Eternal Rebels

I just came across this text at a site called the Greenpepper Project, it is called "Anti-Authoritarians" and it is sort of a history of the Basque revolts in a nutshell, here you have it:

The Basques and Spain: a Historical Primer for Anti-Authoritarians

By Tom Howard

Little is known of the mysterious origins of the Basques, a people living in the mountainous provinces of Viscaya (Bizkaia), Alava (Araba), Guipuzcoa (Gipuzkoa) and Navarra (Naforroa) in northern Spain and Labourd (Lapurdi), Basse Navarre (Naforroa Beherea) and Soule (Zubera) in southwestern France along the Bay of Biscay. These seven provinces are collectively referred to as the Basque Country, or Euskal Herria. Some speculate that the Basques are remnants of the original, indigenous people of Europe who pre-dated even the Celts. Their language, Euskera, does not belong to any known language family and has long been the source of sustainable cultural identity. In fact, the only word Basques have for themselves in Euskera is "euskaldun," or "person who speaks Basque." Today, there are roughly 3 million inhabitants of Euskal Herria. Over the past two hundred years as the often brutal forces of colonialism, capitalism and globalization swept other peoples aside, the Basques have sought to preserve their unique culture and identity while embracing the world, rejecting isolation as they fiercely maintained their autonomy.

In 1804, residents of the city of Bilbao (Bilbo) in the province of Gipuzkoa launched a revolt against military conscription which became known as the Zamacolada, named after the wealthy Basque landowner, or jauntxo (same definition and pronunciation as the English word, "honcho") who initiated the plan. During Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion four years later, Basques in Naforroa waged an effective guerrilla campaign against much larger French forces. One reason the Basques remained loyal to the Spanish crown was due to the preservation of their regional autonomy through a system of laws known as the fueros, written in 1526.

After the death of the Spanish king in 1833, the newly elected Spanish legislature, or Cortes, sought to abolish the fueros and establish a strong, centralized constitutional government that resembled the French model, although it stopped short of removing the monarchy. Additionally, the Cortes instituted a series of secular reforms including the abolition of the Inquisition in 1834, but in calling for an end to regional autonomy, the stage was set for conflict. The First Carlist War lasted from 1833 to 1839. On one side, controlling the legislature and drawing on the new power of urban centers were the Liberals (the first to use the term in its present sense). On the other side were the Carlists, or supporters of King Carlos. Most Basques aligned with the Carlists who promised to restore the fueros, but often were split between "the farm" and "the street," or the rural and urban dwellers. In 1837, a Basque general advocated mutiny by Basque soldiers on both sides. In the end, the Liberals had won.

The true winners of the First Carlist War were the industrials and the Industrial Revolution transformed the iron ore rich Basque provinces of Spain from 1840 to 1870. Karl Marx considered the Liberals bourgeois hypocrites and wrote approvingly of the Carlists as anti-capitalists, yet the Carlists themselves were virulently anti-communist and pro-church. They were also increasingly restless from their defeat and in 1844, the Liberal government established the infamous Guardia Civil to control the rebellious pro-Carlist provinces.

The Second Carlist War lasted from 1872 to 1876 and began as a Basque revolt. Its bloody battles produced another Basque civil war and by 1876, another Carlist defeat. The Liberals proceeded to strip the Basques of any shred of autonomy. Two distinct Basque political identities developed in the years that followed, one exemplified by the Basque nationalist Sabino Arana and the other by the Basque academic Miguel de Unamuno.

Sabino Arana was regarded by many as an unstable, racist hothead. Miguel de Unamuno was a scholar, a university professor who authored novels, books and essays. Sabino Arana's definition of Basque-ness was genetic and social Darwinistic; he saw the Basques as racially and genetically superior to Spaniards. Unamuno, however, came to identify more with Spain than with the Basque Country, preferring Castellano to Euskera. Arana is widely credited with beginning the Basque nationalist movement, creating new words in Euskera like Euzkadi for the "Basque homeland," aberri for "fatherland" and azkatasuna for "liberty." He developed the ikurriña or Basque flag and founded the Basque Nationalist Party or PNV. Arana's supporters often took to the streets shouting, "Down with the army! Die Spain!" Unamuno, though, openly supported the fascist Falange movement in later life, criticizing it only after the Fascists came to power. It was Arana's ideas that would most dramtically shape the course of Basque history.

