ETA: A Report on the Erratic Basque Separatists

In the world of resistance and guerrilla movements, ETA is an interesting hybrid, a strange group that is more akin to a rock and roll band than your standard liberation-minded guerrilla group. At its best it is powerful, efficient, and undeniable, its power drawing upon (and further feeding) its strong sense of cohesion; at its worst it is ineffectual, fractious, and more an annoyance than an attractive alternative to the status quo, one prone to infighting and spectacular displays of violence that accomplish nothing more than razzing a sore nerve, something analogous to a toddler’s tantrums – full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The group initially formed to champion the cause of Basque independence, enrolling its members and the region at large in a four decades-plus march towards separation from Spain. The cause has encompassed spectacular acts (and amounts) of violence and a dwindling amount of public support; it has married standard elements of nationalist and guerrilla movements – calls for autonomy, armed resistance, and a break with a distasteful state – with more exotic flavors of religious fervor, fraternal infighting, and exclusionary xenophobia. The group has managed to survive for close to fifty years now despite not having a well-articulated ideology, a specific leader, regular targets, or large numbers of members or civilian supporters, and has continued activity in spite of the region achieving autonomy in 1979. Support for the group has almost vanished today and attacks are at a minimum, now more an irritation than anything else, albeit a costly one.

History

ETA formed out of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) in 1959 when a group of young dissidents at the University of Bilbao[1] decided to break with that traditional outlet of dissent and embark upon a more active and violent form of resistance. They were “less conservative and clerical” than the PNV, taking issue with the group’s timidity and tactics, not their teachings.[2] In fact, the group’s founding was “impelled by a dual urge among young Basque men to break with their fathers’ generation, and simultaneously to continue their fathers’ political struggle.”[3] (Emphasis, original.)

As its core sprang from inside a religious activist group – ETA’s founders had briefly formed an action group called Ekin (literally, ‘to do’) that concentrated on distributing “social-Catholic” educational material before abandoning the cause for increased militancy[4] -- the group initially experienced stronng support from the Catholic Church. At the time the Basque Catholic Church (along with the Catalan Church) was the “spearhead of social and national protest”[5] and had long been the “main shelter” of Basque culture and language protection advocacy.[6] Many of ETA’s leaders had received religious training, some even being ordained priests,[7] and the ideal Basque resistance fighter was to be a combination of a jeldike and a gudari, or half monk, half soldier.[8] Indeed, early on the church’s influence was so strong on many of the group’s founders that before they embarked on their campaign of violence in 1965, ETA asked the Church for its blessing[9] and enjoyed its continued support even as their violent tendencies escalated, being characterized by the Church as “’a movement of national liberation’ whose heroes and fallen were glorified as the ‘martyrs’ of a sacred cause.”[10]

The group was formally created on St. Ignacio de Loyola Day -- July 31, 1959 – in a deliberate homage to the founder of the Jesuit order, a man who himself led “a military order of devout nationalists deeply imbued with religious values.”[11] They adopted a strategy of armed struggle for national independence and jettisoned PNV’s and Ekin’s almost exclusive concentration on “cultural projects.”[12] Members were reportedly heavily influenced by the 1958 Leon Uris novel on the fight to establish the Israeli state, Exodus, for its romantic descriptions of the struggle for independence and later tried implement them themselves, emulating the models provided by the book and by the Cuban, Chinese, and Algerian revolutions[13] as these seemed to effectively marry socialist and nationalist aspirations.[14]

Plagued by infighting and fractious divides within the movement over everything from tactics to intent, the group has undergone several divisions in its forty-plus years of existence devolving into a confusing web of acronyms and a muddle of similar subgroups. Historian John Sullivan detangles some of the mess, describing several of the factions from the 70s:

