Saturday, April 29, 2006

More on the "Guernica Affair"

Kudos to Com Tóibín who in his article "The Art of War" in the Arts section of The Guardian tells the world why the "Guernica" belongs in Euskal Herria, in Gernika if possible.

Read on:

The art of war

Next year marks the 70th anniversary of the destruction of Guernica. It's about time Madrid heeded the Basque demands for that painting

Colm Tóibín
Saturday April 29, 2006

Guardian

Picasso was in Paris when Guernica was bombed. The devastating air attack on the Basque town on April 26 1937 was widely reported. The following day, George Lowther Steer wrote in the Times: "Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday by insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of the open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes ... did not cease unloading on the town bombs weighing from 1,000lbs downward and it is calculated more than 3,000 two-pounder aluminium incendiary projectiles. The fighters, meanwhile, plunged low from above the centre of the town to machine-gun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields."

The following morning the headlines in L'Humanité, the morning newspaper Picasso usually bought, read: "MILLE BOMBES INCENDAIRES lancées par les avions de Hitler and Mussolini". It was accompanied by graphic pictures of the devastated town and photographs of the casualties.

For the Basques, it was an attack on the soul of their ancient nation; for the world, it was a crime against humanity. As time went by, as the name Guernica became associated with a picture rather than a place, many Basques took a dim view of a painting made far away by someone who had no special affinity with Basque culture. In recent years, however, as that culture has become more open, people in the Basque country have wondered why Picasso's painting should hang only in Madrid, why it has never crossed their borders to hang in the place where the crime was committed. They, and many others in Spain, want to see this great icon on show in Bilbao or in Guernica itself.

By the time of the bombing, Picasso had, along with other artists such as Joan Miró and Julio González, been commissioned by the Spanish republican government to design a work for the international exhibition in Paris at the Spanish pavilion in 1937. He had visited the site of the pavilion, designed by Josep Lluís Sert and Luis Lacasa. He had seen the large space his mural was to fill.

By this time he had also made two of the series of six grotesque etchings called Dream and Lie of Franco. Yet there were still rumours that he supported the fascists, or had remained indifferent to what was happening in Spain, enough for him to issue a statement as he worked on Guernica: "The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death."

Picasso had by that time found a large studio in Paris, with rich associations, where he could work on his mural. It was in rue des Grands-Augustins, about which Balzac had written, and in a building that had more recently been used by the surrealist George Bataille for meetings that Dora Maar had attended. The building had an enormous attic. Picasso had no excuse not to work, but in the weeks before he read about the air raids on Guernica there is no evidence that, despite some efforts, he had any great ideas about the commission.

The reports of the bombing, which had killed 1,645 people and injured 889, made it clear that it had been an indiscriminate attack on a civilian population. The Times reported: "In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history." Picasso, as well as feeling outrage, had the fate of his family and friends in Barcelona to worry about.

On May 1 he made his first sketch. The process of making the mural was recorded by Maar. Two years earlier Picasso had mused: "It would be most interesting to preserve photographically not the stages but the metamorphoses of a painting ... But there is one very odd thing - to notice that basically a picture does not change, that the first vision remains almost intact, despite appearances." This first sketch on a piece of blue paper had the bull, the bird, the dead horse with the raised hind legs and the woman.

Gijs van Hensbergen, in his definitive book Guernica: The Biography of a 20th Century Icon, writes about that first day's work: "There is nothing in the first preparatory sketch for Guernica that specifically describes Gernika [the Basque spelling], the bombing, the planes, the effect of incendiaries, the fingers of flame, or the crashing explosions and the array of corpses. From sketch 2 through sketch 6, all produced on that first day, Picasso ... repositions his actors and discards those extraneous to the plot, slowly refining and paring them back ... By the evening of May 1, he had come remarkably close to the finished painting."

Each weekday that May Picasso worked on the painting, allowing Maar to photograph the process, and at weekends he went to the country to be with Marie Thérèse Walter. At the end of the month he invited friends and artists, including Alberto Giacometti, Roland Penrose and Henry Moore, to see the work in progress. Moore remembered: "You know the woman who comes running out of the little cabin on the right with one hand held in front of her? Well, Picasso told us there was something missing there, and he went and fetched a roll of paper and stuck it in the woman's hand, as much as to say that she'd been caught in the bathroom when the bombs came."

On July 11, the day before the opening of the pavilion, the writer Max Aub spoke to those who had worked on its construction: "At the entrance, on the right, Picasso's great painting leaps into view. It will be spoken of for a long time. Picasso has represented the tragedy of Gernika. It is possible that this art will be accused of being too abstract or difficult for a pavilion like ours which seeks to be above all, and before everything else, popular manifestation ... To those who protest saying that things are not thus, one must answer asking if they do not have two eyes to see the terrible reality of Spain. If the picture by Picasso has any defect it is that it is too real, too terribly true, atrociously true."

So began the arguments about the painting. Was it a poster or a painting? Did it represent the horror of war or some rather personal obsessions of the painter coupled with some art history? What did the bull signify? Was it a new beginning for public art, for pictorial space, for the depiction of horror? The mural was placed in the most central part of the pavilion. The controversy over its value began immediately, with the president of the Basque country less than enthusiastic about the work, declining Picasso's offer of the painting "for the Basque people". The Basque muralist José María Ucelay also took a dim view of it. "As a work of art," he said, "it is one of the poorest things ever produced in the world ... It is just seven by three metres of pornography, shitting on Gernika, on Euskadi [the Basque country], on everything." These remarks rest among the many made in these years by Spaniards of all sorts which need, in the light of current opinion, to be swiftly forgotten.

After its exhibition in Paris, the painting moved to London, arriving on September 30 1938, the day of the Munich pact. In January 1939, both painting and preparatory sketches were shown at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, where 15,000 people came to see it in the first week. Then it was moved to the US, where it was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and subsequently around the country and later in the 1950s in Brazil and various European venues. But the touring did not help its fragile state. Picasso decided that it should stay in New York where "it slowly moved", Van Hensbergen writes, "from the condition of witness and prophecy back into the safer realms of artefact".

However, because Picasso had also stated that the painting could be moved to Spain once fascism ended there, it became a symbol of hope that, after Franco's death, Spain would become a republic. The arrival of Guernica in Spain would mean that the nightmare which Franco had created was over. As the regime softened, a Picasso museum opened in Barcelona and there were suggestions that the painting could return, but Picasso was adamant, as was his family after his death. The painting would come only with democracy.

Thus it did not arrive on Spanish soil until September 10 1981, almost six years after Franco's death. It was placed on exhibition behind bomb and bullet-proof glass. Then, after much further controversy, in 1992 the painting and the sketches were moved to the new Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. Requests to have Guernica exhibited in Guernica itself, or in Barcelona during the Olympic games, were refused because of its fragile state.

In 1992 the Basques did not have a space for the painting at the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. But, just as Guernica became a symbol for resistance to Franco, this astonishing building, designed by Frank Gehry and opened in 1997, has become a symbol for a new Basque confidence, both cultural and political. The Basque cultural legacy is complex. On one hand, it is a deeply nationalist culture that has preserved an ancient language and sense of identity; on the other, because of its prosperity, its openness to France and to the sea, it has long been a most cosmopolitan society. It is no mistake that the playful new museum made to house the best of international art was designed by an outsider, or that the wonderful new bridge in Bilbao was designed by Santiago Calatrava, also an outsider.

