Terrorism in Europe

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Anti-ETA peace march in Madrid on January 13

Three young Ecuadorians unfurl a hand painted yellow banner on Madrid’s metro. “The Ecuadorian people support the victims of ETA,” one reads aloud as the whistle sounds and the train pulls out of the station. Next to the slogan the banner carries photos of Ecuadorians Diego Armando Estacio and Carlos Alonso Palate, the latest victims of Spanish terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). Along with 200,000 other residents of Madrid, these three are on their way to march against ETA’s violence.

“How come you didn’t put ‘etarras’ instead of ‘victims of ETA’?” one of the young Ecuadorians asks, before being corrected by another. Etarras are not victims, but the members of ETA: perpetrators of the violence that returned unexpectedly to Spain on the 30th of December after a nine month ceasefire. As we reach the amassing crowd at Plaza Colon, the three produce an Ecuadorian flag and disappear in a flurry of blue, yellow and red.

The confusion over the term “etarra” shows the extent to which, until now, Spain’s immigrants have been exempted from this domestic political issue. ETA is a terrorist group that has agitated for the independence of northern Spain’s Basque region for nearly forty years. Their victims have been Spaniards from all walks of life, with the main targets including politicians, police officers and university professors.

ETA counts on some, although by no means complete, support in the Basque region. Even amongst those Basques who are staunchly pro-independence, there are many who reject the group’s terrorism. And it is roundly hated amongst the rest of the Spanish population. Such a forceful hatred can be difficult to comprehend for New Zealanders; it is the result of decades of bombings, abductions and murders in the cities and streets where Spaniards live.

In Spain to work and send money home to their families, most immigrants have little interest in the question of Basque independence and they have largely kept out of both the violence and the debate. But the Ecuadorian community has been brought into this issue with the death of two of its own, and it was one of the community’s main associations in Spain that took the initiative to organise the peace demonstration in Madrid.

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Anti-ETA peace march in Madrid on January 13

ETA announced a formal ceasefire in March 2006, putting in motion tentative and controversial negotiations with the government to bring a permanent end to the violence that has plagued Spain for 38 years and killed over 800 people. Although ceasefires had come and gone under previous governments, the March announcement was greeted with much optimism.

Until it parked a van full of explosives outside Madrid’s stylish new airport terminal on the 30th of December, ETA hadn’t killed anyone for three and a half years. As well as killing two people and obliterating a huge section of multi-level carparking, the bomb has ripped the top off a can of political worms.

Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, head of the centre-left governing party Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), has ordered a “suspension” of negotiations with ETA following the attack. It’s an attitude that many believe doesn’t go far enough.

Dialogue with the terrorists has always been a controversial topic in Spain. Little visible progress was made towards dismantling ETA during the nine months that the ceasefire lasted. Kale borroka, pro-independence vandalism, continued in the Basque country and a stock of over 350 firearms belonging to ETA was seized by French police near the Spanish border in October.

The loudest critics of government negotiations with ETA have come from the country’s main opposition party, the right-wing Partido Popular (PP). This party advocates a hard line approach to dealings with ETA, rejecting any form of negotiation in favour of forcefully shutting down the group. Nevertheless, this approach met little success during the PP’s terms in government, which ended with al-Qaeda bombing the Madrid metro in March 2004. Days later, the PSOE was elected to government on their promise to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq, seen as the cause of al-Qaeda’s attack.

No matter which way one views dialogue with ETA, the PP’s response to the peace protest in Madrid was an embarrassment. The party refused to formally attend the demonstration if the official slogan, Por la paz y contra el terrorismo (For Peace and Against Terrorism), did not include the word libertad (freedom). In order to draw on the widest possible support and to make the march as impartial as possible, the Ecuadorian association organising the march agreed to the slogan Por la paz, la vida, y la libertad, y contra el terrorismo (For Peace, Life, and Freedom, and Against Terrorism).

But the PP still refused to join the march. They claimed that while there was no explicit condemnation of dialogue with terrorists, they would not attend: the phrase “Against Terrorism” was not sufficient. They also claimed that the march was directed by the centre-left governing party, despite being initiated, organised, and strongly supported by the Ecuadorian community in Madrid.

The way forward now is unclear. The bombing of Madrid’s airport is the first lethal attack by ETA under the Zapatero government, and comes unexpectedly – rupture of the previous two ceasefires in 1989 and 1999 were officially announced by communiqué before violence resumed. There was no such notification before December’s bomb. For its part, ETA claims that the ceasefire remains in force – they blame the latest deaths on the airport authorities for not emptying the carpark in the hour between the alerting phone call and the bomb blast itself.

So far the official response has been strong, but not overwhelmingly so. A number of pro-independence Basque groups responsible for the kale borroka (street violence) have been declared illegal, making their members guilty not only of violence to property but also of belonging to an illicit organisation.

President Zapatero’s initial response appears not to have ruled out definitively an end to the negotiations, but any return to dialogue will be highly controversial.

* Katie Small is a freelance New Zealand journalist based in Madrid. She blogs at www.foreign-correspondence.com.

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