“A small minority of (mainly younger) activists continued to reject cooperation with non-Basques and resumed the armed struggle. The first of these groups, ETA-VI, evolved towards Trotskyism and rapidly lost support. The second, ETA-V, reaffirmed traditional nationalism, retained support of ETA’s social base and quickly expanded. It carried out a spectacular coup when it blew up the car of Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco’s prime minister and designated successor, in Madrid in December 1973, killing him instantly...ETA had split yet again in 1974. Now the larger group, ETA-PM, agreed to a truce in exchange for the release of its prisoners. The smaller group, ETA-M, refused on principle to negotiate with the Spanish government and called for electoral abstention.”[15]

ETA-PM disbanded in 1983 after forming a political wing and gaining entry into regional government via parliamentary elections.[16] ETA-M also formed a political wing in 1979 a la Sinn Fein in Ireland, Herri Batasuna, (“People United,” later simply Batasuna or “United”),[17] which began its two-pronged attack of political and military action towards independence. The political wing began with the intention of fighting for alternativa Kas,[18] “the recognition of Basque self-determination, the incorporation of Navarre into the independent Basque state, the complete legalization of all political parties, a withdrawal of the Spanish police and the Civil Guard from the Basque country, and a variety of social benefits to be granted to the Basque working class,”[19] a goal that translated into 20 percent voter support in the June 1987 elections.[20] The group was formally outlawed by the Spanish government in August 2002, a move followed less than a year later by the judiciary’s permanent ban of Batasuna in March 2003, the first political party banned since the Franco era.[21]

Goals, Methods, and Financing

As their history implies, ETA is ideologically, tactically, and close to universally conflicted, and is mysterious and protean almost to a fault. There is currently no, nor has there been historically, a founding, visible figurehead for the group along the lines of Subcomandante Marcos for the Zapatistas in Mexico, Gonzalo for the Shining Path in Peru, or Castano for the AUC/ACCU in Colombia. The group’s alleged head intellectual, for example, Alvarez Emparantza (Txillardegi),[22] has maintained a virtually invisible presence throughout the group’s existence and had little involvement with formal proceedings over the years. In his place there has been a disconcerting vacancy in the eyes of the outside observer; a shadow caught out of the corner of the eye indicating a presence nearby, yet one you are unable to put a face to. This lack of a flagpole for the group to crowd around has translated into an endless succession of behind the scenes leaders and a sense of interchangeability – indeed it seems not to matter who holds the mantle of group leader as much as who has their finger on the trigger at any given moment.

As the crackdown on ETA by state security and police forces intensified over the last two decades, this ambiguity over who is in charge increased. Each time a leader was arrested or killed by authorities or paramilitaries, a new one popped up in its place, something akin to the cycle of ducks in a carnival shooting gallery – every time one is shot down, another springs up right behind it. This highly fragmented, horizontal, cellular structure has frustrated authorities and those left to deal with the aftermath of ETA’s attacks.  Since there has been no fountainhead to delineate the group’s ideology or intent -- communiqués rather coming infrequently and hesitantly from a faceless blur of masked, beret-wearing members -- there has been no one to regularly focus both efforts of negotiation or apprehension upon in order to achieve a cessation of violence, and thus success for both ETA and the authorities has been difficult and delayed at best.

This, as is probably obvious, has both positive and negative consequences as an organizational strategy. From the point of ETA, their usage of shadowy, nameless spokespersons affords them a substantial amount of freedom and makes it difficult to pin them down and track them, often eliciting the violence literature’s frequently employed analogy to the hydra of Greek mythology. This phrase is often used to describe groups such as al Qaeda and various militia groups in the US as their lack of a defined leader makes targeting them and eliminating them in one strike almost impossible; the strategy of “remove the leader, remove the group” no longer applies.[23]  At the same time, though, ETA’s lack of a formal leader hamstrings the group and prevents them from achieving their goals as no one knows what their demands are or who to negotiate with or grant concessions to. Thus it’s not a matter of one stop shopping, as is often the case, getting the whole picture of the group in one place, but rather akin to a jigsaw puzzle, forcing observers to assemble and build the picture one piece at a time.