Late last year I travelled through the country for BBC Radio 3 to look at the Basque musical heritage. As a mountainous region, it is of course rich in folk song and, as a society that has been deeply Catholic, its religious and choral heritage is strong. But many Basque classical composers, including Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga, called the Spanish Mozart, have steeped themselves in French and German influences. It is possible to listen to the music of many Basque composers, both contemporary and classical, and feel that the influence of the outside world has been paramount. Of all the features of the Basque country, this tradition is the most hidden and, in some ways, the most typical.

It has been hard perhaps to publicise such cultural treasures as Arriaga, Pablo Sarasate, Jesús Guridi, Jesús Arámbarri, Luís de Pablo or indeed Maurice Ravel in the musical world while the Eta campaign held the headlines. Since Eta has declared a ceasefire, the changes in the society, apparent for a long time to those who live there, may become clear to the outside world. As in Ireland, the vacuum left by political violence can most usefully be filled by culture.

The Basque demand for Picasso's Guernica to be put on display in their showcase building, or in some other suitable venue, is thus clever and interesting. In recent years the Catalans have run a superbly orchestrated campaign for the return of archives that were taken from Catalonia to Salamanca at the end of the civil war by Franco's troops. It was the Madrid government's opposition that gave the campaign much oxygen. Earlier this year the return of the archives to Barcelona was a cause of pride and joy for Catalan nationalists.

So, too, in the Basque country the main nationalist party and the main conservative party have joined forces with other Spanish politicians in calling for Guernica, so disliked by certain Basques in 1937, to be taken from Madrid. It would be very foolish of those who control the painting, no matter how fragile its state, to allow it to become a symbol of Spanish centralism. The campaign to hand it over, for however brief a time, is likely to become a great Basque rallying cause the longer it goes on.

· Colm Tóibín's novel The Master (Picador), was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2004. His radio series, God, History, Fantasy and Reason - A Journey through Spanish History and Music, begins tomorrow at 3.30pm on Radio 3

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Friday, April 28, 2006

Today at EITB

Spain attacks, the Basques speak out.

These two notes appear today courtesy of EITb:

Outlawed Batasuna affirms one part can't build process on its own

Batasuna leader Joseba Permach has denounced today that the Spanish Government is still using a "repressive strategy" revealed by Otegi's latest sentence. He has assured that "it's impossible to move a peace process forwards with the help of "an only part."

Permach and also Batasuna leader Juan Joxe Petrikorena have referred to the 15-month jail sentence for Arnaldo Otegi for praising terrorism unveiled yesterday. They have also referred to the arrest of Sandra Barrenetxea, who has denounced tortures, the shutdown of a bar linked to leftwing nationalism and the denial of permission for Otegi and Pernando Barrena to travel to Ireland to take part in a Sinn Fein act.

Basque premier demands Law takes "new stage" into account

Yesterday, Spanish National Court sentenced leader of Batasuna, Arnaldo Otegi, to 15 years in jail. In view of the sentence for Otegi, charged with praising terrorism, the Basque premier, Juan José Ibarretxe, has asserted that a new stage is open in terms of politics and "spreading justice."

Juan José Ibarretxe affirmed so referring to Otegi's offence of glorifying terrorism in a tribute paid to a late senior member of the Basque armed group ETA, José Miguel Beñaran Argala, in the Basque town of Arrigorriaga, city nearby Bilbao.

The Basque premier has pointed out that everyone should "match up with new times, justice, politics, and media." "We should take into account the new stage is open in terms of politics and spreading justice."

The Basque premier, who attended the popular celebration of San Prudencio in Vitoria-Gasteiz, has stressed the importance of separating powers in a democracy.

A Spanish Judge on Friday denied permission to two prominent Basque nationalist politicians to travel to Ireland to attend a Sinn Fein political event next month, court officials said.

National Court Judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska said in a ruling that Arnaldo Otegi and Pernando Barrena would go in representation of an outlawed organization and that there is a risk of them fleeing the country.

In turn, leftwing trade union LAB representative, Rafa Díez, has been given permission to make that trip and represent his union in the political event.

Díez, Otegi and Barrena had asked the judge for permission to leave Spain for Ireland next May 6-12. Otegi and Barrena are both leaders of the outlawed Batasuna party, considered the political wing of the armed group ETA, which declared a permanent cease-fire last month.

Otegi was convicted Thursday of defending terrorism and sentenced to 15 months in prison.

This can tell you who wants peace, and who is rather comfortable with violence.

In other news, EITB tells us about Atxaga's presence in New York:

Basque writer Bernardo Atxaga at NY Festival of International Lit

The Basque well-known writer Bernardo Atxaga is taking part these days in the PEN World Voices, the New York Festival of International Literature, which has gathered 134 writers from 41 countries. The festival started on April 25 and will last until April 30.

Bernardo Atxaga was born in Asteasu, Gipuzkoa, in 1951. He is a poet and novelist, and writes both in Basque and in Spanish. He published his first book of poems Ziutateak (The Cities) in 1976 and two years later Etiopía, for which he won the Critic's Prize. Obabakoak was awarded Spain's National Literature Prize in 1989 and has been translated into more than 20 languages. Recently, a movie based on this novel has been in cinemas.



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Thursday, April 27, 2006

An Obstacle to Peace

Spanish right wingers will never learn. They rely way to much on authoritarian points of view.

They do not know how to negotiate, they rather repress and criminalize.

They are always crying wolf, knowing all too well that the main media outlets are in the hands of mercenaries whose compromise is with profits, not with telling the story, let alone uncovering the truth.

Since their schemes to derail the peace process have failed so far, the most backwards sectors in Madrid are now sending a strong statement against peace, by following through with their old strategy that consists in jailing any Basque that supports the right of Euskal Herria to its self determination.

As a result of all this, they have decided to put Arnaldo Otegi, the leader of Batasuna, in jail.

Here you have the note by Bloomberg:

Basque Separatist Sentenced for Glorifying Terrorism (Update4)

April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Spain's national court today sentenced the Basque separatist leader Arnaldo Otegi to 15 months in jail for glorifying terrorism, said a court official who declined to be identified.

Otegi, who leads the outlawed political party Batasuna, was convicted for a speech he made at a 2003 rally in honor of ETA member Jose Miguel Benarain, known as "Argala.'' Prosecutor Jesus Santos said he will not call for Otegi to be placed in jail because Otegi may appeal, El Mundo newspaper reported on its Web site.

ETA, which has killed more than 800 people, declared a permanent cease-fire on March 22 opening up the possibility of official peace negotiations with the Spanish government. Otegi, the main public face of extremist Basque nationalism, was due to play a part in those talks, which will probably begin later this year. The U.S. and the European Union both classify ETA as a terrorist organization.

"It's not going to help the peace process,'' Sebastian Balfour, professor of contemporary Spanish studies at the London School of Economics, said.

In the rally, Otegi called on the crowd to give thanks for ETA members "who gave their lives'' for the Basque homeland and to fight against the Spanish state, El Mundo reported.

The Spanish government is working for a permanent solution to the Basque conflict which can balance demands from Basques with the main opposition People's Party insistence that no concessions be made.

Basque People

ETA, whose initials stand for Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom, said it wants the Basque people to have the chance to vote on the future of the region, which straddles the border between northern Spain and southwestern France.

PP leader Mariano Rajoy March 22 demanded that the government keep up the pressure on Basque extremists even after the cease-fire declaration and said that "no political price'' can be paid in exchange for peace. The previous PP government was responsible for making Batasuna illegal in 2003.

"The government has artillery lined up on either flank,'' said Balfour. "They've got Basque nationalists on one side and the PP on the other.''

Basque Nationalist Party Chairman Josu Jon Imaz called on the government to legalize Batasuna in order to help move the peace process forward.

