Respect For The Victims

Next weekend sees the 8th anniversary of the Madrid bombings. In many respects it will be a normal Sunday. Football matches will of course be played, many restaurants will be open, theatres and cinemas too. It's really business as usual, you could argue about whether that's a good or a bad thing - but that's the reality. There will also be the institutional ceremonies to mark the anniversary. And there will be the habitual attempts by sections of the right-wing press and the Partido Popular to use the bombings as a political weapon against their opponents, and if possible to earn a bit of money from it in the process. 

This latter tradition has already begun, with a noisy campaign launched against the decision by Spain's trade unions to hold fresh protests against the government's labour market reform on March 11th. Government ministers and the Delegada del Gobierno in Madrid have claimed that the decision to hold the protests on this day shows a "lack of respect" for the victims. But surely, you'll be thinking, such a fuss is being made because it's not normal for demonstrations with a high political content to be held around the time of the anniversary of the bombings? Ah well, that seems not to be the case. It all depends who is doing the organizing. Did you spot the future prime minister?

All the talk about respecting the victims, coming from these people, is just a bit too much to take after 8 years of fabricated conspiracy theories. The largest association of 11M victims has already publicly disassociated itself from these pathetic attempts to use the victims of the bombings as a battering ram against the trade unions. But for those in the PP who like to claim to speak on behalf of the victims these people simply don't exist. The same victims association refused to swallow any of the conspiranoico nonsense that we have had to put up with for so long, with the result that they were denied public funding by those governing Madrid. 

Perhaps it was their refusal to use such public funds to organise fraudulent demonstrations against Zapatero's government that has always counted against them, as they preferred to use their resources to assist their members. It's as if they don't exist. Alongside all of those victims who still carry shrapnel in their bodies as a reminder of that fateful day in 2004. The conspiracy theorists insist that no shrapnel was used in the bombs that exploded, so that's a another group of victims whose very existence must be denied. With the greatest possible respect, you understand. 

Now I've never been a huge fan of those who have claimed that the Spanish right is somehow different from its European counterparts. Largely because such claims usually involve exaggerating the democratic credentials of the right in other countries to make the point. However, in the case of 11M it is the absolute absence of any kind of ethical baseline that does seem to mark a difference. I'll try to be fair, there are a few (far too few) on the Spanish right who find this repugnant exploitation of 11M to be too much and some have said so. The problem is that they are like voices in the wilderness, almost unheard. 

You look for some sign of someone saying "perhaps we've gone a bit too far this time" but it's just not there. The 'todo vale' ruthless cynicism that we see suggests that life in a moral vacuum doesn't seem to affect the health of those who live in it at all. Just their judgement. It's sad and tiresome. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I'm still writing posts like this one after so many years of the same cynical, manipulative shit from these people. Then the new conservative attorney general throws a meaty bone to the hungry hounds by opening a formal investigation based on another piece of pseudo journalism from Libertad Digital. There will always be a few more bloodstained eurillos to be squeezed from inventing fake news stories, and a few more petty political points to be scored from Spain's worst ever terrorist attack. All because the subsequent election didn't turn out the way they wanted. That, you see, is what they call respect for the victims.

Dangerous ETA Terror Cell Identified

Thanks to the tireless efforts of some of Spain's finest investigative journalists, we are able to reveal that the people shown on the front page of today's ABC are in fact members of ETA.

Oddly, for such a dangerous group of terrorists, some of these people look vaguely familiar. Kofi Annan, didn't he work for some international organisation? Bertie Ahern, Gro Harlem Brundtland? These are names that ring bells. Gerry Adams, Jonathan Powell (the one that isn't pronounced 'pole'), Pierre Joxe. Who would have thought that they all work for ETA? But in case you think it's just one mad newspaper making all of this up, let me correct you. El Mundo confirms that these dangerous people are the "pregoneros de ETA", and the especially reliable La Gaceta says that they are "los enviados de ETA". Surely that puts it beyond doubt?

There is another shadowy figure behind the group who didn't turn up yesterday at this so-called peace conference in San Sebastián. Tony Blair was either too busy sorting out the Middle East (a far fetched explanation if ever I heard one) or just not offered enough money to turn up. The latter sounds true to form. Hiding their true intentions, the sinister group called on ETA to definitively cease all violent actions. If it wasn't for our keen nosed news hounds they might just have got away with it.

What would a former Irish prime minister, an ex French interior minister and Gerry Adams know about terrorism anyway? The people who are here to really tell it like it is are from the party of the political manipulation of 11-M, together with their equally opportunist fellow travellers in UPyD. "Push off foreigners!" is the all too subtle message from those who get incredibly nervous the nearer the Basque Country gets to an end to violence. The victims organisations that have been hijacked by the far right simply deny the existence of any ETA victims who don't share their shrill point of view. 

All of this could still change of course. Should Mariano Rajoy win the election and then decide to sit down and talk to ETA, all of those shouting about betraying the memory of the victims will fall strangely silent. There will be no street demonstrations, and the same newspapers that accuse mediators seeking peace of working for ETA will instead churn out editorials praising the wisdom of the great leader. We know this will happen because it's what happened last time the Partido Popular, under José Maria Aznar, negotiated with ETA. In the meantime, watch out for these dangerous people!

What Happens If ETA's Ceasefire Is For Real?

The latest declaration by ETA of a general and permanent ceasefire doesn't seem to have done much to change the outlook on achieving an end to political violence in the Basque Country. The problem with the statement is that it attempts to take us back to 2006, when the group also promised a "permanent" ceasefire, one that was broken when they didn't get what they wanted from the negotiating process with the Spanish government and which led to the 2007 bomb in Madrid airport that killed two people.