Despite the lack of formal articulation, some core elements of ETA’s ideology can be gleaned from the group’s actions and its sporadic communications and revolve around two things -- preservation of language and independence from Spain. For the former, Emparantza said, “Salvation of the Basque language and its promotion were central to any nationalist policy”[24] and he “was adamant that the party’s struggle was against Spain, not Franco.”[25] Spain, and later imperialism, was the enemy, the fight against it characterized as a “religious crusade.”[26] Class-based animosity did not play a part in their ideas; the target was “not a particular social class,”[27] but the country as a whole. (Interestingly, despite holding a Marxist-style ideology, ETA did not give the proletariat a theoretical or practical role[28] and even avoided drawing upon or dealing with the capitalist class, a central part of Marxist teachings.[29] ) When the group unsuccessfully tried to derail a train carrying Franco supporters to a 25^th anniversary celebration commemorating his rise to power in 1961 – the group’s first violent action -- the failure pushed an internal faction “towards mass activity and a Marxist, rather than populist, ideology.”[30]

Federico Krutwig, one of the group’s early leaders (he is said to have ruled it until the 70s),[31] details part of ETA’s formal strategy in his book Vasconia. There he discusses the “spiral” ETA should strive for, one of a group action followed by police/state repression followed by another group action.[32] This spiral would intensify both the frequency and violence of the group’s actions until victory was achieved, and also, theoretically, the amount of support the group enjoyed, as the security forces would come off as the aggressors.

In terms of tactics, the group seems to have embraced wanton violence with the same zeal Abimael Guzman and Sendero did in Peru. Describing the group’s modus operandi as essentially an “indiscriminate orgy of terrorism,” Shloma Ben-Ami explains: “The sporadic acts of terrorism and violence perpetrated by ETA had in reality very little to do with the strategy proposed by Krutwig; they were essentially nothing but a series of daring actions carried out by minority groups, admittedly backed by popular sympathy.”[33]

During the course of their activity, ETA were big employers of random bombings, car bombings and kidnappings, in addition to undertaking a series of bold attacks, characterized by a string of political assassinations. Illustrative of the latter, ETA’s most audacious act of the 70s was the assassination of Prime Minister (and probable Franco successor) Admiral Carrero Blanco on December 20, 1973, a move they argued would be more effective at accelerating the regime’s demise than a full-on coup by the military and the right wing.[34] During the 90s the group attempted to assassinate Jose Maria Aznar -- then the leader of the Populist Party and the future Prime Minister -- with a car bomb, an attack he narrowly escaped,[35] in addition to a plot to kill King Juan Carlos.[36] They also killed Miguel Angel Blanco in 1997, a Basque lawyer whose death prompted massive street protests by roughly six million Spaniards.[37] ETA continued a chain of politically directed assassinations over the rest of the decade and on into the new century, targeting opposition party leaders and officials, lawyers, journalists, and members of the Guardia Civil, Spain’s state police force.[38]

As we’ve witnessed in virtually all cases of guerrilla/separatist movements across the globe, especially in Latin America, over the 80s, 90s, and 00s, ETA (and the region at large) became the target of “indiscriminate repression” by the Spanish police, in addition to “ultra-rightist squadrons” who formed to murder ETA members and supporters (real or perceived).[39] This intensified crackdown has led to a marked dropoff in violence from the group, falling from the peak of 90-100 victims killed each year from 1978-80 to the current totals of a dozen or less since 1994.[40]

The group’s membership numbers have never been all that substantial, with estimates ranging from a mere dozen to less than a hundred.[41] It is said to finance itself through the usual guerrilla channels -- “revolutionary taxes” and extortion payments on businesses and civilians, kidnapping,[42] bank robberies, and even ties to the drug trade[43] -- and is reportedly financially solventt, having “more than enough money to maintain its present structure, in terms of both active members and those who are now in reserve.”[44] Despite their small numbers, ETA carried out an estimated 51 attacks between 1988 and 2002 alone – just counting car bombs and shootings[45] – and have caused close to 800 deaths over the course of their operation.

