Basque History of the World

by Mark Kurlansky

  Barrionuevo, Vera, and Sancristóbal each received ten-year prison terms, and nine other defendants received lesser sentences. The prosecution had asked for sentences of up to twenty-three years, the penalty for belonging to an armed terrorist group under Barrionuevo’s antiterrorist laws. But the judges ruled that the prosecution had failed to prove that GAL was an armed terrorist group.

  THE EXACT NUMBER of law enforcement officers in Spanish Basqueland is a state security secret. The Guardia Civil, which admits to 5,000 officers there, also has an undisclosed number of Basque-speaking undercover agents, as does the National Police. According to the Spanish government, there are about 15,000 uniformed police, including Basque police, Ertzantza, who are patrolling the 2.1 million inhabitants in the three provinces of Euskadi—more than seven police officers for every 1,000 citizens. This makes Spanish Basqueland the most policed population in Europe, although the ratio is probably similar in Navarra and may be even higher in the three French provinces.

  One of the reasons for the high numbers of police is Madrid’s lack of confidence in the Ertzantza. “The Ertzantza are reluctant to go to certain lengths,” explained an adviser to the Spanish government. The Spanish government claims that the Guardia Civil and National Police have an arrest record four or five times higher than that of the Basque force. This is not necessarily an accomplishment, considering that most of those arrested are released after a few days without ever having been charged. According to Gestoras Pro-Amnistía, the Basque human rights group founded to campaign for amnesty after the death of Franco, in the twenty years since it achieved the 1977 general amnesty, 8,000 Basques have been imprisoned for political reasons, and the majority of them never had trials. Most human rights monitors believe Gestoras Pro-Amnistía’s estimate to be extremely conservative.

  The Basques do not credit their police force with gentleness. The Ertzantza has created tough antiterrorist units. Human rights monitors have found that all three groups practice torture, though they use different techniques. Josu Barela, head of Gestoras Pro-Amnistía, said, “What is worse? Do you want to be nearly asphyxiated with a plastic bag by the Guardia Civil, interrogated all night by the National Police, or threatened with death by the Ertzantza?”

  More cases of psychological torment than physical torture have been found among those held by the Ertzantza. But Barela said, “We often find that physical torture does not leave victims as damaged as psychological torture. We often find that people who have hardly been touched physically are the most scarred.” Insomnia, unreasoned fear, low self-esteem, a deep sense of guilt are among the symptoms.

  The Ertzantza, from its inception, had been concerned about its public image. The Basque government had turned to Ramón Labayen to design a uniform for the new Basque police force. Ramón’s passion is toy lead soldiers. He designs them, creating his own molds. For the new Ertzantza’s uniforms, his only instructions had been to make them look as different from Spanish uniforms as possible. Labayen gave them red berets.

  For all its Basqueness and its bright berets, the public had always been a little distrustful of yet another police force. When the new Basque security force began training, rumors spread that the Israelis were doing something in Alava. The Israeli-Basque connection, mostly imaginary, was a chronic topic of rumors.

  Basque youth called Ertzantza cipayos, a pejorative used in the Indian independence movement for Indian troops that served the British. Armed with sticks and rocks, groups of youth called encapuchados, hooded ones, because they wore ski masks, staged seemingly disorganized attacks. The Spanish government believed that they worked with ETA, but in early 1998, ETA leadership publicly denounced them as “very young people ready to do anything,” who interfere with ETA’s overall strategies.

  The Spanish government has always seemed to be either unwilling or unable to distinguish among widely diverse Basque groups. But in fact everyone was starting to look alike. Few faces were seen. ETA commandos wore knitted ski masks to conceal their identity. Then, in the 1990s, pro-ETA demonstrators began wearing them too—perhaps to show solidarity with the commandos, perhaps because the police started videotaping demonstrations, perhaps because the rebels in the Chiapas region of Mexico had popularized ski masks as a revolutionary symbol. Guardia Civil and National Police also began wearing masks to protect themselves from being singled out for reprisals. The Ertzantza’s antiterrorist units adopted the same practice. Judges and court officials started wearing them too, for especially controversial sentencing.

