Despite Outrage at Killing, Basques Still Press Nationalism

The Basque separatist killers have aroused so much fury in Spain with their latest escapade in terror that it is tempting to hope that they have finally overreached and collapsed under the weight of national contempt. Some prominent Spaniards believe so.

More than two million angry Spaniards demonstrated in the streets of their cities last week to protest the murder by ETA terrorists last weekend of Miguel Angel Blanco Garrido--a popular 29-year-old accountant who dabbled in small-town politics and drummed in a local band during his spare time.

This outpouring prompted Crown Prince Felipe to tell mourners at the funeral in the Basque region, “The Spaniards and especially the Basque people have spoken with a single voice to state now: That’s enough.” El Pais, Spain’s most authoritative newspaper, prophesied that the murder “signaled a crucial stage in the growing isolation of the terrorist organization.”

But fury and anguish have produced heartfelt cries about the demise of ETA before. Just 10 years ago, for example, ETA terrorists exploded a bomb in a Barcelona supermarket that killed 21 people. This attack against bystanders in a non-Basque city outraged Spain. If ever ETA had overreached, it was then. But the reign of terror did not stop.

ETA, which takes its name from the initials in the Basque language of the slogan “Basque Homeland and Freedom,” has killed more than 800 people in almost 30 years. There are not many terrorists--perhaps a thousand or so--but they are sheltered by tens of thousands of sympathizers.

There is no doubt that support for ETA has lessened over the years. At first, some foolish Basques smiled at its bloody acts, hoping a dollop of terror might jolt the central government into giving up more autonomy for the Basque region. Other Basques felt contempt for the victims--often Spanish soldiers or Civil Guards who used to bash Basque heads during the days of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. This sympathy for ETA diminished, however, as the Basque region attained more autonomy and the terrorists began killing Basque officials and even civilians with as much impunity as they once killed swaggering outsiders.

Yet a good deal of Basque support for ETA remains. This can be measured by the vote for the Herri Batasuna Party, the political wing of ETA. In the 1986 parliamentary elections, 195,000 people, or almost 18% of the electorate in the the region, voted for Herri Batasuna. Ten years later, in the 1996 elections, 155,000, or 12.5% of the electorate, voted for these ETA surrogates. That is not an insignificant decline. Yet it also means one out of eight in the Basque region still sees nothing wrong with ETA murder.

The vote, in fact, reflects just how intractable the Basque problem has become. It will take more than the fury of funeral oratory to make ETA wither.

The Basques are victims of their own history. A people in the Pyrenees mountains who had some autonomy during the Middle Ages, the Basques originally spoke Euskera, which was far different from Spanish. Their desire for autonomy was revived in the late 19th century, when a wave of cultural nationalism swept ethnic minorities throughout Europe.

The Basques were served poorly, however, by their leader, Sabino Arana, who forged a racist ideology that hurt nationalism in the long run. Arana, for example, preached that the Basques must not soil their language by teaching it to outsiders. Another taboo was intermarriage. The Basques would remain exclusive.

When newcomers came to the Basque region earlier in this century, attracted by the industrial might of Bilbao and other Basque towns, the Basques shunned them and refused to teach them Euskera. This backfired. The influx of other Spaniards became so great, and their grasp of Euskera so weak, that Spanish became the dominant language in large towns. The 40-year Franco regime weakened the culture further when it tried to wipe out all vestiges of Basque nationalism.

Only a minority of the two million people in the Basque region now speak Euskera, mainly in rural areas. Basques feel their culture slipping away.

The atmosphere is far different in Catalonia, an ethnic region of Spain not burdened by extreme racist ideology. Immigrants to Barcelona and other Catalan industrial towns were embraced so warmly that they soon learned to speak Catalan and take on Catalan identity.

Franco tried just as hard to wipe out Catalan nationalism as Basque nationalism. Yet the vast majority of those who live in Catalonia now speak the Catalan language. The Catalans feel self-confident about their culture. There is no breathing room for terrorists in Catalonia.

During the Franco years, the ETA killers were heroes throughout Spain. In 1973, they assassinated Franco’s despised prime minister, Luis Carrero Blanco, in Madrid. Spaniards assumed the Basque heroes would halt their killing once Francoist fascism yielded to democracy.

But, after Franco’s death in 1975, and the transition to democracy, the killing intensified. Some Basques, forgetting the lessons of 40 years of dictatorship, insisted it did not matter who reigned in Madrid; dictator or democrat, they said, it was all the same for the Basques.

This was nonsense. It is true that the democratic leaders at first did not understand the depth of nationalist feelings in the Basque region and moved too slowly in negotiating autonomy. But Madrid did away with the Francoist cultural repression. And Spanish democracy finally accepted regional autonomy. While there is still squabbling over taxes and finances, the Basques now have far more self-government than any state in the U.S.

The moderate Basques who run the autonomous government have worked to bring their region into the mainstream of Spain and of Europe. The regional government, for example, financed the $87-million, titanium Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, designed by architect Frank Gehry, that will open this fall. The Basques hope this spectacular museum will help shake Bilbao from its doldrums. Bilbao also tries to attract notice every year with a festival of documentary films.

But these stabs at self-promotion are sad. Bilbao, the largest city in the Basque region, is a depressed city, partly because its heavy industries like shipbuilding are in decline, partly because the terror has discouraged investment. As long as ETA hovers in the background, it is inconceivable that Bilbao could ever emulate Barcelona and stage an Olympics.

In the past, Madrid has tried to wipe out Basque terrorism with both an iron fist and a soothing voice. The government of Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez even shocked Spanish liberals when it took a page out of Argentina’s Dirty War and allowed secret paramilitary gangs to assassinate suspected ETA conspirators. Failing to stop ETA this way, the Gonzalez government tried negotiating. This approach failed as well.

The present conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, himself the target of an aborted ETA assassination before taking office, will surely have to deal with ETA in similar waves of toughness and softness. After the recent murder, the Aznar government announced it would no longer talk to members of Herri Batasuna. But Aznar will probably find that it will soon be wise to resume talks.

In the long run, the odds are against the Basque terrorists. But the long run may prove very bloody and, in fact, very long before coming to an end.