It has a raft of international ties, with its executive branch (what little there is) having allegedly fled to France,[46] its members purportedly having trained in Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, and Yemen,[47] numerous contacts reportedly having occurred between ETA’s political wing, Herri Batasuna, and the IRA’s political counterpart, Sinn Fein,[48] and a handful of ex-members apparently having sought refuge in Cuba.[49] Some members are also thought to now be residing in locations ranging from Latin America to Europe, including “Algeria, Argentina, Belgium, Cape Verde, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Germany, Holland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Panama, Sao Tome and Principe, Uruguay, and Venezuela.”[50]

Politics of Separatism

As mentioned earlier, the group’s core emerged from within the PNV, a party that was first established in 1895 to “safeguard Euskadi (the Basque country) from an ‘invasion’ by allegedly racially inferior, immoral and godless immigrant workers from other regions of Spain.”[51] In its Declaration of Principles, first issued in May 1962, the group called for the independence and unification of the French and Spanish Basque countries to preserve religious, linguistic, and cultural freedoms.[52] When Franco died and the democracy was being installed, violence intensified, but not in an attempt to eradicate the new system altogether, rather “to provoke a continuous state of instability that could benefit the Basque cause without producing the total collapse of the Spanish state and a consequent return to indiscriminate repression. ETA was loyal to Clausewitz’s maxim that a victory is better defined if it is limited…[this] led ETA not to aspire to, or aim at, the destruction of the Spanish state or its newly won democracy, but to break the national will to maintain Spanish unity.”[53]

Infighting within the group intensified during the 60s, revolving around the issue of Spanish immigrants that had matriculated to the region, with over half the population now having immigrant or mixed roots.[54]  Despite this immigrant community’s history of activism and its sympathy for Basque independence, to fully ally with them risked alienating the more conservative nationalist factions of ETA. To quote an illustrative passage detailing more of the splits:

“Within ETA, a division was being created between those who, on the one hand, wanted a Marxist strategy based on the working class, including immigrants, and on the other, a coalition made up of those who defended a Third World kind of guerrilla strategy and others, like Txillardegi, who traditionally rejected all that was Spanish, including the oppressed Spanish proletariat.”[55]

As the group became more violent and tactically indiscriminate as the decade bore on, increasingly targeting (or indirectly killing) civilians, a corresponding political split occurred. Opposition grew substantially among all sectors of the population, including “non-Basque Spaniards who had supported or sympathized with ETA during the Franco period and the subsequent transition to democracy” who now began to reevaluate their support for the group.[56]

This political split led to a situation (again) very similar to that exhibited in Northern Ireland, one where support for the IRA began to waver and fragment as violence against civilians increased, and led to the establishment of two factions – the hardcore, uncompromising republicans in favor of armed violence and the more moderate, concessionary supporters of independence/nationalism who tired of the fighting.[57] A similar factionalization occurred here in Spain:

“A progressive splintering occurred within the Basque political continuum over the attitudes toward the violence of ETA. It is a continuum that was, and is, configured by the existence of a social mechanism that we might call reason-sentiment ambivalence. That is, within the nationalist world, a person who was politically opposed in principle to ETA’s tactics could nevertheless, and because of his personal experience under Francoism, harbor positive affective feelings toward the violence. The superposition of disparate political discourses would progressively force social actors to choose between them, i.e., to support or oppose the violence.”[58]

ETA experienced a growing chorus of electoral support for the nationalist cause over the 80s, despite their increasingly reckless and violent tactics, with nationalist parties including Herri Batasuna garnering close to 68 percent of the vote in June 1987, a doubling from the 35 percent earned in the first democratic elections in June 1977.[59] Support for ETA has since tapered off, though, as the Basque region gained a growing number of rights and ultimately autonomy, leading many to allege the group is dangerously out of touch with public sentiment now.[60]