  An ETA commando. Ertzantza officers on the street. (Both courtesy of the photography archives of Egin, Hernani)

  IN MARCH 1996, Felipe González’s Socialist Workers Party was defeated. Manuel Fraga’s Popular Alliance, originally an alliance of Francoist politicians, had changed its name to the Popular Party, the PP, and came to power with José María Aznar as prime minister. The PP, with its Francoist roots, had promised to take a harder line with the Basques than had the Socialists. In spite of muzzling the press, imprisoning thousands, and engaging in torture, kidnapping, and murder, the González government was still vulnerable to the accusation of being “soft on Basques.” To demonstrate the sincerity of its stance, the new government decided to have the entire twenty-three-person directorate of Herri Batasuna arrested.

  During the election, in which each party had an allotted television airtime, Herri Batasuna had used its time to run a video from ETA. This party again won its usual 12-15 percent of the Basque vote and two seats in the Madrid legislature, which it again refused to fill, along with hundreds of offices in the Basque legislature and municipalities. The video had shown three men, faces concealed in ski masks, who, having been identified as ETA members, explained the demands of the organization for an independent Euskadi. This tape was a response to the Spanish government’s often-stated view that “nobody knows what ETA wants.”

  Aznar’s camp was divided on the impending arrests. Some thought that it would be a mistake to isolate Herri Batasuna, which represented almost 200,000 people; and it would be more useful, they thought, to try to win over its supporters. They also worried that other European countries would strongly criticize the new government for attempting to silence a legal political party that had the backing of voters.

  Nevertheless, the twenty-three were arrested by masked men in front of press cameras. On December 1, 1997, the Supreme Court of Spain, also with masks on, sentenced the twenty-three politicians to seven years each.

  Successive Spanish governments have learned that it is easy to ignore criticism from human rights groups. Numerous human rights groups have regularly protested the practice of torture in Spanish prisons, but they have also, often in the same reports, protested the violence and intimidation of ETA. The Spanish government does not deny the existence of torture, which is frequently corroborated by prison doctors. It has prosecuted and convicted officers and then sentenced them to two or three months in prison. A 1997 United Nations Human Rights Committee report on Spanish torture noted that when the Spanish government was confronted with allegations of torture, it often did nothing; and in cases where it did take legal action and obtained convictions, the torturers were “often pardoned or released early, or simply [did] not serve the sentence.”

  “The prisons are worse now than under Franco,” said Eva Forest, human rights advocate and former prisoner. “Torture is more directed, more institutionalized. The Franquistas [Francoists] were not only not purged from the system, they have been promoted.”

  The Spanish government counters by repeatedly claiming that ETA has killed more than 800 people since Txabi killed the first Guardia Civil. But in that period of time, the Guardia Civil and others answering to the Spanish government have killed hundreds of Basques. Some have been presumed guilty and shot down in the streets, often in an alleged act of self-defense that none of the witnesses could verify. Some have died of “accidents” while in custody.

  The persistent reports on Spanish abuse by human rights gro
ups have little impact because European governments do not respond to them. What the Spanish government fears is condemnation from Western democracies, especially those of Europe. Their nightmare is condemnation from the broadest European forum, the Council of Europe. Founded in 1949, this was the first pan-European political organization.

  Outside Spain, despite years of continuing human rights reports, it is widely believed that arbitrary arrest and torture in Spain are things of the past No one noted the paradox when in October 1998 a Spanish judge, Baltazar Garzón, requested the extradition of Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet for the torture and killing of Spanish citizens during his rule. The irony was even underlined when aged Franquistas, unpunished and unrepentant, showed their support for Pinochet by a rally in which they gave the Fascist salute. Garzón indicated that his quest for justice to be served to torturers might not even be limited to Chile. He was considering Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Garzón was unmoved by the argument from these South American countries that they could not bring the crimes of the past to justice without provoking a military rebellion that would end their struggling new democracies. Nor did he appear deterred by the fact that regimes had often attempted to justify these crimes by saying they were fighting dangerous terrorists. Both arguments have been standard fare for Spanish governments.