When the Second Spanish Republic came into being in 1931 after a failed military dictatorship, few Basques called themselves Republicans. Carlists had more in common with the Fascists and Spanish Monarchists, except that they demanded Basque autonomy. The Liberals were staunchly capitalist and generally shunned the socialist reforms of the Second Republic. In the industrial centers of Bilbo and San Sebastian (Donostia), a third force was rising, that of a growing Socialist labor movement. Best known among these Basques was Dolores Ibarruri, La Pasionaria, a Communist elected to represent Asturias in the legislature. She was known as a firery orator who dressed entirely in black and gave the Republic its motto during the Spanish Civil War: No Pasaran! They shall not pass!

The PNV were not leftists and the Monarchists even approached them for help in a coup against the Republic. Jose Antonio Aguirre, PNV's head, rejected the proposal. Aguirre himself refused the entire phraseology of leftist or rightist, positioning himself and his party only for Basque rights. This rejection brought the Basques the enduring emnity of the Spanish right. In 1936, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, with military aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, launched a coup d'etat against the Republic setting off the Spanish Civil War.

On April 26, 1937, one year into the Civil War, Nazi bombers of the Condor Legion targeted the marketplace of the Basque town of Guernica (Gernika). There were perhaps only 10,000 people in Gernika that day, but the Basque government estimated that as many as 1,700 civilians died in the crowded market. Franco's forces occupied the town three days later and denied that it had been bombed at all. Later, the Fascists said that only 200 people had been killed and Franco continued to deny the bombing, insisting that the Basques had dynamited themselves. It was not until 1970 that Franco admitted the bombing of Gernika, but denied any wrongdoing. In 1998, the German government officially apologized to the Basque people for its complicity in the attacks, which the Spanish government has yet to do. To date, all government documents relating to the massacre are sealed as state secrets.

The Basques continued to resist the onslaught of the Fascists, but were poorly armed and equipped. After the capture of Bilbo, Franco's forces arrested 16,000 Basques and executed at least 1,000. There were summary executions of any POWs. 2,000 Basques were among the 20,000 Republican veterans held in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Between 1938 and 1947, nearly 22,000 Basques were executed by the Spanish government and at least 100,000 held as political prisoners. Many Basques fighters escaped Spain only to join the Resistance in France during the Nazi occupation. Basques felt a profound sense of betrayal when the United States allied with Franco during the Cold War and young Basques increasingly questioned the effectiveness of the conservative PNV. Franco's bloody repression brought only increased resistance from the Basque people and encouraged a new and militant groups calling for Basque independence, including the group known as ETA.

It was formed by Basque technical school students in 1952 as Aberri Ta Azkatasuna, or "Fatherland And Liberty," but in the Gipuzkoan dialect of Euskera, an "ata" was a "duck." In 1959 the name changed to Euzkadi Ta Azkatasuna, or "Basque Homeland And Liberty." Its acronym, ETA, appears to be everywhere in written Euskera because "eta" is the standard dialect's word for "and." The original founders saw ETA primarily as an anti-fascist, Marxist national liberation movement. Marxism was embraced primarily because it was the antithesis of Francoism. ETA's founders also redefined the nature of Basque identity, declaring that anyone who spoke Euskera could be considered Basque.

One of ETA's first actions was the 1961 derailment of a train carrying Fascist veterans of the Civil War to Donostia to commemorate the 1936 coup d'etat. No one was injured, but the government detained and tortured one hundred Basques in response. The first death linked to ETA was that of a Guardia Civil officer who pulled over one of ETA's leadership, Txabi Etxebarrieta. In response, the Guardia Civil hunted down and killed Txabi. The Spanish government and nearly every media outlet routinely mentions the 800 or so deaths attributed to ETA in the past 36 years but never mentions the deaths and injuries inflicted by the government.

In the 1960's, the Guardia Civil routinely "disappeared" Basque university students. By 1973, ETA had killed 6 people. From 1968 to 1973, the Guardia Civil killed 14, shot and wounded 52 and arrested and tortured over 4,000. Between 1956 and 1975, 11 States of Emergency were declared putting the Basque Country into a virtual state of siege for the period. Additionally, general strikes and other resistance to Franco's regime were numerous and sustained throughout the second half of his rule, not only in the Basque Country but also in Catalonia, Andalusia, Galicia and elsewhere.

ETA's first car bomb killed then Prime Minister Admiral Carrero Blanco, Franco's hand-picked successor, in 1973. A common joke at the time was, "one more pothole, one less asshole." In 1975, ETA killed 38 people, the Guardia Civil only 33, so Franco ordered the execution of 5 political prisoners to even the score. The next year the Guardia Civil killed 18 people, the year after, 16. In 1976 ETA killed 18 people, some of them Guardia Civil officers attempting to remove booby-trapped ikurriñas. During Franco's forty year reign, speaking Euskera and displaying symbols like the ikurriña was punishable by imprisonment and torture. Thousands of political prisoners were held. ETA split into two groups, ETA militar, which carried out attacks and ETA politico-militar, which carried out kidnappings and ransoms. The activities of the second group often targeted Basque business owners and were largely unpopular, but at the same time, the Guardia Civil were attacking folk festivals.