Batasuna

"Batasuna represents a part of Basque society and should be included in the political discussions,'' Imaz said during a debate in Madrid. "The government has important work to do to move beyond a period in which Basque political organizations have been criminalized.''

Imaz's Basque Nationalist Party, which condemns the violent campaign of the separatists, leads the government of Spain's Basque region and saw its own plans for increased autonomy defeated last year.

Otegi is facing a separate investigation over allegations that he incited 108 acts of violence that occurred during a March 9 strike in the Basque region called to protest at the deaths of two ETA members held in Spanish jails. He may also be charged with membership of a terrorist organization.

Pernando Barrena, a Batasuna spokesman, said March 22 the government should ease pressure on Basque groups to help the negotiating process.

"The government has the opportunity to create a democratic scenario and so they should deactivate all repressive measures restricting political activity,'' he said.

A Batasuna spokesman who didn't want to be identified declined to comment on Otegi's sentencing.

To contact the reporter on this story:

Ben Sills in Madrid at bsills@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: April 27, 2006 11:47 EDT


This is the international media reaction to the jailing of Otegi:

Belfast Telegraph: Basque leader is jailed for praising former head of ETA

CNews:
Prominent Basque politician jailed 15 months; Spain says he praised terrorism

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Dylan's Peace Concert

Well, is good to see the media heavy weights react to the Basque peace process.

For many years now, Hollywood enfant terribles have been making interesting statements each time they are honored at Donostia's San Sebastian Film Festival, but other than that, not many of them have done nothing more than that.

So, to read that Dylan is willing to put some of his star power behind the peace process opened up by ETA's call for a permanent ceasefire is quite refreshing.

Here is the note that appeared at Yahoo News:

Dylan to play 'peace concert' in Basque country

Thu Apr 27, 4:53 PM ET

Bob Dylan is to give a free concert for peace in the Basque resort of San Sebastian on July 11 as the city hosts a jazz festival, regional authorities said.

Ramon Etxezarreta, city councillor for cultural affairs, said US singer Dylan, who last toured in Spain in 2004, was on board for the event.

The announcement comes a month after the armed Basque separatist group ETA announced a permanent ceasefire.

ETA has been blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people in a three-decade struggle for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and parts of southwestern France. The ceasefire has raised hopes that peace is now in sight for the wealthy but troubled region.

Dylan is due to play an evening set on San Sebastien's Zurriola beach. The Europa Press news agency reported that the artist had requested the event not be turned into a political occasion.

This is BBC's coverage of the note: Dylan to play Basque peace show

Not too long ago, Spencer Tunick photographed over a thousand Basques in the nude at that same Zurriola beach.

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Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Shy Basques

The well known US photographer Spencer Tunick visited Euskal Herria for one of his famous sessions of nude crowds.

For some reason people, including Tunick, thought that the Basques were too shy to show up in great numbers to pose bare naked for the New York artist.

Well, as it happens, Basques are not that skittish about appearing in public in full nudity.

This is the report by IBL News:

Nude Photo Shoot To Waive Shyness Tag

More than 1,200 people have stripped off in the Basque town of Donostia for a nude photo shoot. The shoot was organized by Spencer Tunick, a U.S. photographer famous for his pictures of naked crowds in public spaces.

Miércoles, 26 abril 2006

April 25, 2006

"People told me that in the Basque country they are shy but this is proof that Basques aren't shy with their bodies, with life. They enjoy everything to the fullest.", Tunick said.

The shoot began inside a convention center, but moved to the beach right outside the complex where participants seemed more confident and comfortable. The session lasted five hours and ended with claps and thanks from the American photographer.

Tunick has photographed nude people in New York City as well as other urban centers around the world including London, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Vienna among others.

Oh, and by the way, if you visit Tunick's page, go ahead and sign up.

Don't be shy.

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The "Guernica Affair"

The Spaniards know all too well that "The Guernica" belongs in Euskal Herria.

Picasso said it clear, the painting was not to be back in Spain until democracy had been restored.

For all of you that do not know it, technically, Spain is not a democratic state, it is a Monarchy, and by principle, monarchies are not democracies.

But that is just a technicallity you could argue.

Well, in every day life, Spain does not behave as a democratic state either. Spain bans political parties, shuts down newspapers and radio stations, incarcerates political leaders of the opposition, torture is a widespread practice in Spanish jails.

And most important of all, those who perpetrated the attacks against civilian targets during the so called Spanish Civil War never ever faced imprisonment.

As a matter of fact, they were allowed to form a political party known today as the Partido Popular. Their ideological heirs are the ones that today are more opposed to a peace process in the Basque country. Old members of the Partido Popular are outspoken apologists of the Holocaust were millions of Roma, Poles, Germans, Slavs and Jews perished under the rule of their one time ally, Adolph Hitler.

New members are know for being a totalitarian crowd. Who can forget the way José María Aznar, Mariano Rajoy and Angel Acebes, to name a few, lied to the world in the aftermath of the attacks in Madrid on March 11th of 2004?

They did not only attempted to profit politically from the carnage, they also lied to the international community, lowering the general state of alert against other possible attacks in countries like Germany and France.

That is the reason why "The Guernica" does not belong in Spain, but in its rightful home, a museum in Euskal Herria, either in Gernika or at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

Here you have the note that appeared at The Economic Times:

Spain, Basque in conflict over Picasso's Guernica'

MADRID: At a time when Spain is hoping to launch a peace process to solve the four-decade old Basque conflict, a dispute has erupted between the Spanish and Basque authorities over Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, his most famous painting, which the Basques regard as a national symbol.

The Basque regional government has asked to borrow the masterpiece from Madrid for an exhibition in Bilbao to mark the 70th anniversary next year of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by Nazi Germany in support of General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish government, however, said the Guernica is too damaged to make another trip, having travelled to dozens of exhibitions, since Picasso created it for the 1937 Paris World Fair. The Basques, who already had sought in vain to borrow the painting for the inauguration of Bilbao’s Guggenheim art museum a decade ago, suspect its fragility is partly an excuse to make sure its presence will not boost Basque nationalist feelings.

Modern transport conditions guarantee that the canvas will not deteriorate, Basque government spokeswoman Miren Azkarate said, but culture minister Carmen Calvo vowed the Guernica will “not leave the Reina Sofia” modern art museum, which houses it.

Officially, the Guernica affair has nothing to do with hopes of ending the Basque conflict following a recent ceasefire declaration by the separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), which has killed more than 800 people in its campaign for a sovereign Basque state since 1968.

Yet in practice, Picasso’s painting cannot be separated entirely from politics, because Guernica of less than 20,000 residents is the spiritual capital of the Basques, where representatives of Spanish kings used to swear to respect Basque autonomy.

On April 26, 1937, the German Condor Legion levelled Guernica, killing about 1,500 civilians in an act that caused international outrage and inspired Picasso to paint his black-and-white cubist “cry for peace and freedom”, as Azkarate described it.

Measuring 7.76 x 3.49 m, the canvas depicting suffering people and animals in the midst of war and chaos can also be interpreted as symbolising Basque resistance to the 1939-75 Franco dictatorship, which oppressed Basque language and culture.

The Spanish government’s opposition to moving the painting “fits in badly with the times and roads of peace and freedom we want to take”, Ms Azkarate said in an apparent reference to the ETA cease-fire. Picasso did not want the Guernica to return to Spain as long as Franco ruled, and the work only came home in 1981 from New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

It has made some 40 trips to exhibitions in places ranging from Scandinavia to Britain, being rolled and unrolled until the canvas has become cracked and paint has flaked off. The Basques had hoped to make the Guernica the big attraction of the inauguration of the Guggenheim art museum in 1997, but the Spanish government called a symposium of international experts who said the painting was in too poor shape to move.