  El Mundo, a conservative Madrid daily, was among the many enthusiastic voices of support for Garzón’s new approach. El Mundo and Judge Garzón were both key players in uncovering the GAL. El Mundo broke the story, and Garzón built an impressive case alleging that Felipe González was the director of GAL, which the Supreme Court refused to hear, citing a lack of evidence.

  El Mundo excitedly termed Garzón’s new policy of pursuing human rights cases in Latin America as “justice without borders.” But an older concept that might be termed “justice within borders” seemed forgotten. Neither El Mundo nor Garzón had showed much concern for human rights abuse by Spanish officials unless they were Socialists. Even as the Spanish judge moved to try a Chilean leader for his regime’s abuses, the fact that Spain had not brought to trial a single perpetrator of the many crimes committed in the thirty-six-year dictatorship was never raised in Spain. Neither the politically motivated arrest of at least 8,000 Basques, nor the fact that the majority of these victims were tortured while under arrest, that hundreds were killed by law enforcement, and that political leaders and journalists were jailed, has provoked the kind of legal scrutiny of the GAL scandal.

  Garzón was concerned with torture in South America, not in Spain. Basque victims have tried taking their complaints to Garzón with little success. Enkarni Martínez, who was arrested in 1994 because her husband was not home when the police came to arrest him, went to Garzón with more than thirty bruises still evident on her body. “I was tortured from June 5 to June 8, 1994. When they set me free, I went to the doctor to be examined. As soon as they read the results of the tests they were alarmed and ordered my immediate hospitalization . . . If not for the test, they told me, I could have lost my kidney. I denounced it all in front of Judge Garzón. I told him, ‘Do you want me to show you the marks?’ He replied: ‘No. No. No.’”

  THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT, along with the Madrid press, have successfully dominated Spain’s and the outside world’s view of Basques. The Spanish celebrate the great Basque soccer players and bicyclists, the great Basque cuisine. The adjective Basque on a restaurant in Spain implies quality. Traditional Guipúzcoa taverns, selling fermented cider from barrels, salt cod omelettes, and steak, are being imitated throughout the country. Atxaga, whose writings have been translated into Spanish, has a large following. Massive Chillida sculptures are planted like great iron Basque anchors on the wide boulevards of Madrid. Yet the first thing Spaniards think of as Basque is what the Aznar government estimates to be seventy ETA commandos and their 800 killings, without much reflection on what 15,000 police were doing to thousands of Basques.

  The Basques provoke a deep insecurity in Spain. The legal charge that Basques have “insulted” the country is one expression of that insecurity. Spain has never gotten past 1898, the year of “the Disaster.” The centennial of it was an enormous event: Bookstore windows were filled with new books on 1898; the newspapers ran special feature series; television had special programming. The Spanish still feel theirs is a country that has failed or is somehow unworthy of nationhood. This is why the government so fears a condemnation from European governments.

  But European governments accept without question the Spanish government line that ETA, whose primary demand for several decades has been negotiation, refuses to negotiate. In 1998, the U.S. State Department placed ETA on a short list of thirty “terrorist” organizations for whom it is illegal to provide funds. Neither the Irish Republican Army nor the violent Corsicans were on the list, but ETA was, along with Egypt’s Holy War, Iran’s Mujadeen, Peru’s Shining Path, which had killed thousands, and the Khmer Rouge, which had murdered a million Cambodians.