Maybe ETA, recently under intense police pressure, want to try and pick up the thread of negotiation where they left it before that bombing. The Spanish government doesn't and it's not hard to see why; the possibility of a repeat of what happened in 2007 is a political risk they will be unwilling to take. Add to that the view that with ETA being so weak they are not in a position to demand concessions in return for abandoning violence. Despite this, there is for the moment one significant difference with the previous process; the international dimension. This has meant that the ETA declaration included a willingness for their ceasefire to be verified by the international community.

Potentially this difference could be very important, with its echoes of the Northern Ireland process where international observers supervised the destruction of IRA weapons. ETA hasn't gone as far as saying that this is what they mean by verification, and the international mediators who have been contacted will be understandably cautious about getting involved without certain guarantees of the process leading somewhere. The word that is really missing from the ETA statement has been taken up by their political wing, Batasuna, in the last 24 hours. That word is "irreversible", but it's still not one that the men who hold the guns have uttered.

The illegal Batasuna is said to have been hoping for a clearer declaration that would pave the way for the legalisation of the party in time for it to contest the municipal elections in May. That looks an unlikely prospect given the very cool reaction by the Spanish government to the latest ceasefire. Batasuna will probably test the Ley de Partidos that was introduced to illegalise the party, by proposing a new organisation with a constitution that rejects the use of violence. According to the law that would be enough for the new party to contest elections, but in reality the decision is a political one and a bad law will continue to be used until either of the two major national parties decides it shouldn't be.

At least one of those parties, the Partido Popular, can be relied upon to oppose any movement that even suggests that Zapatero's government could preside over an end to ETA. That's what they did the last time, and a party whose atrocious and repugnant manipulation of terrorism as a political tool has been a consistent feature since March 11th 2004 is not going to change now.  The first demonstration by the far right Libertad Digital/ Hazte Oir crew has already been called for the 5th February, and the insane myths about how Zapatero has pacted the handover of Navarra to ETA amongst other concessions have also been resurrected for the occasion. Expect far more shouting against the government than against ETA.

We can also expect the South African international mediator, Brian Currin, to become something of a hate figure for much of the right in Spain; even though his involvement is only going to have the intention of bringing about an end to violence. The same has already happened to the prominent Basque Socialist politican, Jesús Eguiguren, only for having the temerity to suggest that a ceasefire declaration would merit a response from the government. This is a man who has been an ETA target for years but such things matter little to the fanatics who have more or less branded him as being part of the group.

Whilst ETA and Batasuna are working hard on building up the international dimension of the process, the government is attempting to avoid this. But if it turns out that ETA really are willing to go the full distance then there will surely have to be some sort of positive response. The suggestion that the Spanish police will be the ones who verify the ceasefire is absurd, it goes along with those who say the only way out is for ETA to formally surrender. That's not the way these things happen, and it would be a serious matter if a chance for peace was turned down on the grounds that Spain rejects any international involvement.

It's very hard to have an accurate picture of what is going on inside ETA, but it's clear that there is intense debate in Batasuna and almost certainly inside ETA itself about the way forward. The rejection of the opportunity that existed in the last process has ended up with more of their prisoners drifting away from the cause, and with former supporters more or less openly questioning the point of ETA's existence in a way that didn't happen often before. It's still ETA's move, but that doesn't mean the other players shouldn't be preparing their response.

The El Mundo Journalism Masterclass

Imagine that you go to a football match. There are lots of people there and, who knows, perhaps 60-70 metres away from where you are sitting someone unfurls a banner or holds a placard supporting a political cause. Then a photographer takes a picture of the said placard which captures you along with many other people far away in the background. You might be under the impression that this does not associate you directly with the cause in question. You are wrong to think that, because you have not counted with the journalistic ethics of El Mundo and their ability to draw a circle around your head. Today's front page from El Mundo - how to construct an eye catching headline out of nothing.

I don't have any special affection for Cataluña's new president, Artur Mas, but El Mundo's crude manipulation is just pathetic. Since we're talking about media coverage and El Mundo have already introduced the Basque theme let's give Público a slap on the wrist as well. Their piece on the Wall Street Journal publishing comments by Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi is just stupid. Based around the common idea in Spain that the role of journalists in press coverage of terrorism is to instruct people on what they should think, the Público piece looks for  a way to take Murdoch's empire to task for, in their words in the paper edition, being a "loudspeaker" for ETA. 

Things get really silly because they try to hang the accusation on the association between the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, and José Maria Aznar. As if this really has anything to do with foreign media giving coverage to what may, after all, be interesting developments concerning ETA's future. There's a bit too much obsession with Murdoch sometimes in Spain with people fearing that the Aznar link was the prelude to him entering Spain's media market. Where Murdoch would possibility find a market opportunity in a country which already has so much flaky right-wing media is an open question.

Felipe Gonzalez And The Return Of The GAL

Former Spanish prime minister Felipe González has captured newspaper headlines in Spain for the first time in years following his interview on Sunday with El País. What caught most attention was his declaration that his government once had information concerning the time and place of a meeting of the entire leadership of ETA, and that he decided against blowing them up. The administration led by González has been accused for many years, on good grounds, of having been behind the GAL dirty war against ETA in the 1980's. The GAL group carried out kidnappings and assassinations, frequently involving people who had no connection to ETA at all, and their activities probably gave a significant boost to the Basque group given that they didn't need to invent an argument about state terrorism.

