On July 10th, 1997, the Basque terrorist group Eta kidnapped a young conservative politician called Miguel Ángel Blanco. The kidnappers demanded that the central government move jailed Eta members to prisons closer to the Basque Country in exchange for his release.
The government of José María Aznar refused to negotiate and, over the next couple of agonising days, millions of Spaniards across the country were glued to their radios and television sets as they followed the countdown to Eta’s deadline.
When it was not met, the 29-year-old Blanco was shot twice and left for dead in a wooded area near the city of San Sebastián. The next day he was found, barely alive, and he died in hospital.
The drama of Blanco’s death made it arguably the most notorious of Eta’s more than 850 murders. It also marked a turning point in the response to the group’s terrorism, as millions of people and politicians of different stripes turned out in the streets of towns and cities across Spain to demonstrate against Eta. The musician Carlos Goñi was so moved by the news of Blanco’s death that he wrote a song, Una lluvia violenta y salvaje (A violent and wild downpour) in response to it.
The social and political unity displayed during those days became known as “the spirit of Ermua”, Blanco’s hometown, and it was credited with accelerating the eventual demise of Eta.
‘Anti-terrorist fight’
“The disgust of Spaniards, expressed in protests, demonstrations and brave responses, helped perfect all the mechanisms of the anti-terrorist fight,” noted Antonio Basagoiti, a friend of Blanco who joined the Basque wing of the conservative Popular Party (PP) at the same time as him.
Increased police pressure severely weakened the organisation and it disbanded in 2018, eight years after its last killing. However, Eta remains the focal point for a political rancour which has refused to fade and has flared up again in recent days.
The cause of the ill-feeling has been the reliance of Pedro Sánchez’s leftist minority government on the support of small nationalist parties in parliament, including the left-wing, pro-independence EH Bildu, which is seen as the political voice of those who once supported Eta.
Last month, an agreement with EH Bildu ensured that a government historical memory Bill, which seeks to allow the investigation of crimes during the Franco dictatorship, should be approved by congress this week. The Bill was amended, at EH Bildu’s instigation, to enable police abuses from the early 1980s, such as those committed against pro-independence Basque activists, to be probed.
Sánchez’s critics have presented this as new evidence of his willingness to pander to Basque and Catalan separatists in order to keep his government in office. The timing has raised the heat even more. Not only is the Bill due to be voted on a day after the anniversary of Blanco’s death, but this month also marks 25 years since the celebrated release by police of José Antonio Ortega Lara, a prison officer kidnapped by Eta for 18 months.
Victims’ groups
“Sánchez, in order to remain a few more months in power, has made the political successors of Eta judges of the nation,” wrote the conservative commentator Luis María Anson, reflecting the opinion of many on the right.
Some terrorism victims’ groups refused to take part in an event in Ermua on Sunday to mark the anniversary, in protest at Sánchez’s presence there. Blanco’s sister, María del Mar, who is a PP politician, threatened not to attend due to a disagreement with the Socialist mayor of Ermua over whether she would be allowed to speak at it.
Many on the left see the outrage surrounding the anniversary merely as another instance of Spain’s unionist right exploiting the legacy of Eta for electoral gain. Yet some within the ranks of Sánchez’s own Socialist Party have also expressed concerns. Former Socialist prime minister Felipe González, who has frequently criticised the Sánchez administration, said that the memory law agreed on with the Basque nationalists “doesn’t sound right to me”.
As Spain enters an electoral cycle that is due to culminate in a general election in late 2023, there are signs that Sánchez’s willingness to govern with nationalist support is one of several factors – including the cost of living and his handling of the complex relationship with Morocco – that are eroding his electoral support.
“We made the mistake of imagining that one day all of this would end,” sang Carlos Goñi in his tribute to Miguel Ángel Blanco a quarter of a century ago. The violence of Eta that he was referring to did end. But the bad blood surrounding its legacy still flows freely.
