End to Basque Truce Spurs Pleas for Peace in Spain

Hours after Basque guerrillas called off the longest truce of their independence struggle, a crowd gathered silently outside the City Council building here Friday to witness something nearly as hard for Basques to imagine as peace itself.

For the first time in the 31-year-old conflict, politicians of all Spanish and Basque parties, including the guerrillas’ political wing, stood behind a single banner unfurled as a siren sounded at noon. “Pakea behar dugu,” it read in the Basque language. “We need peace.”

No one spoke. After five minutes the banner came down and the crowd of several hundred applauded and dispersed, joining the rest of Spain in a nervous wait for the guerrillas’ reply.

People here in northeastern Spain’s Basque country are stunned by the collapse of the 14-month truce, which threatens to halt a revival of the region’s tourist-driven economy. They are doubly frustrated that it coincides with the advent of home rule in Northern Ireland--the fruit of a long peace process that inspired the Basque rebels to declare a unilateral, indefinite cease-fire on Sept. 18, 1998.

Expressions of dismay have dominated newspaper columns, radio and television call-in shows, cafe conversations and social gatherings since the Basque Homeland and Freedom group, known by its Basque initials, ETA, announced last weekend that its commandos could be ordered to resume armed attacks as early as Friday.

“It’s not just the prospect of less business or fewer visitors but the way we feel inside,” said Carmen Arrazola, who manages San Sebastian’s popular seaside aquarium. “When people lose hope in peace, they lose energy and a sense of purpose in their work. They get depressed. This pessimism contaminates everything.”

‘We Are Under Terrorist Threat’

The pacifist rally here was one of scores staged Friday in the Basque country and across Spain after a TV newscaster declared at midnight: “The truce is over. Once again we are under terrorist threat.”

Although the breadth of support for the Basque country rallies was unprecedented, the region’s governor ordered that they be kept brief and silent, hoping to play down bitter differences over how to salvage the best chance yet for ending what is now Europe’s oldest armed conflict.

It was the first time that ETA’s political wing--Euskal Herritarrock, or Basque Citizens--has stood with foes of the rebels at any demonstration. The separatists distinguished themselves by waving green-red-and-white Basque flags.

“Nobody is against peace, but it must come with a recognition of the Basque people’s right to make their own decisions without interference of any kind” from Spanish authorities, Joseba Alvarez, a once-imprisoned leader of Euskal Herritarrock, said after taking part in the rally here.

“The violent radicals, those people with the flags, are here for their reasons, and we’re here for ours,” said Inigo Manrique, a City Council member from Spain’s ruling Popular Party. “The important thing is that we’re here together, asking for a chance to express our differences in peace. I hope ETA is listening.”

Hundreds of officials like Manrique are once again at risk and have begun using bodyguards for the first time since last year.

Move to Democracy Marred by Deaths

The conflict has claimed about 880 lives since 1968, touching nearly every Basque family and blighting Spain’s remarkable transition to democracy, which began with the 1975 death of dictator Francisco Franco. About two-thirds of those killed have been police officers, judges, politicians and bystanders slain by guerrilla bombs and bullets.

ETA said it was ending its truce because the mainstream, nonviolent Basque Nationalist Party, which runs the semiautonomous regional government with support from ETA’s political wing, had broken a promise to work vigorously for Basque independence.

The rebel group also scolded Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s center-right administration and French authorities for continuing to arrest its guerrillas during the cease-fire. ETA accused Aznar of seeking political gain from the truce, which it said had become “blocked and poisoned” since a failed round of negotiations in Switzerland in May.

The ETA announcement, sent with photographs to Basque media, brought back an image most Basques had hoped never to see again: five hooded guerrillas reading a strident communique at a secret location.

The strong public outcry has raised some hope that ETA will reconsider and refrain from violence--just as huge street protests against the 1997 rebel slaying of a kidnapped village councilman helped bring about the truce. But so far there is no evident break in the underlying political deadlock over Basque separatism.

ETA and its political wing demand a referendum on independence for the 2.6 million people who live in Spain’s four historic Basque provinces and 250,000 others in the adjacent Basque region of southern France.

Backed by Spain’s main opposition Socialist Party, Aznar has refused to discuss outright sovereignty for the Basque country, which already collects its own taxes, teaches in the Basque language in its public schools and has its own 7,000-member police force. His government has been willing to discuss only rebel disarmament and leniency for hundreds of Basque prisoners and exiles.

Caught in the middle, the Basque Nationalist Party has accused Aznar’s government of intransigence while warning ETA against uncompromising demands on behalf of a population that, in two elections during the truce, remained evenly divided between nationalist and pro-Spanish parties.

Struggling to keep the guerrillas quiet, the Basque Nationalist Party signed a new agreement this week with ETA’s political wing reaffirming the goal of Basque self-rule.

Many Basques taking part in the silent rallies said they blame ETA for the collapse of the truce but fault Aznar for failing to pursue a political solution here, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair did in Northern Ireland.

“Aznar and his government took ETA’s truce as proof that they had won a war, not as an opportunity to resolve a complex political conflict,” said Jonan Fernandez, coordinator of the Basque peace group Elkarri. “They thought ETA was finished.”

People in San Sebastian, a seaport city of 184,000 and home of ETA’s infamous Donosti commando unit, aren’t willing to make that assumption.

ETA Cease-Fire Had Helped Boost Tourism

Enjoying what might have been a brief peace dividend, San Sebastian rushed to finish an ultramodern convention center this summer and a major expansion of its aquarium the previous autumn. A rebound of the tourist industry has created thousands of new jobs in the region.

In the year after the end of ETA-inspired street violence in San Sebastian’s port area--where militants often had burned public buses and the cars of French tourists--the aquarium drew more than 600,000 visitors, nearly 10 times as many as in the previous 12 months, the aquarium’s manager said.

As he accepted a Basque government award for the aquarium’s boost to tourism, Vicente Zaragueta, the 66-year-old president of the regional oceanographic society, electrified a gala audience Thursday night with an impassioned appeal “for a definitive peace!”--a phrase he shouted three times in a row.

Basque government leaders are trying to maintain the impression of a continuing de facto truce. After Spain’s largest telephone company decided this week to cancel a convention for 1,000 of its executives and sales managers here in February, for fear of violence, the government persuaded it to reverse the decision.

But Ricardo Marti Fluxa, Spain’s secretary of security, predicted that ETA will attack “sooner rather than later.” Spanish police distributed photographs of nine ETA gunmen who are believed to have slipped into Spain from France recently, and security patrols were tightened on both sides of the border.

Spanish officials say ETA had been reduced to as few as 50 experienced guerrillas before the truce but worked during the past 14 months to rebuild and rearm, stocking 3 tons of industrial dynamite from a September theft in southern France.

“ETA was in a bad way a year and a half ago, and it’s not much better now,” Interior Minister Jaime Mayor Oreja said this week. But he warned, “As long as they are able to kill, I will not use the word ‘weak.’ ”