A recent interview hints at a possible change of heart, though, by ETA and a tempering of their violence:

“An absence of violence is something that we, Basque militants especially, pine for. An absence of violence would mean being free to live in our own country, being ourselves without being forced to take up arms to defend our rights. The objective of our struggle is [to] ensure that the Basque people can freely express themselves and whatever they decide be respected by the French and Spanish states and the international community as a whole. To get this process going [ETA] declares its willingness to negotiate and to reach a widespread agreement. This has happened on other occasion but the violence of both states has continued. The PNV says that it is ETA’s violence which impedes the possibility of the Basque people freely and democratically expressing themselves, when the reality is quite the opposite: it is due to the fact that both states have violently cut away all the rights of our country that ETA has been forced to use the armed struggle.”[61]

The group is frequently accused of intractability, refusing to negotiate with Spanish officials because their demands are not being met, but the previous quote implies more amenability to the prospect now, as does their having undergone a series of ceasefires over the course of the 90s and since 2000.[62] The same interview offers a possible light at the end of the tunnel in terms of stopping the violence -- when describing the stalemate between separate Basque nationalist parties, the ETA spokesperson of the moment said:

 “In our understanding of the situation today, it would be criminal to consciously leave this conflict open for future generations being able to resolve the conflict in democratic and just terms…How does one overcome this impasse? Well, like everywhere else, through talks, dialogue and agreement. ETA’s hand is closed into a fist to fight against those who oppress this nation, but it continues to be open and offers its hand to those who wish to negotiate and reach agreements.”[63]

Analysis of Separatist Viability

As mentioned earlier, the region was granted autonomy after Franco’s death, earning it officially in July 1979. Since that time it has been maintained (and increased) without economic collapse, despite a series of hardships. Before this happened, Krutwig, one of the group’s original leaders, advocated instituting a parallel administration system in the Basque region to phase out the influence of Spanish government and to create pressure on the Spanish state to acknowledge its independence.[64] The region earned autonomy when they garnered a regional parliament with local control over “local administration, police, social services, education, internal commercial regulations, taxes, and courts.”[65]

The primary sources of revenue for the area are a mix of agricultural and industrial, with fishing and livestock farming filling the front end of the statement and fledgling steel, paper, machine, and petrochemical industries filling the back end.[66] Increased industrialization of Europe and protective policies implementing quotas on production and trade have harmed the region’s economy over the past twenty years, a deterioration that was accelerated with entry into the EU.[67] This change is illustrated by a decline in agricultural production, industrial plants closing, the number of fishing ships dwindling, and unemployment rising, among others. Further,

“EU membership has taken [its] toll in the Basque industry, and enterprises have lost their quota in the national market as well as their export capacity. The service sector, closely linked to the economic decline of the industrial activity, finds itself in a very vulnerable and unbalanced situation. The public sector, controlled by Madrid and submerged in a process of structural adjustment since the 1980s, is now much in the hands of multinationals which continue pressuring for further privatization. Employment in the agricultural and cattle sectors in extremely low.”[68]

Despite being staggered, though, the Basque economy has not been felled. In spite of having to make extensive modifications to survive in the open market, modernizing facilities, increasing productivity, lowering costs, and attracting investment to fund the changes,[69] they were able to do so rather well. In fact, by 1990, the Basque economy was “clearly integrated” into the European Community’s open market.[70] Foreign investment is still rather high, ranking third in Spain behind Madrid and Barcelona, specifically in the chemical, electronics, plastics, and rubber sectors. [71] This, in addition to large foreign aid payments,[72] has helped the region survive.[73] ETA itself has little effect on the day to day operation of life in the Basque region, which for the most part is functioning fine on its own, with the group instead being relegated to the role of a fly pestering a buffalo – an annoyance that only factors into the latter’s consciousness briefly and sporadically.