The Basque region’s ruling Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) has now asked two foreign experts to inform the Senate about the state of the painting to “avoid suspicions” of partiality, Basque senators said. Spain has not only refused requests from the Basques, but also from Japan and France to borrow the Guernica.

“I do not play politics with pieces of Spanish public heritage,” Mr Calvo said, arguing that Picasso did not intend the Guernica to be a “localist symbol” but as “a harsh symbol of the tragedy of war”.


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Ibarretxe and His Peace Proposal

Seems like Ibarretxe has a new project in the works.

This is what EITb published:

Basque premier presents plan to settle peace in Euskadi

The Basque premier, Juan José Ibarretxe, has presented today the Plan for Peace and Coexistence aiming to settle the process arising from ETA's cease-fire declaration. The text gives "an essential role to terrorism victims" in the peace process, bets for acknowledging the pain caused recovering memory, and highlights the necessity to prevent torture and bring Basque prisoners to Basque jails, apart from emphasising civil and political rights.

After a meeting with his governing associates Joseba Azkarraga (nationalist EA) and Javier Madrazo (communist EB), Ibarretxe has unveiled the agreed text. The plan will be sent to the Basque Parliament and accepts suggestions from the rest of parties. Among others, the Basque Government will promote a solidarity law for terrorism victims recognising their status.

The Basque premier has said that the plan is "the contribution of the Basque Government to the peace process, to head towards a reconciled society," and has added that "no peace process can be built on oblivion."

Five main keys

There are five central points in the plan: the defence and promotion of human rights, solidarity with terrorism victims recovering historic memory, rewarding Franco's victims, defence of civil and political rights, and preventing detainees' and inmates' torture. Each of these issues includes a "number of initiatives to try to recognise and alleviate suffering and prevent new violations of human rights."


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Aguirre and Steer


The British consul in Bilbao, Derek Doyle (C), jokes with the son of the first Basque president Jose Antonio Aguirre, Joseba Aguirre (L) and the son of George L. Steer, George Steer (R), in Gernika, near Bilbao April 26, 2006. A bust of George L.Steer was unveiled as part of commemorative services on the 69th anniversary of the bombing of Gernika during the Spanish Civil war. REUTERS/Vincent West

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Gernika Honors George Steer

A Basque dancer (R) performs an 'aurresku,' for the son of George L. Steer, George Steer (2nd L) during the unveiling of a bust of the war correspondent in Gernika, near Bilbao April 26, 2006. The bust of Steer was unveiled as part of commemorative services on the 69th anniversary of the bombing of Gernika during the Spanish civil war. REUTERS/Vincent West

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George Steer's Bust in Gernika

A Basque flag with a black mourning ribbon flies behind the bust of war correspondent George L. Steer in Gernika, near Bilbao April 26, 2006. The bust of Steer was unveiled as part of commemorative services on the 69th anniversary of the bombing of Gernika during the Spanish Civil war. REUTERS/Vincent West

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Gernika: The First Report

The Times has published the original report of the fascist bombing of the sacred Basque city of Gernika by George Steer.

Here you have it:

Times Online

April 26, 2006


This article by George Steer of The Times brought to the world news of the massacre by German pilots of more than 1,000 civilians in the Basque town. The outrage inspired Pablo Picasso’s masterwork, and Steer has now been honoured for the piece
THE TRAGEDY OF GUERNICA

TOWN DESTROYED IN AIR ATTACK

EYE-WITNESS’S ACCOUNT

From Our Special Correspondent

BILBAO, April 27 1937

Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of this open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter, during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes consisting of three German types, Junkers and Heinkel bombers and Heinkel fighters, did not cease unloading on the town bombs weighing from 1,000lb. downwards and, it is calculated, more than 3,000 two-pounder aluminium incendiary projectiles. The fighters, meanwhile, plunged low from above the centre of the town to machine- gun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in. the fields.

The whole of Guernica was soon in flames except the historic Casa de Jontas with its rich archives of the Basque race, where the ancient Basque Parliament used to sit. The famous oak of Guernica, the dried old stump of 600 years and the young new shoots of this century, was also untouched. Here the kings of Spain used to take the oath to respect the democratic rights (fueros) of Vizcaya and in return received a promise of allegiance as suzerains with the democratic title of Señor, not Rey Vizcaya. The noble parish, church of Santa Maria was also undamaged except for the beautiful chapter house, which was struck by an incendiary bomb.

At 2 am today when I visited the town the whole of it was a horrible sight, flaming from end to end. The reflection of the flames could be seen in the clouds of smoke above the mountains from 10 miles away. Throughout the night houses were falling until the streets became long heaps of red impenetrable debris.

Many of the civilian survivors took the long trek from Guernica to Bilbao in antique solid-wheeled Basque farmcarts drawn by oxen. Carts piled high with such household possessions as could be saved from the conflagration clogged the roads all night. Other survivors were evacuated in Government lorries, but many were forced to remain round the burning town lying on mattresses or looking for lost relatives and children, while units of the fire brigades and the Basque motorized police under the personal direction of the Minister of the Interior, Señor Monzon, and his wife continued rescue work till dawn.

CHURCH BELL ALARM

In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than in the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history. Guernica was not a military objective. A factory producing war material lay outside the town and was untouched. So were two barracks some distance from the town. The town lay far behind the lines. The object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralization of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race. Every fact bears out this appreciation, beginning with the day when the deed was done.

Monday was the customary market day in Guernica for the country round. At 4.30 pm, when the market was full and peasants were still coming in, the church bell rang the alarm for approaching aeroplanes, and the population sought refuge in cellars and in the dugouts pre pared following the bombing of the civilian population of Durango on March 31, which opened General Mola’s offensive in the north. The people are said to have shown a good spirit. A Catholic priest took charge and perfect order was maintained.

Five minutes later a single German bomber appeared, circled over the town at a low altitude, and then dropped six heavy bombs, apparently aiming for the station. The bombs with a shower of grenades fell on a former institute and on houses and streets surrounding it. The aeroplane then went away. In another five minutes came a second bomber, which threw the same number of bombs into the middle of the town. About a quarter of an hour later three Junkers arrived to continue the work of demolition, and thenceforward the bombing grew in intensity and was continuous, ceasing only with the approach of dusk at 7.45. The whole town of 7,000 inhabitants, plus 3,000 refugees, was slowly and systematically pounded to pieces. Over a radius of five miles round a detail of the raiders’ technique was to bomb separate caserios, or farmhouses. In the night these burned like little candles in the hills. All the villages around were bombed with the same intensity as the town itself, and at Mugica, a little group of houses at the head of the Guernica inlet, the population was machine-gunned for 15 minutes.

RHYTHM OF DEATH

It is impossible to state yet the number of victims. In the Bilbao Press this morning they were reported as "fortunately small," but it is feared that this was an understatement in order not to alarm the large refugee population of Bilbao. In the hospital of Josefinas, which was one of the first places bombed, all the 42 wounded militiamen it sheltered were killed outright. In a street leading downhill from the Casa de Juntas I saw a place where 50 people, nearly all women and children, are said to have been trapped in an air raid refuge under a mass of burning wreckage. Many were killed in the fields, and altogether the deaths may run into hundreds. An elderly priest named Aronategui was killed by a bomb while rescuing children from a burning house.

