Introduction
The origin of the terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom) could be investigated to contextualize its cause; However, it is not the object of this reflection, in which the procedures carried out by ETA and the response of the Spanish State through the executives of Rodríguez Zapatero and Rajoy Brey to present today, which shows signs of political victory of the terrorist group. The causal thread of language will be followed at all times, an instrument that has been effective in modifying reality, in a certain way.
Strategic and tactical logic of ETA
Euskadi Ta Askatasuna undergoes an evolution characterized by the internal disputes and the generation of splits from 1956 until, practically, the transition, when it strengthened. In 1973, with the VI Assembly, its lines of action were definitively established; strategic and tactical logic that will accompany it, on occasions modified by circumstances, until its formal dissolution on April 8, 2018, when in the newspaper RACE[1] expresses his decision to leave the social spectrum years after the cessation of his violent activity (2011). These logics will be formed on the use of violence as the only optimal instrument to achieve their political objectives. Well, the strategic logic of terrorism has a singular and direct relationship with violence and democracy, which arises from the need to break the social, legal and political order of the State in which it occurs. In this case, ETA already took advantage of it during the dictatorship, although it discerned about it during its development, being at the end of the seventies (77-78) when it became only and exclusively a terrorist group.
For former members of the organization such as José María Garmendia, also professor of Contemporary History at the University of the Basque Country, Violence was substantial to ETA from its beginnings. In fact, in 1959 the gang already planted three homemade explosives, one of which would explode in the Civil Government of Vitoria (Fernández, 2017). It is clear then that, since the I Assembly (1962), violence as an element to damage the State is already present. However, it was not until III, in 1964, that it was treated as the most effective tool to achieve its objectives, and in IV (1965) the action-reaction-action strategy was definitively approved: provoke, through attacks, the massive repression of the dictatorship so that, in the face of repression, the masses react in two opposite and complementary ways: with panic and rebellion. So that, at some point, if the organization withstood the police response, the Basque civilian population would “wake up” and join the cause (Fernández, 2014).
In this way, and following a pragmatic evolution, during the V Assembly (1967), ETA decided to structure itself on four fronts: cultural, socioeconomic, political and “military”, as well as calling itself the “Basque Socialist Movement of National Liberation”, with a clear tendency towards the third world path[2]. Since the transition, with the dissolution of ETA Political Military, violence, from its "military" arm (an expression consistent with its intended "armed struggle", knowing that it is a concept associated with the army and not being applicable to a terrorist group, but useful for modifying reality through language) increases exponentially, validating the violence – democracy relationship (Fernández, 2016). Coinciding, furthermore, with the Antiterrorist Liberation Groups (GAL), 1983 - 1987, which, contrary to helping to dismantle it, legitimized it. That supposedly oppressive State that they used to commit terrorist acts, apparently, was so with this mechanism. Wrong, of course, as demonstrated by Rui Pereira's interview, reproduced in Gara in 2003, with members of the band: “It is because the States violently curtail all the rights of our people that ETA uses armed struggle” (Alonso, 2018 ).
Propagandistic and communicative logic
Fernando Buesa, spokesperson for the PSE in the Basque Parliament and murdered by ETA (2000) said: “There is a violence that kills and another that does not let you live.” The modification of language and denaturalization of concepts are tools capable of distorting reality to such an extent that not only is a story created, but the actions of society are influenced. And this is one of the principles of terrorism, also of ethnonationalist one like that of ETA, who created a lexicon that permeated political and journalistic jargon to achieve, among others, the fragmentation of society. ETA's terrorism sought the exclusion of a part of Basque society, that selected as a target for ideological, professional or political reasons, and it achieved it. The “socialization of suffering” and the violence of persecution consolidated a spiral of silence[3] by which non-nationalists could not express their opinions freely, nor, therefore, support that “objective” of the criminal gang; directly influencing, therefore, the rise of nationalism, whether out of conviction or necessity (Alonso, 2018).
To this permanent oppression, to the broken society, was added the informative asepsis caused by the media in their desire to tell understandable news, imprecise from a terminological point of view, which caused them to talk about the causes, the ends, but not the methods. All of this led to part of the population asked for “peace”, as if it were a state at war. In fact, during the first years of democracy, in the period when Spain suffered the most from terrorism, abroad, in European countries such as Belgium, France or Italy, it was thought that ETA was a Basque resistance organization protecting the needy. and culture. That is to say, The press also influenced internationally. This is not intended to demonize the media, of course, but it is intended to show how the journalist is the intermediary between the terrorist and society, and must treat this phenomenon rigorously so as not to turn the news into propaganda (Rivas, 2020). So that, contrary to what usually happens, language and reality are not supplanted by an imaginary, a mystification. The victim was the medium through which the message was transmitted, and the media, unconsciously or not, were its spokespersons (Sánchez, 2010).