  One recent study by Iñaki Zabaleta found that 85 percent of all articles on Basques in the U.S. press made a reference to terrorism. The outside world knows little of the 2.4 million Basques except those seventy faceless commandos. The Spanish government has learned, as did Franco, that international opinion can be managed.

  The standing of ETA among the Basques is difficult to measure. In recent years there have been huge demonstrations against ETA violence. But there have also been significant demonstrations of support for ETA. ETA is not trying to be popular. It is trying to cause the breakdown of the status quo. Practices such as extorting money from Basque businessmen and killing Basques thought to be collaborating with the enemy were always certain to be unpopular. A campaign unleashed in the mid-1990s to assassinate local PP officials, Basques who belonged to the ruling party, both angered and mystified fellow Basques, who saw this as purposeless violence. Just when the Guardia Civil was becoming demoralized and receiving hundreds of requests for transfers out of Navarra and Euskadi, it was suddenly being ignored while small town mayors were instead becoming targets.

  The PP, aside from the tragedy of seeing their colleagues murdered, coldly found the new ETA strategy to be to their advantage. The killing of PP officials, especially when they were Basque, was extremely unpopular with Basques. Charles Powell, an adviser to Aznar, said, “These attacks have enabled us to play the victim. The victim! Here we are the party in power, but we are also made to look like the victim. That is not a bad political position.”

  The great majority of Basques had grown weary of the violence. If a vote for Herri Batasuna—renamed Euskal Herritarok, We, the Basque People, after the jailing of its leaders—is a vote supporting ETA, that would still mean an overwhelming majority of Basques are not ETA supporters. But there may be many ETA supporters who do not vote for Herri Batasuna, including some who do not vote at all, while, on the other hand, not everyone in Herri Batasuna supports ETA violence. Patxi Zabaleta, an Herri Batasuna representative in the Navarra legislature, said, “HB is divided on armed struggle. Some think it’s not furthering political goals. But at least ETArists are people who sacrifice for what they believe. They are not mercenaries like in GAL.”

  Herri Batasuna was finding that most of its supporters were angry young people, children of workers and farmers, often not even of Basque racial origin. These supporters were typically between eighteen and twenty-five years old. Once they turned thirty, they began to drift away from the party. “Once people start settling down, HB is seen as far from the problems of daily life,” said Zabaleta. “Self-determination is not the bread and butter of daily life.”

  The Basque Nationalist Party has been unambiguous in its condemnation of ETA violence. While various Spanish governments discussed, debated, agreed to, and refused to negotiate with ETA, no government ever showed interest in negotiating with the nonviolent Basque nationalists who represented the largest portion of Basques. Not only did they refuse to allow a referendum to test the popularit
y of Basque nationalism, but they would not enter into talks with the Basque Nationalist Party on increased autonomy. It is only the tiny violent minority to whom they responded.

  According to Arzalluz, “The problem is that there are people in Madrid who only want a victory. If auto-determination was negotiated, if Spain let Basques go their way—not independence but freedom to go their way—ETA would disappear.”

  JUST WHEN ETA seemed cornered and the Spanish government was plausibly claiming that the commandos were few and unpopular, ETA changed the rules of the game. In September 1998, it announced that it had decided to unilaterally and unconditionally give up violence.

  The Aznar government, caught completely by surprise, at first tried to do what it always had done with ETA announcements: dismissed it as insincere. But in spite of the government’s refusal to respond, ETA kept to its word. Local elections were coming up, and the government began to realize that the PP would not be forgiven for ignoring this opportunity. So, for the first time since the transition, the Spanish government began talking to Basque leaders about their demands. It still refused to talk with ETA or even Herri Batasuna. But Aznar met with Arzalluz and leaders of other Basque nationalist parties.

  Conservatives, leftists, and moderates—all the Basque nationalists told him the same things, the same things ETA had been saying. They wanted the Guardia Civil to leave. Beyond that, they all wanted the relationship of Basqueland to Spain to be revised. The constitution had to be amended.