The tactics of the bombers, which may be of interest to students of the new military science, were as follows: — First, small parties of aeroplanes threw heavy bombs and hand grenades all over the town, choosing area after area in orderly fashion. Next came fighting machines which swooped low to machine-gun those who ran in panic from dugouts, some of which had already been penetrated by 1,000lb bombs, which make a hole 25ft. deep. Many of these people were killed as they ran. A large herd of sheep being brought in to the market was also wiped out. The object of this move was apparently to drive the population under ground again, for next as many as 12 bombers appeared at a time dropping heavy and incendiary bombs upon the ruins. The rhythm of this bombing of an open town was, therefore, a logical one: first, hand grenades and heavy bombs to stampede the population, then machine-gunning to drive them below, next heavy and incendiary bombs to wreck the houses and burn them on top of their victims.

The only counter-measures the Basques could employ, for they do not possess sufficient aeroplanes to face the insurgent fleet, were those provided by the heroism of the Basque clergy. These blessed and prayed for the kneeling crowds—Socialists, Anarchists, and Communists, as well as the declared faithful - in the crumbling dugouts.

When I entered Guernica after midnight houses were crashing on either side, and it was utterly impossible even for firemen to enter the centre of the town. The hospitals of Josefinas and Convento de Santa Clara were glowing heaps of embers, all the churches except that of Santa Maria were destroyed, and the few houses which still stood were doomed. When I revisited Guernica this afternoon most of the town was still burning and new fires had broken out About 30 dead were laid out in a ruined hospital.

A CALL TO BASQUES

The effect here of the bombardment of Guernica, the Basques’ holy city, has been profound and has led President Aguirre to issue the following statement in this morning’s Basque Press:— "The German airmen in the service of the Spanish rebels, have bombarded Guernica, burning the historic town which is held in such veneration by all Basques. They have sought to wound us in the most sensitive of our patriotic sentiments, once more making it entirely clear what Euzkadis may expect of those who do not hesitate to destroy us down to the very sanctuary which records the centuries of our liberty and our democracy.

"Before this outrage all we Basques must react with violence, swearing from the bottom of our hearts to defend the principles’ of our people with unheard of stubbornness and heroism if the case requires it. We cannot hide the gravity of the moment; but victory can never be won by the invader if, raising our spirits to heights of strength and determination, we steel ourselves to his defeat.

"The enemy has advanced in. many parts elsewhere to be driven out of them afterwards. I do not hesitate to affirm that here the same thing will happen. May to-day’s outrage be one spur more to do it with all speed."


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Gernika to Honor Steer

The commemoration of the bombing against Gernika by the Nazi Luftwaffe supporting Francisco Franco's attack on the young Basque republic will contain a new element this year.

George Steer, author of "The Guernica Tree" will be honored by the inhabitants of the Basque town.

Here you have the note that appeared at no other place but Steer's publishing home, The Times:

The Times

April 26, 2006

Guernica honours Times man for telling its story



GEORGE STEER, the journalist for The Times whose report of the German bombing of Guernica outraged the world and inspired Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece, is honoured today in the Basque town where the massacre happened.

Exactly 69 years after the Luftwaffe Condor Legion squadron attacked the civilian population of the Basque town on a busy market day, a bronze bust of Steer will be unveiled and a street named after him.

As part of the build-up to the 70th anniversary next year, the Basque authorities wanted to remember the journalist whose report brought the news of the massacre to the world.

Underneath Steer’s bust, in Basque, Spanish and English, are the words: “George Steer, journalist, who told the world the story about Guernica.”

Calle George Steer is finally to become a street name in the ancient capital of the Basques after a 25-year campaign by a group dedicated to reminding the world of the horror that was unleashed by the German bombers.

Steer, who was covering the Spanish Civil War for The Times, was among the first journalists to reach Guernica just hours after more than 1,600 civilians were killed by the bombing and subsequent firestorm on April 26, 1937.

He waited to find proof that the Nazis were responsible before filing a report on the attack: three small bomb cases stamped with the German Imperial Eagle.

At this point, Nazi Germany had signed the Non-Intervention Pact and German troops were officially playing no role in the war.

But Steer’s report uncovered the lie. It read: “Guernica was not a military objective . . . the object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralisation of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race.” It appeared in The Times, was syndicated to The New York Times and went round the world.

When Picasso, who was in exile in Paris, read the news he was outraged and changed a canvas that he was preparing for an exhibition.

The result was Guernica, the black-and-white painting that has come to symbolise the horror of war.

Every year, the authorities in Guernica mark the anniversary of the bombing, remembering the dead at the cemetery in the town.

After the ceremony, the bust by a Romanian artist, Septimiu Jugrestan, 23, will be unveiled.

Nicholas Rankin, the British author and former journalist for the BBC, who has written a biography of Steer called Telegram from Guernica, will be at the ceremony along with Steer’s son, George Barton Steer.

Mr Rankin told The Times: “Steer told the world the Germans were secretly bombing Spain which caused outrage around the world. It was a great story, like the Iran-Contra scandal.

“Picasso read his report, was outraged and started on Guernica on May 1, 1937. His black and white painting was not a photograph but almost like that. It was his response to this news story.”

He added: “Steer did a fantastic job. His was not the first report but it was the one which caused the most impact. It is a real pleasure to be able to honour him.”

Alberto Gadeka, of the Commission for the Investigation of Guernica, which has campaigned for a street to be named after Steer, said: “He reported the truth of what happened here to the world.

“His extensive report brought it home to people. He deserves to be honoured after so long.”

Steer went on to write a book about his experience in the Basque town, called The Guernica Tree, named after the former meeting place of the region’s parliament.

Born in 1909 in South Africa, Steer was the son of a newspaper manager, who studied at Oxford.

He reported on the Ethiopian war with Italy for The Times and came to know Emperor Haile Selassie.

Steer was then sent to Spain to cover the civil war between the Republican forces and General Francisco Franco’s Nationalists.

He also covered the Winter War in Finland, before joining up when the Second World War started.

He served in Ethiopia in a propaganda unit and then was transferred to India where he fought the Japanese.

Steer was killed in a car crash in 1944.

Too bad not The Times nor any other news outlet had the chance to come up with other brave reporters willing to tell the world what was done to the Basques from 1937 through 1975.

If that have happened, then the infamous line of "the 800" had never seen the light.

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Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Derbez and the Ikurriña

Supporters hold up a Basque flag behind Mexico's Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez in Mexico City, Tuesday, April 25, 2006. Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that five men and a woman accused of being members of the Basque separatist group ETA can be extradited to Spain to face terrorism charges. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

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Farewell to Gorostidi

The Basque Country is mourning the departure of one of its great leaders.

Here you have the note that appeared at EITb:

Prominent leader of leftwing nationalist HB dies at 62

Prominent leader of the leftwing nationalist, Jokin Gorostidi, has died today at the Donostia hospital, in the Basque city of Donostia-San Sebastián, where he was admitted last Friday March 21. He suffered a heart attack which produced him a deep coma when he was travelling from Deba to Donostia-San Sebastián by train, EiTB has said. The trial was then postponed until May 8.

Born in the Basque town of Tolosa in 1944, he was married to the former leader of HB, Itziar Aizpurua. Both lived in Deba since the 80s, a town in the province of Gipuzkoa.

Gorostidi, who was sued in the summary 18/98, was to testify last week. He was one of the 15 ETA members tried and condemned to death charged with the "Burgos affair" in 1970 under the Franco regime.

The leftwing nationalist leader was a mechanic by profession, but started his political militancy within the trade union Comisiones Obreras, before becoming member of the Basque armed group ETA in the 60s. He was arrested in the Basque town of Eibar, and was one of the 15 ETA members who were condemned to death in 1970. After the amnesty, he became member of the leftwing nationalist HASI and was one of the founders of the Herri Batasuna party, being part of its National Committee until 1992.