González declared that he wasn't sure whether he had made the right decision, the presumed logic behind his doubts being that organising such an act would have dealt a potentially fatal blow against ETA. It's unlikely, given the way in which ETA has so far survived several times the detention of its leadership. ETA in the 1980's was a much stronger organisation than it is at the moment. It's fairly clear from the tone of the interview that González regarded the decision as a strategic question rather than one involving any questioning of whether this is an appropriate way to respond to terrorism. More interesting in some ways was what he had to say about the GAL because his claim that the kidnapping of Segundo Marey was ended on the orders of his then interior minister amounts to what is effectively the first open admission that the GAL's activities were under direct government control. It's one thing that almost everyone believes that to be the case, quite another that it is said in such an open way.

Only González and those who are close to him know why he should choose to speak this way about the issue after so many years. The right-wing press has already been hammering away on the GAL ever since the recent government reshuffle that effectively made Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba the new strongman of Zapatero's administration. Indeed, El Mundo has been headlining with it all week. The dirty war against ETA did not begin with the GAL, but it certainly reached disastrous heights during the time González was in charge. What's depressing is the feeling that may of those who use it as a hammer to beat the PSOE and González would almost certainly have approved of it had their own party been the organizer. That, and the ambivalence shown by so many vocal opponents of terrorism when it is a government that plants the bombs.

Egunkaria

On the face of it, it seems as if justice has worked as it should. Five directors of a Basque newspaper called Egunkaria were wrongly accused of being in the service of ETA, and today a Spanish court has absolved them of all charges. Surely no cause for complaint there, but when you look at the history of the case you come across something that can only be described as a massive and prolonged miscarriage of justice. Today Egunkaria makes headlines because of the verdict, but most of the long and sorry story of this case has been largely invisible, except to those who seek out information about it.

Egunkaria was originally founded in 1990, and was at that time the only newspaper that published entirely in the Basque language. Perhaps not surprisingly, the paper adopted positions that could be broadly identified with Basque nationalism, but not with support for ETA and terrorism. However, in 2001 a captain in the Spanish Guardia Civil presented a report to judge Baltasar Garzón claiming that documentation captured from ETA members could be interpreted to mean that Egunkaria had been set up to further the aims of the group. Garzón, who can legitimately be accused of overdoing it when it comes to tarring people as accomplices of terrorism, didn't bite on this particular hook and rejected the accusation.

That could, and should, have been the end of the matter. But the Guardia Civil officer persisted until he found a judge more receptive to his argument, and it was to be judge Juan del Olmo who took the decision to act and to close Egunkaria, claiming that it was created, financed and directed by ETA. We are now in 2003. Serious accusations of being terrorist accomplices were made against the directors of the newspaper. The years passed, and Del Olmo was unable to sustain a case proving the accusations used to close the paper. By 2006 the state prosecution service was already declaring that no evidence existed to substantiate the allegations of ETA support or control and called for the case to be shelved. Over three years ago.

Again, you might think that would spell the end of the process. But it continued, thanks above all to the fact that two of these ultra right-wing group who seem to make all the running in the Spanish legal system these days managed to keep the process going without the support of prosecutors. So finally, at the end of last year, the Egunkaria case came to trial with the accusation being presented by the Asociación Víctimas del Terrorismo and another group called, quite inappropriately, Dignidad y Justicia. The trial sessions did not last very long, but it was carried out on the principle of having a morning of hearings and then adjourning until the following week. Then it has taken another three months for the verdict to be issued, perhaps just a detail when you consider the overall time frame we are dealing with.

The verdict today dismisses the charges against the accused. Despite the careful legal language and the general unwillingness for those inside the system to ever admit mistakes, it is quite a damning document. It states clearly that the groundless prosecution has been based on the idea that anything to do with the Basque language or culture must also have something to do with ETA. The trial judge, Javier Gómez Bermúdez, comes close to suggesting that Del Olmo acted illegally in closing the paper. He even, and this is probably a first from a Spanish judge hearing a case linked to ETA, doesn't dismiss the accusations of mistreatment and torture made by the accused following their arrest. Gómez Bermúdez is certainly no radical, he was the judge who presided over the Madrid bombings trial. For that he is already on the hitlist of some of the right wing media who supported the 11-M conspiracy theories. His latest decision will guarantee his position on that list.

So there we are, surely justice has prevailed? Well no, a perfectly legal newspaper was closed years before the case affecting it came to trial and several of its directors have spent those years living under the shadow of being accused as terrorist collaborators. The closure can never be compensated, and justice still has a long way to go to right this situation. One of the ironies of the trial was that the groups presenting this bogus accusation attempted to frighten the court by claiming that huge compensation would have to be paid if the accused were not found guilty. But what price do you put on them being denied the right for years to freely publish in their language of choice?

ETA, The FARC And Venezuela

There has been significant coverage both inside and outside of Spain of the decision by the judge Eloy Velasco to point the finger at Venezuela for allegedly providing ETA with an operational base in that country. Almost as a postscript in his document on supposed collaboration between ETA and the Colombian FARC, Velasco claimed there was evidence of Venezuelan government cooperation with the two groups. The accusation has caused problems between the governments of Spain and Venezuela, with an angry reaction from Hugo Chávez. Within Spain itself it has provoked a predictable chorus from the right along the lines of "this is what you get for maintaining friendly relations with Chávez".

The problem is that Velasco doesn't prove his own accusation. The presence of ETA members or sympathisers in Venezuela is not in doubt, but what many people may not know amidst all the noise is that this presence dates back to the 1980's. Not only that, but it was the result of negotiations between the Spanish government led by Felipe Gonzalez and the Venezuelan administration presided at the time by Carlos Andrés Pérez. Following the failure of negotiations with ETA in Algeria and in an attempt to get known ETA members removed from France, the agreement with Venezuela became the solution. Despite all the recent reports about ETA members living openly in Venezuela under Chávez, the truth is that they did the same with the full knowledge of the Spanish government under previous Venezuelan governments. Some weeks ago I read a report of a former Spanish ambassador in Venezuela recommending a Basque restaurant in Caracas. He said that it was a very good place to eat, despite the fact that the cooks were all Etarras!

