POLITICS-SPAIN: Outrage and Powerlessness in Face of ETA Attacks

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Jul 17 2000 (IPS) - Loathing and a feeling of impotence have swept the Spanish – including the Basque – population as a result of attacks over the weekend attributed to the illegal Basque separatist organisation, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA – Basque Freedom and Homeland).

On Saturday, a city councillor of the centre-right Popular Party (PP), José María Martín Carpena, was shot to death as he left his home with his wife and his 17-year-old daughter in the Andalusian city of Málaga, 550 km south of Madrid. He was unarmed.

Just hours later, a car bomb exploded in the town of Agreda, in Soria province, 240 km northeast of the capital, injuring a police officer’s wife.

There was extensive damage to the Civil Guard’s family housing compound as a result of the Agreda attack. Police sources indicated there could have been dozens of victims if the bomb had exploded a half hour earlier.

Condemnations of the attack have been widespread – though with variations -, expressed through declarations and massive demonstrations across Spain. The only exception is the Basque political coalition Euskal Herritarrok (EH), though there has been internal dissent from the official position of this party that maintains close ties to ETA.

But the outrage of the majority is accompanied by a spreading sense of powerlessness. The PP has 24,624 city councillors around the country, and all are now believed to be ETA targets, though the organisation also kills socialists, and leftists of all stripes, as well as human rights defenders.

Jaime Mayor Oreja, Interior minister and PP legislator in the Basque Country, said the number of people who have received threats is so high that it would be “very complicated to provide security measures for everyone.”

“ETA kills wherever it can and whoever it can, without distinctions,” said PP president in the Basque Country, Carlos Iturgaitz. Three years ago, ETA members kidnapped and killed Miguel Angel Blanco, a councillor in the Basque village of Ermua, which has just 20,000 residents, he pointed out.

Meanwhile, José María Fidalgo, head of the Federal Confederation of Workers’ Commissions (CCOO), a pro-communist group that is one of Spain’s two largest unions, said that “ETA turns against anyone because its only intention is to spread terror and impose a fascist regime.”

Pío Cabanillas, a government spokesman, made the official stance clear. “In response to assassination and totalitarianism there are no shades of grey and there is no reason to suggest that it is more convenient to establish some type of bridge or relationship” to negotiate with ETA.

The PP as well as the major political opposition forces, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and the United Left coalition, have called on the moderate Basque Nationalist and Eusko Alkartasuna parties to abandon the political agreements they have signed with the parties and organisations linked to ETA.

The separatist organisation was founded in 1959, but did not claim its first victim until 1968. In the last three decades, ETA has been held responsible for over 800 deaths.

The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and Eusko Alkartasuna reject violence and condemn the attacks, but have so far refused to break the accord signed with EH that is heavily focussed on sovereignty and demands a national identity for the Basque Country.

According to nationalists, moderate or not, the Basque Country encompasses the three provinces that make up the autonomous community by the same name, the Community of Navarra (where a referendum rejected its integration into the Basque Country), and three departments in France.

PNV president Xavier Arzallus intimated that the responsibility for the assassination of the councillor in Malaga falls on the central government, “which must alter its policies.”

PP secretary general Javier Arenas responded that “Arzallus should give up on his tales, because those who kill and those who find political justification for it are equally responsible.”

EH spokesman Arnaldo Otegui expressed his condolences to the family of the murdered official and called on his fellow political leaders “to not fall into the useless exchange of condemnations.”

In his opinion, the solution for ending the attacks requires “democratic mechanisms that allow the free will of the Basque Country to be recognised by the French and Spanish governments, without any type of veto or interference.”

Another EH leader and councillor for the coalition in Pamplona, capital of Navarra, distanced himself from Otegui and called for political and non-violent solutions to the conflict.

He said ETA had made a “grave mistake” when it ended its 14- month unilateral ceasefire last December. The separatist group is blamed for several killings and car bombings since then, including one last week in a popular Madrid shopping district.

The attacks over the weekend sparked strong reactions. Monday, in all of Spain’s major urban areas, including Basque cities, demonstrations were held to express solidarity with the Carpena family and to condemn ETA.

But in the Basque Country, the demonstrations were not united, as the moderate nationalists marched in one part of the city, while the rest of the parties, led by the PP, PSOE and United Left, marched in another.

In Málaga, the city where Carpena lived for the last 25 years, even the hospitalised who were mobile enough to do so took to the streets to show their support for the family and to protest the ETA attack.

The president of the Forum for Peace, Vidal de Nicolás, a Basque, demanded the immediate withdrawal of the PNV and Eusko Alkartasuna from their pact with EH and other pro-ETA groups, which he referred to as “fascist.’

De Nicolás and other human rights organisation leaders joined the protests mobilised across Spain under the slogan: “for peace, for liberty, everyone against terrorism!”