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Basque in Literary Toast

Something big is cooking in New York.

And it seems like they will be ingredients from many parts of the world.

Most important of all, Euskal Herria will be present. This is the report by The International Herald Tribune:

Speaking in tongues: A literary toast

By Dinitia Smith The New York Times

TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 2006

New York Some 6,500 languages are spoken in the world today. And according to the 2000 census, you can hear at least 92 of them on the streets of New York. You can probably hear more; the census lumps some of them together simply as "other."
But by the end of the century, linguists predict, half of the world's languages will be dead, victims of globalization. English is the major culprit, slowly extinguishing the other tongues that lie in its path. Esther Allen, a professor of modern languages at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, calls English "the most invasive linguistic species in the world." Spanish and Hindi are also spreading, subsuming the dialects of South American Indians, and of the Indian subcontinent.
In the next two weeks, however, some of these endangered idioms can be heard at two international literary festivals in New York that celebrate languages big and small, as well as the power and resilience of words.
The PEN American Center is holding its second World Voices Festival of International Literature, beginning Tuesday and running through Sunday. Allen is the curator of the gathering, and the novelist Salman Rushdie is its chairman as well as a participant in a discussion Wednesday on "Faith and Reason" - the festival theme - with 134 writers from 41 countries.
Among the 58 events is a panel, "Writers on Their Languages," with the novelist and poet Bernardo Atxaga, who writes in the endangered language of Euskera, or Basque; and Dubravka Ugresic, whose most recent novel is "The Ministry of Pain" and who writes in Croatian. Other writers scheduled to participate include Orhan Pamuk, from Turkey, E.L. Doctorow and Martin Amis.
Then there is the People's Poetry Gathering, from May 3 through May 7, sponsored by City Lore and the Bowery Poetry Club. There will be some 60 poets reading their work in English and in their native tongues. Among the highlights is a performance of poetry and music by Kewulay Kamara, whom City Lore commissioned to return to his boyhood home in Dankawali, Sierra Leone, in 2004 to recreate an epic poem destroyed during the recent civil war.
There will also be a reading by Robert Bly of some of his translations and his own poetry, and a program on endangered languages at the United Nations, co-sponsored by the United Nations SRC Society of Writers, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the World Intellectual Property Organization.
American publishers have one of the lowest translation rates in the Western world, according to Andrew Grabois, a consultant for Bowker, which tracks the publishing business. Only 3 percent of books published in the United States are translations, Grabois said, compared with, for example, 27 percent in Italy. As a result, linguists contend, much of the English-speaking world knows little of other countries and cultures.
English may be eating up other languages, but paradoxically translation into English is vital for their survival, Rushdie said.
"People are not going to learn Serbian," he said. "If Serbian writers are going to survive in the world, they will have to be translated into English."
Allen said, "The whole point of this festival is inviting these people from outside English into the conversation, and making a place for them in English."
Among those invited to the Poetry Gathering is Kamara, of Sierra Leone. Kamara's native language is Kuranko, part of the Manden language group in West Africa. His family, the Kamaras, are members of the Fina caste: orators, who recite at ceremonies like weddings and funerals. Kamara came to the United States when he was 18. Now 52, he teaches in the African-American studies department at John Jay College in New York. His epic poem "Voices of Kings" tells of the origins of the Fina caste. One part relates the story of how the Prophet Muhammad rewarded an old couple for feeding him when he was hungry:
The old man returned to manhood
The old woman returned to womanhood
The child they bore
They called Fisana
Muhammad names Fisana and his Fina descendants "the voices of faith."
The epic has many parts, and recitation can continue for hours, even days, Kamara said. He has also interwoven it with his own story.
"It's not linear. You can start anywhere," he said.
Another endangered language being highlighted in both the Poetry Gathering and the PEN festival is Euskera, or Basque. Atxaga, the Basque writer, wrote in an e-mail message from Spain that he is fighting to preserve Euskera because it is "a language we know well, it helps us to live."
Yet he said he disagrees with the idea that language gives insights into a people's consciousness and culture. "Presumably, a national epic can be translated," he said.
"All you need to do is read the thinking of the Nazis," he said. To them, "the German language was unique and carried with it a singular concept of the world and life, revealing the essence of the German people," he said. "This quickly reached absurd extremes."
Ugresic noted that the same thing has occurred in the former Yugoslavia, where language has become intensely politicized.
Serbo-Croatian has broken up into Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, all of them very similar but with speakers of each language claiming - sometimes violently - the supremacy of their own.
Beatings and book burnings have occurred when one group objected to the language of the author. "Crazy linguists are ready to project many things into languages," she said by phone from Amsterdam, where she lives. She added that languages are always in a continuous state of transformation, and that to try and get in the way is useless.
"Some languages are dying and some are appearing," she said. "That is a much deeper and more interesting dynamic."


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Monday, April 24, 2006

Difficulties, Nudes and Altarpieces

There is a little bit about everything today at EITb.

Here you have it:

Basque premier: "The process will continue despite difficulties"

Following the weekend attacks targeting an insurance office and a hardware store, the Basque premier, Juan José Ibarretxe, has affirmed today that despite "difficulties," the process "will continue." After insisting that ETA's cease-fire must be "complete," he has addressed Batasuna's world saying "there's not political solving dialogue" with violence.

In an interview for the public radio station Radio Euskadi, he has affirmed that the information he has accessed on the weekend attacks is the same everybody else has, and has assured that violence can't be "a companion" in a peace process.

Ibarretxe has pointed out that there is "a certain confusion" and citizenship needs "clear messages." "Despite difficulties, we will push the peace process forwards as well as the process of political normalisation," he has added.

The Basque premier has said that ETA's cease-fire must be "universal" and "no group can be excluded." "There can't be any kind of violence," he has emphasised.

Contemporary artist Spencer Tunick is widely known for his nude figures. This time, the photographer has chosen the Basque city of Donostia-San Sebastián for his public setting.

At first, he expected about 300 volunteers to attend for his new creation, but he has been gladly surprised when about 1,000 have been attracted to the place. All of them have posed for his contemporary picture.

The session was scheduled to begin at 6am, but it has been delayed until 8am to finish at 12:30 in the interior rooms of the Kursaal convention centre, to make the most of the daylight.

But there is one thing he has requested: no famous in these sorts of pictures. The North-American artist seeks to find the "individual within the mass," but in any case should the attention focus on a specific person, he has stressed.

"People told me that in the Basque country they are shy but this is probe that Basques aren't shy with their bodies, with life. They enjoy everything to the fullest and I am so happy that I want to come back to the Basque country," Tunick said after the shoot.

Photography Foundation Ordóñez Falcón (COFF) with the support of the Gipuzkoa county council and private sponsors, have made this work possible. A sample could be available next year in Donostia-San Sebastián.

Bergara: Santa Maria de Oxirando

In Guipuzcoa, the first route starts off in the Alto Deba, in Bergara. There, in the Parish of Santa Marina de Oxirondo, visitors can contemplate one of the milestones in rococo altarpiece work in the Basque Country. The responsibility for this work lay with the brilliant Guipuzcoan designer Miguel de Irazusta, a maestro educated in the Court and familiar with the tastes that were becoming the fashion in Europe.

Oñati: Parish Church of San Miguel, University Chapel, Convent of Bidaurreta

In Oñati, a place that is extremely well known for its artistic and sculptural wealth, four magnificent examples of Renaissance and baroque altarpieces can be visited. The oldest of these is the altarpiece of the Piedad in the parish church of San Miguel. Its excellent level of artistic quality and its size make it a magnificent example of the Renaissance era, with the rich texturing of its figures being especially outstanding.