The key to the current accusation is a man called Arturo Cubillas, who is one of those who has been in Venezuela since the 1980's. Cubillas currently occupies a relatively minor position in the Venezuelan administration, yet it it is this fact which Velasco has used as a peg for the accusation of Venezuelan government support for ETA activities. We can't yet rule out the possibility that some suitably incriminating "evidence" will surface from the bottomless resources of the laptop computer that allegedly belonged to the FARC leader Raúl Reyes. This amazingly bombproof laptop which survived unscathed when Reyes was killed seems capable of producing documentary proof of whatever Colombia's government would like to demonstrate at any given time.

Also involved in the accusations launched by Velasco is the Spanish citizen Remedios García, who is often cited in reports as being the European representative of the FARC or similar. García was arrested in 2008 following the initial supposed revelations from the miraculously strong laptop, and was deemed to be so terribly dangerous that she was quickly released on bail of €12000. Between then and the new case brought by Velasco we know of no concrete accusations against her. Meanwhile there continues to be a group of Basque exiles linked in some way to ETA living in Venezuela. Some may still be sympathisers of the group, others may not be. We don't know the reality, although it has been reported that the exiles in Latin America were amongst those who took badly the failure of the last peace process as they find themselves trapped in the limbo of exile without any obvious solution.

Firefighters Or Terrorists? An Easy One For The Press

If one good thing has come out of the lamentable mistake made by French police the other day accusing five Catalan firefighters of being members of ETA, it is that at least a few sections of the Spanish media have had to think about the way they go about their work. The video footage of the firefighters doing a bit of shopping in a supermarket near to where ETA killed a French policeman was passed to the Spanish authorities who promptly paid no attention to any concept of presumed innocence and circulated it to the Spanish media as being film of wanted ETA members.

That doesn't excuse the fact that much of the media then did the same thing. The mistake was disguised a bit for those who live in the larger Spanish cities as the revelation that those appearing on the video had been recognised by their families back home managed to reach some newspapers in time for them to change their second editions. The first editions had been in no doubt that the video showed dangerous terrorists. El País even had a police "expert" who assured the paper that the five firefighters were either ETA members or policemen - no other option was possible. The press soon had to change their tune, although on the whole they did so without recognising their own contribution to identifying the innocent as terrorists.

It's a frequent problem involving terrorism, with headlines proclaiming the capture of an "Etarra", whilst the subsequent release without charges of the same person may not even be reported at all. The presumption of innocence only seems to come into play for politicians and priests. It's not just terrorist suspects who might be affected, a few months ago the paper ABC carried an atrocious front page that accused an innocent person of being the killer of a small child. The paper's editor later had to publicly apologise for that one but the damage was already done, and probably sales increased that day.

Another Pointless Candle On The Cake

By killing two policemen today in Mallorca, and with a huge bomb that destroyed a Guardia Civil barracks yesterday in Burgos, ETA have reminded everyone of their continuing presence and their ability to survive under intense police pressure. Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the organisation, but the half-century is not a happy one for a group that should never really have survived beyond the age of 16 at most. ETA may believe that they can force the Spanish government back into negotiations with bombs like those we have seen this week, but such an outcome has rarely looked further away than it does at the moment.

Today's attack has also provoked a new frenzy amongst those who are determined to force the foreign media to use their language when writing about ETA. It's a bit sad to see otherwise creditable media organisations urging on this silly campaign that tries to enforce an obligatory vocabulary on those whose job is supposed to be that of informing their readers. The fact that this time the assault happens with Twitter does little to make it any more worthwhile. I've been through the argument before, and I still think that a news bulletin that begins with the compulsory "La banda terrorista" offers neither information nor insight into what is going on. I used to think it was partly a cultural thing in a country where many seem to believe that reality is nothing more than a reflection of the words you choose to describe it. However, I now think it's more to do with a lack of tradition of genuinely independent journalism.

Those lost souls who are determined to waste their lives trying to introduce the word "terrorist" into the English Wikipedia article on ETA show the same inability to distinguish between information and propaganda in an encyclopaedia. Unsurprisingly the Spanish language article takes a different line. The common assumption in Spain seems to be that the description of ETA as "Basque separatists" is revealing foreign ignorance about the truth of the situation. The fact is that many of the journalists using this kind of description have spent years in Spain, and are often better informed about what is going on in the country than many of those who are so quick to criticise them.

When the far right ex-president of the Asociación de Victimas de Terrorismo recently accused the widow of ETA's previous victim of using the language of the nationalists and terrorists at her husband's funeral, only a tiny fraction of those who are so noisy against the foreign press had anything to say about it. There are perhaps already too many media sources content to feed the prejudices of those who read them as opposed to attempting to enlighten, so let's applaud those who refuse to bend under the pressure to do the same.

That's No Way To Stop A Train

The latest action this week by ETA, the execution of businessman Ignacio Uria, goes beyond demonstrating the ever more clear futility of the group's existence. Uria was killed because his company was working on the extension of Spain's high speed rail network to the Basque cities of Bilbao and San Sebastian. What is known in the rest of the country as the AVE (Alta Velocidad Española) had already been retitled for its Basque section as the TAV (Tren de Alta Velocidad). This rebadging does little to comfort those who regard a fast train link to Madrid as a connection to the heart of the colonialist beast.

