arcay during a routine road check. The police pursued, cornered and killed Etxebarrieta. ETA retaliated by assassinating the chief of the secret police in San Sebastián, which in turn led to several ETA members receiving death sentences.
In December 1973 they performed one of the most significant single killings in their history when they assassinated Franco’s prime minister and chosen successor Admiral Luís Carrero Blanco. Some have claimed that this killing led to Spain transitioning to democracy after Franco’s death, as Carrero Blanco may well have continued Franco’s policies. Former ETA-member turned antiterrorist activist Jon Juaristi claims, however, that ETA’s main aim was to provoke a massive government backlash against the Basque people, causing them to rise up, join ETA and create a cycle of violence that would destabilise Spain.
After Franco died and was succeeded by King Juan Carlos, Spain transitioned to democracy and regional autonomy was restored to the Basque Country. A good deal of ETA members then left the organisation to move into democratic politics, however a hard core remained, determined to carry on their armed struggle against democratic Spain until they had achieved full independence for the Basque lands.
During the 1980s an anti-ETA terrorist group called Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL) emerged, who committed assassinations, kidnappings and torture of suspected ETA members and sympathisers. In the early 1990s the Spanish newspaper El Mundo revealed that GAL had been sponsored by members of the country’s Socialist government, and had even been helped by the civil service. The resulting scandal contributed to the fall of Felipe González’s Socialist government in 1996; González himself said that “the constitutional state has to defend itself also in the sewers”, indicating some knowledge of his party’s involvement in GAL.
With the moral waters muddied by this scandal, ETA looked to be on a high, however two events turned the tide decisively against them. The first was their kidnapping in 1997 of the conservative councillor Miguel Ángel Blanco in the Basque town of Ermua. They demanded the transfer of all ETA prisoners to prisons within the Basque Country in exchange for Blanco’s safe release. The government refused to negotiate, however, and three days later Blanco’s body was discovered shot dead, leading to over six million people taking part in anti-ETA protests across Spain, including in the Basque Country. The public mood had turned against them.
They suffered a second major blow after the September 11th attacks in New York, when a newly anti-terrorist America froze bank accounts associated with ETA members and the world’s police forces coordinated themselves better. José María Aznar’s conservative government, in conjunction with the French government, launched an all-out police offensive against the group and several of its key leaders were arrested over the following years.
Aznar’s government also passed a new law that allowed the courts to outlaw any political party that refused to condemn terrorist actions. This led to the illegalisation of Batasuna, a radical leftist separatist party (whose name, ironically, means ‘unity’) with close links to ETA, and prevented its members from forming a new party.
In March 2006 the organisation finally announced a permanent cease-fire and offered to enter into negotiations with José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero’s Socialist government. During the negotiations, however, ETA were still involved in criminal activity such as stealing 300 handguns in France. They also continued to send out threatening messages, warning they would continue to take up arms. This angered Spanish conservatives, who argued that the government were negotiating with terrorists who had no real intention of giving up violence of apologising for their crimes. Finally, in December 2006, ETA bombed a multi-storey car park in Madrid Barajas airport, destroying the building and killing two Ecuadorian immigrants. The peace process had ended.
In September 2010 the group once again announced a ceasefire, and in January this year announced that it would be permanent. Observers seem genuinely optimistic that this week’s negotiations could mean the end of ETA’s violent campaign, and possibly even its disbandment, however it remains to be seen whether a group of radical members will break away and carry on the violence, in the style of the Real IRA. Recent history suggests that ETA, although now seriously weakened by the targeting of its leadership, could still have a few nasty surprises up its sleeve.
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