In 1977, two years after Franco's death, the government declared a general amnesty for political prisoners after heavy pressure from human rights' groups. The transition government of Franco confidant Adolfo Suarez had changed little in reality and after a few weeks, the arrests began again. In 1978 a new constitution was written which allowed for a certain level of regional autonomy in the Basque Country and Catalonia but did little to address those regions' concerns. Also in that year, the pro-independence Herri Batasuna, or Popular Unity party was founded as an off-shoot of the PNV. Its leaders were immediately arrested by the government and its activities suppressed, although it was not banned outright. HB candidates consistently polled 15-20% of the vote. Between 1978 and 1980, ETA killed 80 people in a bloody campaign of bombings and murders. The Guardia Civil responded by killing 41 people. Additionally, 35 people were killed by what the government describ ed as incontrolados, or "uncontrollable" right-wing elements of the military and police.

For many life-long Fascists, the transition away from Franco was more than they could bear. On February 23, 1981, a failed coup threatened to return Spain to Fascist dictatorship. In its aftermath, politicians like Felipe Gonzalez of the Socialist Workers' Party, or SWP, decided that for Spain to remain stable, the military and Guardia Civil must be placated. The SWP swept to power in 1982 and promptly brought Spain into NATO and the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union. The government also instituted a series of draconian anti-terrorism laws, the first of which suspended habeus corpus indefinitely. ETA increased their activity and splinter groups appeared.

Another remarkable, but often overlooked aspect of the the late 1970's and 1980's in Spain was the emergence of an effective anti-nuclear and environmentalist movement. A project to build a nuclear power plant at Lemoniz, near Bilbo in Bizkaia, was abandoned in 1982 after ten years of demonstrations, some with tens of thousands of protesters and after 250 attacks, many carried out by ETA. The anti-nuclear and environmentalist movements have drawn a deal deal of support from Basques. Still, the war between ETA and the Spanish state, or of the Spanish state against the entire Basque people, tends to overshadow such accomplishments due to its brutality and intensity.

Between 1982 and 1987, 27 murders occurred (26 of them in French Basqueland) of civilians loosely affiliated with Basques nationalists or Basque industry. Many suspected Gozalez's government to have sponsored these killings, a fact which Gonzalez repeatedly denied. The group responsible turns out to be a collection of right-wing mercenaries: Italian neo-fascists, mob hitmen, Portuguese colonialists, right-wing French veterans of Algeria's war for independence and former Spanish policemen. The group was known as GAL, or the "Antiterrorism Liberation Group." In 1986, France became concerned with the terrorism it saw as now having crossed its borders and agreed to arrest and extradite wanted Basques living in Spain, despite the fact that others who had been extradited had been tortured. With the extradition agreement in place, GAL ceased its activities and disappeared from the scene. Fifteen government and police officials, including the Minister of the Interior, the governor of Viscaya (Bizkaia) and the director of state security were convicted of running GAL in 1989 but only received light sentences since the judges decided the prosecution could not prove that GAL was an armed terrorist group. ETA attacks increased.

A key player in the GAL scandal was Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon. Garzon lead efforts to lay the blame squarely at the feet of Felipe Gonzalez and pursue harsh sentences for those involved in the GAL affair. More recently, he won international fame for attempts to try Pinochet for abuses during the Chilean dictatorship. However, Garzon also headed efforts to eradicate Basque independence parties and Basque-language newspapers. Enthusiastic in his prosecution of foreign dictators, Garzon refused to question the abuses of Spanish officials unless they were Socialists. Not a single case has ever been brought to trial against officials in the Franco dictatorship for forty years of murder, torture and other human rights abuses, nor has any trial sought to uncover the abuses perpetrated after Franco, with the exception of GAL.

By the mid-1990's, ETA shifted its focus from Guardia Civil and military officials to politicians from the Popular Party, a newer incarnation of the Fascist Popular Alliance founded by members of Franco's dictatorship. Other targets included tourist destinations. In 1996, after fourteen years in power and rocked by a massive corruption scandal, Felipe Gonzalez's Socialist Workers' Party loses to Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party. Within a year, the entire 23 member political leadership of Herri Batasuna, representing 200,000 Basque voters, was jailed for sentences of 7 years each in a show trial, accused of aiding and cooperating with ETA. Herri Batasuna tried to air a videotape of ETA's demands during a political campaign in order to push for negotiations with the group. By 2002, Batasuna would have its assets seized and be declared a part of ETA. By March of 2003, Batasuna would be banned indefinitely and the pro-independence Euskera newspaper Egunkaria 0 would be shut down. By May of 2003, both the United States and the European Union, at the request of Aznar's government, would declare Batasuna a terrorist organization. Having failed to stop ETA, the Spanish government would instead strike at any who called for Basque independence.