There are good reasons for not feeling comfortable with the way in which high speed train travel has developed in Spain. The very fast connections between cities come with an environmental cost and the withdrawal of other trains that served intermediate towns on the route. Personally I think its great that I can get to Barcelona from Madrid in 2.5 hours but it comes at a cost that some people can't necessarily afford. The straight flat line that 300 km per hour trains require means that obstacles in the way have to be somehow removed. Perhaps if the train went at 200 km per hour it could just go round rather than through some of the natural landscapes affected by the new lines.

The problem now for anyone who wants to make such reasoned arguments in the Basque Country is that ETA has charged into the fray by shooting a contractor. The great fault line that runs through many of the arguments justifying terrorism is that those who claim to act in the name of the "people" are not inclined to let those same people decide how to campaign on an issue. Instead they assume the right to decide for themselves. Anyone opposing the project without supporting violence against those working on it will now find that their arguments are overshadowed by ETA's decision to try and dictate the shape of opposition to the new link.

An Ordinary Week, Only Two Political Parties Banned

This week saw a long awaited, but more or less predictable, decision by the Supreme Court to ban two Basque political parties. Acción Nacionalista Vasca (ANV) and the Partido Comunista de las Tierras Vascas (PCTV-EHAK) were both illegalised under the Ley de Partidos. This is the law introduced under Aznar's administration with the particular aim of prohibiting ETA's political wing, Batasuna. Both ANV and the PCTV have been banned on the grounds that they are regarded as successor parties to Batasuna, both parties having effectively lent themselves to the task of representing Batasuna's voters in regional and municipal elections in the Basque Country.

The decision is particularly paradoxical in the case of ANV because this party was created some 50-60 years before Batasuna was even thought of, so the idea that it is a successor to the latter is odd to say the least. ANV currently control around 40 municipalities split between the Basque Country and Navarra, and although the party may be illegal their councillors in these municipalities will continue to hold their position unless a legal pretext is found to remove them from office; something that can't be ruled out. It could be argued that there is more consistency now than the previous situation where half of ANV's municipal candidates were ruled to be illegal and the other half not. The PCTV only stood in the last regional elections in the Basque Country although their elected members do hold the balance of power in the Basque parliament. However, with the Basque elections due in a few months time their seats will not be occupied for much longer.

Whatever the feelings may be towards the parties concerned, the law is still a bad one. Despite the judicial show that is put on, once a process is set in motion to ban a party under this law it only ever has one result. Also, it's application seems to depend entirely on which way the political wind is blowing. The criteria permitting a party to be banned become ever broader, as the cat and mouse game to try and enforce it becomes more complicated. In the meantime, the distinction between the terrorist who places the bomb and those who sympathise with ETA has almost completely disappeared allowing for all sorts of people to be classified as "terrorists" in an arbitrary way. Still to look forward to are the ridiculous attempts to prosecute nationalist and socialist leaders in the Basque Country for having talked to Batasuna representatives in an attempt to bring an end to terrorism in the region. In the end the strongest argument for ETA abandoning violence is that they can pursue the objectives of Basque independence by legal and peaceful means. Laws like this make that argument harder to sustain.

Otegi Gets Out Of Jail

Last weekend saw the release from prison of Arnaldo Otegi, the man who would probably like to be seen as the Basque Country's equivalent of Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams. Otegi went to prison as part of the backlash following the breakdown of the last attempt to persuade ETA to dissolve itself.

Otegi finds himself in a complicated situation. The political party he led, Batasuna, is illegal and the next few weeks are almost certain to see the illegalisation of those parties who have taken much of Batasuna's support in recent elections; ANV and the PCTV. Otegi himself faces the possibility of returning to prison as a result of other charges that have been laid against him. The political climate at the moment does not favour any resumption of attempts to get ETA to give up the armed struggle, government ministers moved quickly following Otegi's release to make it clear that they saw no prospect of resumed negotiations.

Meanwhile there have been reports of discontent amongst ETA prisoners and exiles in South America. Some of these reports have to be taken with a pinch of salt, there are several hundred ETA prisoners in Spanish jails and the fact that some of these may now reject violence as a way forward doesn't necessarily mean that this is the general opinion. Nevertheless, there are expressions of discontent with the direction which ETA has taken, in the case of the exiles it seems that some have simply become tired of spending years far away from home. There are exiles who would not even face charges if they returned, given the time that has elapsed since they left.

ETA's leadership made a significant miscalculation in the last negotiations, and now it is difficult to see them forcing the Spanish government back to the negotiating table; assuming that this is what they want to do. Whilst this remains the case there is little role for someone like Otegi to play, he has been given permission to take a holiday in Italy and could probably make it a long one. Which is not to say that his time will never come, at some point ETA will have to face up to the reality of their situation and the futility of their continued existence.

Hard Times In The Bunker

It's hot outside, so come with me down into the cold - even frosty - underworld of the Foro Ermua. One of these satellite organisations set up in the past few years to agitate the issue of terrorism principally on behalf of the Partido Popular, the Foro has recently fallen victim to the same sort of infighting that has kept the PP so busy since the general election. It is a grouping that has never really excelled when it came to political tolerance. A member who wanted to stand in an election for a party that was not the PP was informed that this was incompatible with his continuing to occupy any position of responsibility in the Foro. Now however, this sectarianism has been taken a step further with the removal of the president, Iñaki Ezkerra, for having the temerity to be supportive of the new, relatively less hard line, leadership of the PP in the Basque country.

The Foro Ermua has been turned into a bunker of the extreme right. Now wait a minute. For those of you who think that this description is just South of Watford labelling decent upstanding anti-terrorist folk as being crazed rightists I should perhaps make it clear that the words are not mine; the description came from Ezkerra himself. If the cap fits you might as well use it. Ezkerra has also claimed that the Foro has been excessively generous, even careless, with some of its cocktail receptions, getting the association into some financial difficulties. Step forward the Comunidad de Madrid who have offered a significant injection of funds to help the Foro get over this difficult patch. It’s time for a Frequently Asked Question!