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Sunday, April 23, 2006

Sirene: Basque Artist

Thanks to her post "Miss Leading" at her blog "Sirenesworld" I found out about Irene Alexandra's web page titled Sirene's World.

Her art is both intriguing and mesmerizing.

The best part is, she publishes Sirene's World in Euskera, Spanish and English.

And by the way, I think I'm kin to the use of lauburus when it comes to the drawing in question.

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Friday, April 21, 2006

Basque Victims of Torture in Spain

For some reason I forgot to mention the report by the Clearing House from Australia concerning their investigation on torture carried out in Spain against Basque political prisoners.

Then this morning, Mizgin, author of the blog Rasti about Kurdish issues, sent me an email about the coverage by Istanbul Indymedia (Turkey) about this note.

Well, here you have it:

The Spanish Inquisition

(By the way, it takes too long for the video to show, so, if you want to see it, you can go to the web edition of Basque newspaper Gara)

For years now, the Basque people of Spain have alleged that Spanish police have regularly tortured suspects, arrested for having connections with the Basque separatist group ETA. Recently, those allegations have been backed up by the UN Human Rights Commission.

Broadcast Dateline 06/05/06 - SBS Australia

REPORTER: David O’Shea

Four years ago, Susana Alesanco and Juan Cortes were like any other couple getting on with their lives.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): I was 31 years old, I was at university, on a research project, I was… things were fine with me. I had my partner, my life was fine.

But on January 17, 2002, their world fell apart. Heavily armed police raided Susana’s family home. This is actual footage of the arrest.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): Lots of cops entered my home carrying torches and machine guns. It was like a scene from a movie.

The police suspected that Susana and Juan belonged to the violent Basque separatist group ETA. They were taken to a secret location in Madrid for interrogation. Under Spain’s tough anti-terror laws, they could be held incommunicado for up to five days, isolated from their families and lawyers.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): I had no idea why I was there, they asked me so many questions, about my friends, about who I went out with, about my brothers. Thousands of questions about where I had worked, about the trips I had taken. I got the feeling that everything I’d done in my life had been a crime.

Like thousands of Basques before her, Susana alleges she was tortured during the five days she was held incommunicado. Basque human rights activists produced these images which recreate some of the torture commonly described by former prisoners.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): Without a doubt the worst moment of all, the worst experience was in the last interrogation when, when they simulated a rape. They positioned me, ready to rape me. For three days they had been threatening to rape me. By that stage I , by then I was convinced they’d do it.

Susana says that she was deprived of sleep, sexually assaulted, asphyxiated, threatened with execution, and electrocuted - all methods of torture which inflicted pain without leaving marks.

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): They kept me naked, threw water on me, they applied electricity to me….it’s hard to believe these things can happen in a democracy and very hard to prove. But that is what happened to me, I went through that and by the fourth day I couldn’t stand it any longer.

REPORTER (Translation): So there was a point where they broke you?

SUSANA ALESANCO, (Translation): Yes, that is right, completely.

At that point Susana signed a statement saying that Juan was a member of ETA and that she was a collaborator. This admission was later retracted. Since that time Susana and Juan have been out on conditional release, awaiting trial. They face a 7-year sentence.

Susana’s story is not unique. Theo Van Boven, the former United Nations special rapporteur on torture, has looked at scores of similar cases and concludes the Spanish police torture to extract confessions.

THEO VAN BOVEN, FORMER UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON TORTURE: The suspects will be softened up after torture and they will sign statements, the type of statements the government wishes them to make. That's one thing. And I think also that torture has quite a long tradition in this country. We had the Franco dictatorship up till - what is it? - 1975. And so it has been rooted, I think, in a long history and you don’t wipe that out from one day to another.

The government in Madrid dismisses torture allegations, saying they are part of ETA strategy to discredit the Spanish state. Antonio Camacho is the powerful Secretary of State for Security.

REPORTER (Translation): In 2006 there’s still torture in Spain, How can this be?

ANTONIO CAMACHO, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SECURITY, (Translation): Look, this government is very clear abot this, and our daily polices demonstrate it, that we will not accept any kind of torture.

While the Spanish Government says it will not accept torture, the well-known case of Unai Romano is difficult to explain. This is his photo before and after his time in police custody in September 2001. He accused the police of beating him. The government said the injuries were self-inflicted and is suing him for defamation.

The former United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Theo Van Boven, was so concerned at reports from Basque human rights groups that prisoners were being tortured, he listed Spain alongside countries like Indonesia and Uzbekistan in his 2002 report. The then Spanish government was not happy.

THEO VAN BOVEN: They thought that my report and the recommendations should be put in the wastepaper basket - that was the only suitable place where my report should stay.

So outraged was Madrid, Van Boven was invited to Spain to investigate the facts on the ground. But as he tells this Barcelona conference on torture, the government's attempts to convince him his sources were wrong backfired.

THEO VAN BOVEN: The visit in Madrid was tense and tough. The authorities - some of them - and members of parliament went far beyond a technical discussion. They wanted to give me a lecture, particularly on the Basque problem, and I could not... I just felt this was an obsession.

It’s impossible to understand the Spanish Government’s obsession with the Basques without understanding the Basque obsession with independence from Spain.

Until the 1970s Basques were not permitted to use their language, but they never lost their strong sense of national identity. In Hernani, near the French border, these people meet to sing Basque folk songs every Sunday morning. From windows around the square, people hang photos of Basques held in Spanish jails and banners demanding they be brought back to Basque prisons.

ETA has waged a horrific campaign on the Spanish state for decades. It has killed over 800 people in terrorist acts over the past 20 years. The government responds by sentencing the killers to thousands of years in prison. The current socialist government has continued the hardline response instigated by the previous conservative administration.

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): I think the struggle against terrorism has been maintained by all democratic governments throughout the history of this country. This government has been particularly careful to maintain pressure in the police struggle against ETA. And consequently, there have been more than 200 arrests in the two years or so that this government has been in power.

ETA’s bombs and the government’s draconian response have polarised opinion in Spain about the Basques.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): They think we walk around t he streets shooting people, blowing things up. They think we go around collecting revolutionary taxes and so on.

Rosa Urizar de Paz knows a lot about the struggle for independence. Her son joined ETA when he was 22 and has spent the last 15 years in prison. Rosa makes no apology for her family’s nationalism.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): This sign here means that everybody in life must sacrifice something sothat a few don’t have to sacrifice everything. That is what it means. This one was killed at the hands of the police.

Rosa’s favourite bar is clearly pro-independence. It is a virtual shrine to the many Basque prisoners.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): Look how beautiful our girls are.

Among them is a photo of her 22-year-old daughter Amaia. She was arrested in October 2004 and is still in prison. She, too, has accused the police of torture. Her case provoked outrage in the Basque country after she wrote a graphic statement describing the torture.

AMAIA, STATEMENT: They were all laughing, one of them held me by my neck while the other put the barrel of the gun in and out of my vagina and grabbed my breasts very violently. I could feel the cold metal inside me and they kept saying it was loaded and would be my fault if it went off.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): you know what hurt me the most? Have you read what she wrote about the torture? Of all those things, the thing I found most upsetting was the terrible loneliness…those poor kids suffer when incommunicado, while they’re being held by the civil guard or the police.

When Rosa visits her other daughter at work, she finds her on the phone to Amaia. Each week she is allowed a 5-minute call from her prison in Madrid.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): How are you darling? Yes Okay. How I wish I could hug you, very well my love, do you need anything? What about the dentist?