In 1998 a slight change occurred. For the first time in its history, ETA called for a cease-fire. This coincided with the historic Good Friday Peace Accords in Northern Ireland. The Aznar government reacted by dismissing the idea. To justify its far-reaching powers and immense funding, Spain's security apparatus needed enemies. To negotiate with ETA, either directly or through an intermediary, meant losing its reason for existence. Aznar knew this. For ETA, negotiations may have only seemed politically expedient, but either way turned out to be fruitless. After fourteen months, during which ETA attempted to open negotiations with the government but were repeatedly rejected (the two sides met once, in Geneva in 1999, of which Aznar's government was similarly dismissive), ETA ended its truce by detonating two car bombs, one in Vitoria (Gasteiz) in the Basque province Alava (Araba) and one in Madrid. The conflict continued, but by 2004 showed signs of tapering off with only 3 de aths attributed to ETA in 2003.

By the March 11, 2004 bombing in Madrid, Aznar's government, weakened by criticism of the Iraq War and its handling of the November 20, 2002 Prestige oil spill off the coast of northern Spain, may have already been looking for an excuse to emulate the memory of Franco. Immediately after the attacks and with little evidence, Aznar's government began blaming ETA. When it became apparent that Al Qaeda and not ETA was most likely responsible, voters responded to the PP's manipulation by voting Aznar's party from power. It has widely been speculated that Aznar's party may have been considering a coup d'etat, a charge that Arnaldo Otegi, head of the banned party Batasuna, made on March 19, 2004 when he said in an interview that his sources informed him of a plan to revoke Basque autonomy, place the regional Basque police force Ertzantza under direct government control and conduct mass arrests. Had Aznar's insistence that ETA was behind the Madrid blasts been ta ken at face value, this may have been the result and Spain may have once again narrowly escaped a return to fascism. Currently, Aznar's successor, Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has ruled out negotiations with ETA on the grounds that they are a terrorist organization while ETA has suggested them.

Two demands that have resounding support among all Basques are that the Guardia Civil be withdrawn and that the Spanish Constitution of 1978 be revised to grant greater regional autonomy. With a ratio of 7 police officers for every 1,000 civilians (New York City, with a police department of 40,000 has a ratio of 5 for every 1,000) the Spanish Basque Country remains the most policed area in Europe. Zapatero's government may wish to resolve this conflict once and for all, or it may turn once again to the policies of Gonzalez and Aznar. The latter seems likely. Throughout whatever may occur, it must be kept in mind that while ETA's actions receive attention, they do not represent the whole of Basque identity, merely one part of one chapter of a long history.

In 1997, the Guggenheim built a new museum in Bilbo. Euskera is gaining ground as a spoken and written language as Basque culture continues to flourish. There is even an Indymedia Euskal Herria with a website in Euskera, French and Spanish. Basque anarchists have been active in solidarity with Palestinians, in local struggles for the environment and squatters' rights and in larger, anti-globalization struggles. Fernando Perez Gorraiz, one of the Thessaloniki Seven arrested at the EU Summit in Greece is Basque. Their history replete with examples of resistance and a fierce belief in autonomy and liberty, the Basque people have outlasted Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, Hapsburgs, Bourbons, Bonapartists, Nazis and Franquistas; they will almost certainly outlast France, Spain and the European Union.

That, in itself, is something to be admired.


Sources of interest:

The Basque History of the World, by Mark Kurlansky. 387 pages. Penguin Press, 1999. — an indispensable book.
http://www.baskinfo.org — a website in Dutch with English news updates.
http://www.euskojustice.org — International Basque Organization for Human Rights (English and Spanish).
http://www.breakthechains.net/btcconference/basque.html — Report on the Break the Chains workshop on the Basque Struggle (English).
http://euskalherria.indymedia.org — Indymedia Euskal Herria (Spanish, French and Euskera).

Note: Throughout this piece, words in Euskera, or Basque, when different from the commonly known names, will be included afterwards in parentheses. Euskera pronunciation may at times seem difficult to the English speaker, but here are some tips: z is pronounced similar to a hard s, tx is pronounced as ch and tz is pronounced roughly similar to ts. In most instances, Euskera names have been used instead of their Spanish or French counterparts.

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