Q. “This Comunidad de Madrid, the one that is picking up the tab for the cocktails, is it by any chance related to the one that denies any funding at all for the main victims association of the Madrid bombings?”

A. “Yes.”

The Judicial Silly Season

It was a little bit like old times on Saturday with the noise surrounding the release of the ETA prisoner Iñaki de Juana Chaos. All the usual suspects gathered in Madrid to protest at the release, and it was inevitable that the target of the protests would be the government for not having “done enough” to keep De Juana Chaos locked up. What the government should have done in the view of these people is invent a legal pretext to stop him from going free, given that he has served his sentence and is entitled to be free. The new secretary general of the Partido Popular, Maria Dolores de Cospedal, showed up at the protest too although it was a sign of how things have changed in the last few months that she was also a target of criticism and abuse from some of those gathered.

That could not be the end of the matter, and sure enough the duty judge at the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid has now decided that a letter from De Juana Chaos to his supporters is sufficient grounds to open a fresh case against him for allegedly praising terrorism. The letter does no such thing, but in this situation the political requirements far outweigh any nonsense about what the law might say. The judge could easily have devoted his time this summer to doing something to reduce the chronic judicial backlog, but the fatal attraction of the De Juana Chaos case promises far more media attention. Sending De Juana Chaos back to jail will be undoubtedly popular amongst those who believe that someone’s freedom should be decided by opinion polls, newspaper editorials and political preferences. At the same time it promises to make the law look ridiculous in its vengeful pursuit of a single ETA prisoner whose relationship with that organisation is now said to be distant.

De Juana Chaos, Chapter Two

If anyone though that we had heard the end of the Iñaki de Juana Chaos saga then I’m afraid I have bad news. ETA prisoner De Juana Chaos leaves prison on the 2nd August, assuming that no-one invents a fresh legal pretext to keep him inside. He will have served his (second) sentence and legally be a free man. It was never very likely that the PP and associated rightwing fringe groups (of which there are now so many I don’t even have space to name them) would let the event pass without trying to seek some political advantage from it. So cue, yet again, El Mundo – always ready to lead the charge. Our favourite newspaper has visited the street in San Sebastian where De Juana Chaos will be living on his release and found that some victims of terrorism are also resident in the same street. The new party UPD, with its single member of parliament and determination to get some attention, has also jumped onto the bandwagon to protest at this situation.

We are already witnessing the beginnings of a campaign which promises the creation of a seriously dangerous and complicated law; one which will prevent former ETA prisoners from living close to victims of the group’s actions. Indeed the government, in a panicky reaction to head off the inevitable noise that is approaching on the issue, has already announced that it is going to study such a proposal. Zapatero’s hope that he can prevent the issue of ETA from dominating the political agenda is again under threat. Now just in case anyone imagines that De Juana Chaos is deliberately choosing to live near to the victims, it should be pointed out that the flat where it is said he will live belonged to his mother. He will have served his sentences and will legally be free to live where he likes. Restricting the freedom of a person to live where they choose is potentially unconstitutional, although with the constitutional court’s membership depending on the two major parties such an obstacle can probably be overcome. Where there is a political will there is usually a political way.

Supposing the government decides to introduce such a law, a number of questions are raised. How big a distance would such a law propose? Many released ETA prisoners will take up residence in either Bilbao or San Sebastian, and the number of those resident in both cities who can be considered as victims is probably quite high too. What happens if the released prisoner has renounced any connection with ETA’s campaign? Will it apply to all offences committed by ETA members, if not which ones are to be included? In the end it results in a differential treatment for members of ETA than that received by other people who have also been found guilty of very serious offences, as well as trashing the idea that once you have served your sentence you are free. I’m not saying that it’s nice for someone affected by ETA’s actions to have to live alongside those who have been convicted for similar offences, but it does risk infringing so many principles to try and prevent it from happening. If my neighbour commits an offence against me and goes to prison for it there is no reason in the end why the same person cannot return and be my neighbour again after serving their sentence. With the proposed law he would presumably be unable to be my neighbour again only if he supports independence for the Basque Country! Hard hats on, this is a political hysteria alert.

The 'Anti-Peace' Process Continues

The capture in France of four alleged members of ETA has dominated the headlines because one of them is said to be the leader who decided to end the last truce with the bomb attack at Madrid’s airport. Whilst such arrests always produce optimistic noises about ETA being nearly finished, the Basque regional government has already announced that it is increasing the level of alert in case of potential attacks. After a high profile arrest like this one, there is always the risk that ETA will attempt to show that their capacity to act has not been affected. Those responsible for their most recent bombings are still at large.

There is the possibility that the arrest of a notable hardliner could lead to changes in the direction being taken by ETA. Even if that were the case, however, there is no reason to believe that there will be any substantial progress towards ending terrorism in the Basque Country for some time to come. ETA’s current campaign continues either because the group wants to try and bomb the government back to the negotiating table, or simply because they are unwilling to contemplate any other future. In either case the result is likely to be the same, after the failure of the previous process it would be hugely dangerous for the government to try again without additional guarantees on the part of ETA. Even if ETA were to unilaterally declare a new ceasefire that would not necessarily mean that the conditions existed for any resumption of the peace process. Equally, high profile successes like the latest arrests show how much the pressure is on for ETA in France, but don’t mean that the group is about to disappear.

Spanish General Election 2008....The Day Of Reflection

I had to abandon a post I had written for this blog yesterday. I wrote a piece which compared the closing days of this campaign to the sombre and tense finale to the last election campaign in 2004. In it I celebrated the awful tedium of having an end to the campaign that was not overshadowed by terrorism or even by the attempts of some to gain political advantage with it. Then came the assassination yesterday of Isaias Carrasco by ETA and in a single moment my post no longer seemed to fit.

