BASQUE PRO-INDEPENDENCE radicals formerly associated with the banned Batasuna party announced at the weekend that they were forming a new party, still to be named, whose constitution would explicitly reject political violence in all circumstances.
Batasuna was made illegal under Spain’s controversial Political Parties’ Law in 2001, which was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in 2009, and which provides for the banning of groups that do not condemn terrorist acts.
This is the latest in a series of steps that distances the radicals from the Basque terrorist group Eta, which called a cessation of “offensive operations” on September 5th. It puts the group under greatly increased pressure to dissolve itself altogether, since it now appears it no longer has any significant political allies in the Basque country.
But it also puts the Spanish government and courts under pressure to concede a legal political platform to an organisation that could push independence up the Basque agenda.
The Partido Popular, Spain’s hard-right major opposition party, yesterday predictably called on the government not to legalise “another franchise for Eta”. Sources close to the governing Socialist Party (PSOE) indicated that it would hang as tough as it has throughout this autumn’s very one-sided “peace process”.
They said no new party would be permitted to function until either Eta had hung up its guns for good or the new party explicitly condemned Eta, and not just violence in the abstract.
Batasuna leaders have been traditionally unwilling to express any public disagreement with Eta.
But they have made unprecedented statements since September, calling on the organisation to make the ceasefire “permanent and internationally verifiable”, as requested by the South African peace process facilitator Brian Currin.
One such leader, Rufi Exteberria, told The Irish Times in September that if Eta returned to violence “they will place themselves outside and against the new strategy adopted by our members”.
On Saturday, Mr Etxeberria read out a statement signed by 300 of his associates saying that the new organisation “will reject the use of violence, or the threat of its use, for political ends”, and that this commitment is “not subject to changing tactics or circumstances”.
Many observers had expected a new Eta announcement confirming a complete end to its campaign by the middle of this month.
This weekend’s developments either herald such a declaration in the very near future or a complete split between the remaining armed activists and their political counterparts in the Basque country.
Either way, the statement marks a defining moment in the movement’s history.
The statement came on the same weekend that Catalonia was expected to elect a first minister, Arturo Mas of political party Convergencia y Unió, who will be the first such leader to explicitly support a pro-independence programme.
It has not passed unnoticed in the Basque country that the Catalans have reached this position without the “support” of any terrorist group.