Generous dialogues: ETA and the executives of J. Rodriguez Zapatero and M. Rajoy
ETA sought to modify reality from illegality, through physical damage, but above all psychological, caused by terrorist acts against civil society, for political purposes. For this reason, the terminology “peace process” was maintained at all times by the band, by its supporters, and even by the media, to evoke what had been its objective since its beginnings; not to say dialogue (which denotes the capacity of the State to influence terrorist actions), or in its case, and also being imprecise, negotiation (which shows the weakness of the State and equalizes the parties, but does not directly affect the language ) this phrase ended up being used with a deep emotional charge and political intentionality which alludes to a prior and necessary state of war in which, however, there are no victims or perpetrators, but rather two opposing sides that seek to put themselves before the other to finally emerge victorious and forget the process that led to this, or, where appropriate, create an official collective memory. They contrast, always from that invented language, terrorism to peace to undermine the democratic order through moral blackmail of a specific population, in this case, the Spanish one, which will end up demanding it and, if it is not done, will even transfer the blame to the State. When the opposite of terrorism is the law.
Since 2004 and with the executive of Rodríguez Zapatero, who had just begun his term, The violent arm of ETA was allowed to become a bargaining chip between the government and the terrorist group.. Some argued that it was necessary and even advantageous compared to international references, such as Jesús Eguiguren, president of the Socialist Party of Euskadi. Despite the fact that, during the eighties and early nineties, with the Ajuria Enea Pact, the suspicions that this path generated in the political spectrum had already been expressed, the government instrumentalized it to validate ETA as an inevitable “interlocutor” of the State in the search for, as stated in the Official Gazette of the Cortes Generales, of May 20, 2005, "the appropriate conditions for a negotiated end to violence", granting it a wrong legitimization of terrorism, which would directly attack the police and legal fronts of the anti-terrorist policy and which, M. Rajoy, contrary to his political program, followed as a road map already marked: the disappearance of the Parot doctrine, the rapprochement of the ETA prisoners[4] and the legalization of the nationalist left (Alonso, 2018).
Operational defeat, political victory
While is true that ETA's operational weakening led to its termination, and that for certain personalities such as Florencio Dominguez was defeated (2017), it cannot be ignored that the band's objectives were political: “the liberation of Euskal Herria from the oppressive Spanish State to build a Basque socialist State.” That is to say, The attacks cannot be disconnected from Basque nationalism; although the way in which the dismantling of the band was carried out is intended to be based on a kind of collective amnesia which has allowed parties that do not comply with the “basic ethical, political and democratic minimums” (Alonso, 2018) like Bildu, today are totally, not only legitimate and valid, but the second force in the Basque autonomous community (Europapress, 2020) and on which the stability of the Spanish government revolves, when it is maintained doctrinally linked to the postulates of ETA (Rivas, 2020).
View: Rivas, P. (2020). International terrorism and ETA. La Perspectiva podcast program. Relateandperiod.
If nationalism currently holds political hegemony in the area, we can speak of a symbolic and factual victory by having achieved the decimation of political pluralism and, therefore, the achievement of certain manifest objectives of terrorist action. However, the resource of the story, of the modification of the facts to show a falsified reality, has allowed the transformation of uncomfortable truths into an absolute truth: “the defeat of ETA.”
[1] Abertzale-leaning newspaper, substitute for Egin.
[2] ETA's great reference was the National Liberation Front (FLN) of Algeria, whose success was notable. The logic of this group lay in the direct attack on the civilian population as a method to inoculate fear of this condition. sine qua non to get to the negotiating table.
[3] Social control that determines individual behavior, rebelling against general opinion.
[4] Prison dispersion over intermediate distances was, and is, an extremely effective measure in anti-terrorist policy to break group unity.
References
Alonso, R. (2018). The defeat of the victor. The anti-terrorist policy of the end of ETA. Madrid, Spain. Alliance Editorial.
LL.M in International Business Law and Law from ISDE and graduated in Law and International Relations from Loyola University. CEO and business internationalization consultant at Reáculoateypunto.