Carrasco was killed outside of his home. He was a member of the PSOE and had previously been a councillor for that party in the town where he lived, Mondragón. In the last municipal elections he was number six on the party list and they only achieved four councillors, so he was not currently on the town council. He worked for the company that runs toll roads in the region, and although he was entitled to have a bodyguard he had decided not to; presumably thinking that as a low profile political figure he would not be high on ETA’s list of targets. Sadly, it is precisely that condition that made him an ideal target for an ETA that is currently not in a condition to aspire to more “important”, but better protected, targets.

The election campaign finished with the shooting, and ETA managed with this single act to put itself back at the centre of political attention. There was not much more campaigning to be done, today is the mandatory “day of reflection” before voting takes place tomorrow. The political parties met yesterday afternoon and agreed a joint statement of condemnation. However, the unity of the parties was at best a formal one. I expected the Partido Popular (PP) to at least make a token attempt at extracting some political advantage, and so it turned out. The PP representatives at the meeting turned up with a couple of demands that they knew had no chance of being accepted; a permanent rejection of any negotiations with ETA and the revocation of the parliamentary resolution that permitted the last attempt to seek a negotiated solution. It was a small, but telling, piece of political theatre. A little sign of what they would surely have attempted had the victim been a member of the PP rather than the PSOE.

With political activity prohibited on the day of reflection, the timing of the killing left few options for those whose only desire in such cases is to hold the government responsible for all terrorist actions. The Asociación de Victimas del Terrorismo (AVT) initially called a demonstration for today which would have brought out all the fur coat clad señoras to shout “Zapatero dimisión” at anyone still prepared to listen. Clearly someone reminded the AVT that today is the day of reflection and they cancelled the mobilisation. Instead we got another PP satellite organisation, the Foro de Ermua, calling a small demonstration last night in Madrid’s Plaza de Colon. Take a look at one of the pretty banners someone took with them:


I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but the outlook on terrorism in Spain is not at all hopeful. The pincer movement formed by an intransigent ETA locked into its time warp of “armed struggle”, and an opportunist PP seemingly determined to use terrorism as its main instrument for seeking political revenge leaves little room for optimism. We hear a lot about ETA’s weakness and how they are on their last legs; the targeting of Carrasco is indeed a demonstration of their weakened state. However, it is also a demonstration of just how easy it will be for them to go on killing – the state is not capable of protecting all the potential targets all of the time. The myth that ETA can be defeated by police pressure alone is attractive to many, but I know of no comparable case where it has actually happened. For all the political rhetoric ETA is not about to disappear, and we could be in for a long period of low intensity terrorism. As usual, those who pay the price of this sad situation are not those responsible for it, instead ordinary people like Isaías Carrasco fulfil that role.

As for ETA themselves, I wonder whether it even makes sense to try and understand where they think they are going. They have the option, much as they like to pretend it doesn’t exist, of taking what we might call the “Aralar alternative”. Aralar is a breakaway party from ETA’s political wing Batasuna, and it pursues the objectives of radical Basque nationalism in a legal, open manner. They are able to do so, nobody prevents them from operating. ETA knows that this option exists, but is not ready for life as the smaller nationalist cousin to a dominant Partido Nacionalista Vasco. Take away the threat of the use of armed action and you have a party which loses the possibility to dominate politics in the Basque Country. Some day it has to happen, the only question now is how many more pointless killings there will be on the way.

Basque Socialist Shot Dead

It looks as if ETA may have finally succeeded in entering the election campaign. A former Socialist councillor called Isaías Carrasco has been shot dead a short while ago in the Basque town of Mondragón and it seems that the Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero has already cancelled some of his commitments to return to Madrid. It has just been reported that the main parties have suspended the rest of their electoral campaign.

It looks like ETA have gone for an easy target - someone who is not a significant political figure and who would have no protection - but at a moment which will have maximum impact on the election as all the parties were preparing for their final campaign rallies tonight.

Now we wait to see how the parties react. Mariano Rajoy made a statement earlier in which he went just to the edge of trying to use it to score a political point. I'm sure there are some in his party who would like nothing more than to get their supporters out on the streets of Madrid before Sunday to tell us that it's all Zapatero's fault. Anyway, it seems that all parties have been called to a meeting in Madrid this afternoon.

Spanish General Election 2008....Death By A Thousand Statistics

So the polls give it to Zapatero again in the second debate with Mariano Rajoy. Naturally I checked first with those who would most want Rajoy to be declared the winner, El Mundo and Telemadrid, but even their polls called it for Zapatero. Despite frantic spinning by the PP as soon as the debate finished they have been unable to create the sensation of their candidate being the winner.

Both candidates were better performers than last time, Zapatero because he was a bit less nervous and is naturally more expressive than his opponent. Rajoy because he had memorized his monologues this time rather than just reading them. Despite this, neither is likely to have enthused anyone except their most committed supporters as the debate raged over precisely the same issues as last week’s edition. The only difference this time, apart from the higher level of preparation, was that a bit more time was dedicated (at least in Zapatero’s case) to talking about proposals for the future.

Rajoy was every bit as aggressive as last week, and relied principally on the same three issues which he pressed in the first debate; the economy, immigration and terrorism. The main problem he has with this trio of issues is that he is very vulnerable to counter-attacks on all of them. A disproportionate amount of time was wasted on whether it was true that Rajoy had asked Zapatero about the economy in their first parliamentary session following the last elections. In reality all he did in that question was mention IVA (the Spanish VAT) in a list of issues. What is undeniable is that the economy then dropped out of the political battle until things started deteriorating at the end of last year. For well over three years the PP had nothing at all to say on the issue.

