Pain in Spain

In Spain, not a week goes by without terrorist attacks and other forms of intimidation by the ETA. VAIJU NARAVANE on the Basque separatist group's depredations.

NOT A week goes by without terrorist attacks and other forms of intimidation in Spain. The perpetrators, ETA, the dreaded Basque separatist organisation. The recent assassinations include the killings of town councillors, civil guards, industrialists and members of the Prime Minister, Mr. Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party. Spaniards have reacted angrily to these killings, turning up en masse for funerals, marked with handclapping as a sign of respect for the dead.

Members of the security forces have always been at the top of ETA's hit list. But more recently the terrorist organisation, as it has become more desperate, has tended to target politicians, especially municipal councillors and local heavyweights. Recently business leaders have also been added to the list of targets.

The terrorist group would like a separate state in the Basque regions of Spain and southwestern France. The province already enjoys substantial autonomy and the Spanish population is now fed up of the violence unleashed by ETA. With its political wing, the HB and the EH, extremists are holding out for a separate state, one that the Spanish Government has vowed they will never have.

ETA is a Basque language acronym for Basque Freedom and Homeland. In its 30-year campaign, the organisation has killed over 800 people and extorted huge ransoms from kidnappings and, since ending its latest truce, staging some spectacular attacks which have claimed ten lives and injured over a dozen.

``Tregua Indefinida.'' The headline had jolted most Spaniards on September 17 1998. It wasn't the tregua (truce) that had surprised them. There have been at least six ceasefire declarations by the ETA these past three decades. But it was the only unlimited truce ever, and the announcement kindled the first tentative hope that the bloody guerrilla war might, one day, come to an end. These hopes, however, were shortlived. Last December, barely 14 months after it declared a ceasefire, ETA equally suddenly decided to end it. ``They used this 14-month period to regroup and to re-arm,'' said one policeman bitterly.

The Basque country lies in north-eastern Spain, in a region running from the Bay of Biscay to the foothills of the western Pyrenees in France. On the Spanish side it is made up of the highly industrialised provinces of Navarre, Guipuzcoa, Alava and Biscay. On the French side, the Basques live in the lower Pyrenees region.

The ambition of political independence was first formulated by Sabino de Arana Goiri with the founding of the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) in 1894. The advent of the ill-fated Spanish Republic in 1930 further fanned the flames of Basque nationalism and saw the emergence of a host of nationalistic groupings. The Basque Government-in-exile lived in France and for a long time received funding and support from Charles de Gaulle who was bitterly opposed to the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco. The Basques were determinedly anti-Franco and, like the Catalonians, suffered terrible repression at his hands.

Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna or ETA itself was born of a schism within the original PNV. The old party founded by Arana disapproves of the terrorist tactics adopted by ETA and is willing to settle for a high level of autonomy within the Spanish state.

The September 16, 1998, ceasefire declaration by ETA while agreeing to stop the killing had made no concessions on its essential demands. ETA's aim continues to be that of a separate Basque state. Nor does the organisation say it will lay down arms, a condition for talks laid down by the Government.

The Government's initial reaction to the ceasefire announcement was of disbelief and contempt. Mr. Aznar said he could not trust the Basque declaration.Mr. Aznar's attitude of distrust and disbelief came in for severe criticism from the church, human rights and peace organisations. In retrospect, his caution appears to have been justified. In 1921, Spain's celebrated writer, Jose Ortega Y Gasset, wrote that nationalism would break Spain. Almost 80 years later Spain certainly seems headed that way.

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