Amaia has now been in custody for 1.5 years and can be held for up to four years without trial.

ROSA URIZAR DE PAZ, (Translation): Okay my darling, I love you too darling. Bye.

On her way home Rosa bumps into a friend whose daughter is also in jail and has also complained that she was tortured.

FRIEND, (Translation): Some are eventually freed, having committed no crime at all, they have been tortured, put in jail, and they have had their lives ruined. Most of them are just kids. Just kids. Maybe because we’re talking like this we’ll get ten years and join our girls.

Outside the Basque country the allegations of torture haven’t gained much traction. Anyone with a connection to Basque nationalism tends to be dismissed as a terrorist sympathiser by the national government and media.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): There are many here who turn a blind eye to torture here but show concern about torture in Ireland, torture in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Palestine or Iraq

Martxelo Otamendi was arrested in 2003. He was one of nine directors of a Basque language newspaper called 'Egunkaria'. Five of them say they were tortured and they became known as 'the VIP torture victims'.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): At the time of all the outrage about the American torturers in that Iraqi prison, I said those images were of Egunkaria detainees. We just need to change the hood colour and swap the uniform of the marines.for the uniform of the civil guard.

Otamendi was arrested and his newspaper was shut down on the grounds that it was controlled and financed by ETA - an allegation that is yet to be proven.

In San Sebastian, thousands of people turned out for the city’s largest-ever demonstration. Meanwhile, Otamendi was being interrogated in Madrid about interviews he had conducted with the ETA high command. During the five days of incommunicado detention, he says he suffered stress positions, a mock execution, sexual harassment and asphyxiation.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, FORMER TV PRESENTER (Translation): And then twice I was subjected to bag torture, which consists of putting a plastic bag you’re your head. And with a plastic bag over your head you feel like you are going to choke. It’s not a big plastic bag from a market with enough oxygen to last two hours, no it becomes a mask that moulds to your face, and the feeling of suffocation is immediate.

When the former TV presenter Martxelo Otamendi spoke out about his experience, it convinced many doubters that torture was indeed taking place.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): People wonder if they are capable of torturing the newspaper’s directors, what would they do to a 20-year-old, who’s unknown, not famous, somebody nobody knows? And someone the media won’t pay much attention to.

Otamendi believes the last conservative government ordered the closure of the paper and tortured him and the four others as a warning to other Basque nationalists.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): I think that with torture as I’ve said before, in the black period of the Popular Party They wanted to give Basques a shock, to frighten them, so they would give up their cause. The politicians’ plan was to close the newspaper, detain the staff and torture them. So that people would get the message that they were serious.

REPORTER, (Translation): But you don’t have any proof that it’s government policy, that’s just speculation.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): Yes, of course, it’s an opinion.

When the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Theo Van Boven, finished his state-sponsored tour his report to the UN Human Rights Ccommission was damning.

THEO VAN BOVEN: It is my considered view in the light of the internal consistency of the information received and the precision of factual details, that these allegations of torture and ill-treatment are certainly not all invented and practices of this kind, though not systematic, were more than sporadic and incidental.

The Spanish delegation in Geneva was furious.

SPANISH AMBASSADOR TO UN, (Translation): someone’s made a big mistake, and those who know the country and it’s problems, know who it is. On reading the report, no one with any knowledge of our country would recognise Spain in it.

When the Spanish Ambassador to the UN couldn’t believe that the proudly democratic Spain was being tainted with torture.

SPANISH AMBASSADOR TO UN, (Translation): All that’s left for me to do in the name of a truly democratic state that leads in the defence and promotion of human rights is to express disappointment and bitterness at the lost opportunity and the outrageous injustice that the rapporteur’s report represents.

It was all the worse for the ambassador because he was the one who had advised his government to invite the special rapporteur to Spain to prove that torture did not exist. Once he had read his statement, the entire delegation got up and walked out.

THEO VAN BOVEN: They were extremely - what should I say? - disappointed. "We invited him, we had a certain scenario in mind and he did not fulfil our expectations." So I think that added to the fact they reacted so strongly.

It was a difficult time for Spain. Just two weeks earlier, terrorist attacks had rocked Madrid and prime minister Aznar was voted out of office for trying to blame the attack on ETA. The new socialist government claims that torture allegations are being properly investigated.

REPORTER< (Translation): But when Basques have been detained under the regime of incommunicado detention, do you agree that there have been incidents of torture?

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): You can not generalise, each claim of torture must be investigated.

REPORTER, (Translation): Let’s look at some examples of people reported having been tortured.

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): You can tell me the allegations, but it doesn’t mean there’s a serious investigation. European countries conduct serious judicial investigations in the most appropriate manner and with the required guarantees for all parties, in order to investigate these matters. A journalistic investigation is not acceptable for a state which follows the rule of law.

In the Basque country the issue of torture still strikes a raw political nerve. Thousands of people turned up for this anti-torture rally in San Sebastian in February.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): The big turnout was expected, because people are pissed off with the practice of torture. Because people want it to end once and for all.

THEO VAN BOVEN: For long in Spain it was a sort of taboo subject in Spain. Officially torture did not exist, or hardly existed in this country. Now this is raised at this meeting and I think this is a beginning of a movement against torture in Spain which is important.

But despite the change of government, allegations of torture during incommunicado detention continue.

REPORTER: There is no denying the reality that last year, during the Zapatero Government, there were over 50 cases documented in the Basque country of torture again. So, I mean, 50 too many, no?

THEO VAN BOVEN: It is apparently a practice that is very persistent so therefore I think in addition to accommodating and changing the political climate there must be a firmer position taken on the issues of torture also by the present government.

REPORTER: Do you see that ever happening?

THEO VAN BOVEN: Well, I'm hopeful.

The present government is clearly sensitive about the persistent allegations of torture.

REPORTER, (Translation): There are many people and many organisations, including Human Rights Watch, the Council of Europe, Amnesty International and 37 groups that met in Barcelona that have agreed that there is torture here in incommunicado detention…

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): Which country in the European Union, hasn’t had cases of torture reported?

REPORTER, (Translation): In the European Union as far as I know, Mr Theo van Bovan, the former rapporteur, said that there used to be in Northern Ireland, but now most of the allegations concern Spain.

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): Turn that off for a moment…

REPORTER, (Translation): No…

ANTONIO CAMACHO, (Translation): Turn it off for a moment! Let’s talk about the terms of this interview, turn it off. Turn it off for a moment.

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): The Spanish government won’t own up to torture until a solution to the Basque conflict is found.

REPORTER, (Translation): Why can’t they admit it before then?

MARTXELO OTAMENDI, (Translation): Because if they do they will go to jail. The Minister would go to jail, it would be like in Argentina and Chile, where senior police and military officers are being prosecuted. In 20 years time some judges will start doing that here too. But I want this done now.

The prospects for a political solution to the Basque problem took a dramatic turn for the better last month. For the first time in its history ETA declared a permanent cease-fire as a prelude to negotiations.

ETA, (Translation): At the end of this process Basque citizens must have the final word and decide on their future.

Any decision on the future for the Basque country is going to have to deal with the issue of torture which has poisoned trust in the Spanish Government.

PEOPLE, (Translation): We are the Basque warriors to set the Basque country free. We are prepared to give our blood for freedom. Let us warriors all go and get our flags.

After decades of violent struggle, it will not be easy to bridge the gulf of trust between the Basques and the Spanish Government.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Thanks for the heads up Mizgin.

Update: Mizgin provides with an excellent analysis of the video about torture against Basques in Spain in his post "Similarity and its discontents". It is a must read post, mainly because of the parallels he draws between the Basque and the Kurdish situation.

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