Their silence is not surprising in the sense that the economy was doing very well and because they were obsessed with exploiting terrorism. In reality, the bubble based around construction that has now been burst was precisely the model of economy that the PP boasted about so loudly in the years of Aznar and “España va bien”. If Zapatero is to be criticised for his handling of the economy it is because he has not done anything to change the model the PP bequeathed to him. However, that was not Rajoy’s angle, and he is forced into tremendous selective manipulation of statistics to try and present the case for economic catastrophe. Something is either wrong with me or with the figures he presented, because if the 43% increase in property prices under Zapatero is greater than that which occurred under the PP, then I am at a loss to explain how property prices in my area of Madrid have risen by around 300% in the last 10 years. Most of that rise occurred under the PP.

In case there was any residual doubt after last week’s debate, last night made it clear that social policy for Rajoy is simply a peg on which to hang his xenophobic messages about how immigrants are depriving decent Spaniards of their rights. Again he is vulnerable, because for all the bluster and nasty insinuation, the fact remains that Zapatero’s move to regularise the hundreds of thousands of immigrants the PP preferred to leave in unregulated limbo has been hugely beneficial for the Spanish state and social security system. To his credit, Zapatero has rejected making concessions to the PP on this issue and pointed out just how many Spanish pensions the contributions of immigrants are currently funding. It needs to be said more loudly so that the “they live better than us and what’s more my Polish woman doesn’t clean my flat properly” brigade are given something to think about.

Then there was terrorism, about which I have little more to add to what I wrote yesterday. It still amazes me slightly that the PP think they can argue that the ETA they claim to have left so weak was at the same time supposed to have been capable of the Madrid bombings. Rajoy got himself into a real mess over Iraq trying to claim that Zapatero was in favour of the war, I don’t think he made a deep impression on that point. He didn’t find the knockout blow he needed or even come close to it. Rajoy’s principal problem is that an already unattractive manner becomes doubly so when he ups the aggression level, something which he has always done when debating with Zapatero.

Then there was the finish! Mariano finished last week with a bizarre tale about his hopes for a little girl growing up safe and secure in Rajoy’s Spain. Nobody in the PP seemed to want to claim responsibility for this idea, so it was even more extraordinary to see him finish last night by telling us that this little girl was “in his head”. In both cases, the clash of styles between the debate and the closing statement could hardly be greater. Unless something quite dramatic happens in the next few days, or the opinion polls have got something seriously wrong, “La niña de Rajoy” may well turn out to be his only political legacy.

Spanish General Election 2008....The Greatest Fraud Of All

With the second electoral debate between Zapatero and Rajoy set for this evening, the latest opinion polls are looking better for the governing PSOE. The advantage they have seems to have settled at around 4% over the Partido Popular (PP), although some polls still put it lower. If this reflects the reality of voting intentions then the elections will leave things pretty much as they are now, with the PSOE needing allies to form a viable majority. The good news for the PSOE is that the indications on turnout in the elections are promising, with estimates of it being around 75%.

There is of course a party who would like voter participation to be considerably less than this, and PP strategist Gabriel Elorriaga was kind enough to spell out explicitly to the British press what he would never have said so openly to the Spanish media. That the PP wants potential voters of the left to stay at home on election day is hardly a surprise, but for them to confirm that they are actively seeking abstention is a sign that they realise the limits of their appeal. It seems that the only message the PP has for those who don’t support their hard right positions is “Please don’t vote”.

The debate tonight is a big one for Mariano Rajoy, his aggressive attacks last week failed to give him anything approaching a knockout blow, and the general perception was that Zapatero did better from the debate despite an uncertain performance. Tonight the tables are turned slightly as the order of intervention will allow Zapatero to have first say in each section and thus give him more opportunity to set the agenda. It’s not necessarily Rajoy’s final chance to score points in the campaign, that could come tomorrow with the announcement of the latest unemployment figures. However, the story of the polls is that the campaign is not currently going the PP’s way.

In the end one of the biggest talking points of last week’s debate was the decision by Rajoy to openly accuse Zapatero of having attacked the victims of terrorism, an accusation which he refused to withdraw. It seems amazing that following the PP’s exploitation of terrorism over the last few years they can still get away with this sort of thing without the political roof falling in on their heads. Their bogus claims to speak in the name of terrorist victims are not new, they have hidden so much of their opposition behind this shield, but it is a depressing illustration of how an important issue can be manipulated to such extremes without apparently affecting the willingness of many people to vote for them.

At least now many victims have had enough and are starting to speak out against the fraudulent way in which the PP has attempted to use their suffering for its own political objectives. The PP only recognises as victims those who support these objectives, such as the leadership of the AVT. Those victims of the Madrid bombings or ETA who refused to accept the conspiracy theories that the PP and their media friends promoted are simply airbrushed out of the photo, and of course denied any funding by those administrations that the PP controls.

Rajoy used as support for his accusation the claim that Zapatero had negotiated politically with ETA, a claim backed up with the blatant lie that no other Spanish government had ever done this before. Irony of ironies, Rajoy’s main advisor in last week’s debate was a certain Pedro Arriola. Now Mr Arriola knows a thing or two about negotiating with ETA, he was a member of the team sent by José Maria Aznar to talk face to face with ETA in Switzerland in 1999. So the question naturally arises, if they didn’t negotiate politically with ETA at this meeting, what were they discussing? Perhaps the weather? Or Athletic Bilbao’s prospects for that season? Some analysts felt that Zapatero could have responded much more strongly on this issue than he did in last week’s encounter. Perhaps tonight he will.