“Eta is alive. It’s in power. It lives off our money. It undermines our institutions. It wants to destroy Spain, deprive millions of Spaniards of their constitutional rights and provoke a confrontation.”
These words, uttered by the conservative president of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, during her recent, successful campaign for re-election, are easy to refute. Eta, a Basque separatist group that killed 853 people during a four-decade terrorist campaign, no longer exists. It disbanded in 2018, severely weakened and nine years after its last killing in Spain. No dissident group has emerged since to break the peace.
And yet, in one sense, Eta is very much alive. In Spain’s political arena, the defunct terrorist organisation remains a big issue for parties on the right, who insist its influence still poses a serious threat and that the left-wing government is under its sway.
[ Candidates with terrorist past bring Eta into Spanish campaignOpens in new window ]
The most obvious link between Eta and the present day is EH Bildu, the Basque nationalist coalition whose biggest party, Sortu, is seen as the political successor to Eta – a relationship that is comparable to that of Sinn Féin with the IRA.
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During Spain’s recent local election campaign, EH Bildu came under intense scrutiny after it emerged that the coalition had 44 candidates who had been convicted of terrorism-related offences. After days of controversy, EH Bildu said seven of its candidates, who had served sentences for murder, would not take up their posts if elected.
The fragile coalition government of prime minister Pedro Sánchez has needed the parliamentary support of EH Bildu’s five MPs. When the recent furore surrounding the convicted candidates occurred, it was Sánchez – as well as the Basque coalition – who faced the backlash.
The leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, accused the prime minister of being “more generous with the killers than with the victims [of terrorism]” and of being an ally of “those who went around in ski masks and with guns”.
Such charges are not new, and Sánchez responded by saying: “When everything fails and the apocalypse doesn’t arrive and the elections come, you always fall back on the same argument ... When Eta is nothing in Spain, for you it is everything.”
PP senator Pedro Rollán went further, accusing the government of implementing its housing law “on the ashes of the Hipercor shopping centre” in Barcelona where Eta killed 21 people with a bombing in 1987.
“Where I live in Madrid they’ve closed down the local health clinic in the afternoon, all because of Eta,” quipped one social media user
The far-right Vox, formed by hardline former PP members, has been similarly fixated on the issue. On one recent occasion, a Vox MP embarked on a rant about Eta during a debate about taxes.
Both the PP and Vox have turned one particular slogan into a taunting catchphrase, targeting Sánchez with the words: “May Txapote vote for you!” – a reference to the Eta killer Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, nicknamed “Txapote”.
For many observers, this obsession with a non-existent organisation has become a caricature of the warped nature of Spanish politics. It is proof, they say, that many of their politicians talk about everything except the important issues.
“Where I live in Madrid they’ve closed down the local health clinic in the afternoon, all because of Eta,” quipped one social media user.
And yet, it could be argued that the anti-Eta rhetoric works. Núñez Feijóo’s PP performed well in the local elections. In Madrid, hundreds of kilometres from the Basque Country, Díaz Ayuso spoke relentlessly about the issue, at one point even calling for the illegalisation of EH Bildu. She was the PP’s star candidate, securing a majority in the local parliament.
As Spain now embarks on another polarised campaign, this time in advance of a July 23rd general election, Eta and EH Bildu are expected to come to the fore once again.
There’s a huge difference between acknowledging the legality of a political party and turning it into a party-friend and inseparable partner
— Right-wing commentator Ignacio Varela
The phenomenon feeds into Spain’s territorial tensions of recent years, caused by the Catalonia region’s failed attempt to secede. Sánchez’s parliamentary reliance on Catalan nationalists has also riled the right. But it is the Basque Country’s baggage that triggers a more extreme response.
The right-wing commentator Ignacio Varela compared the situation unfavourably with that of Northern Ireland.
“Today, there is nobody left in the leadership of Sinn Féin who has taken part in terrorist activity,” he said, contrasting this with the more direct relationship EH Bildu has with Eta’s violence. The central government’s reliance on such a party, he said, crosses a moral line.
“There’s a huge difference between acknowledging the legality of a political party and turning it into a party-friend and inseparable partner,” he said.
And yet, as many on the left have pointed out, the PP itself has often taken a much softer line on both Eta and EH Bildu. A PP government held ultimately fruitless peace talks with the terrorist group in the late 1990s. And more recently the conservatives have reached agreements with EH Bildu in the Basque regional parliament on dozens of occasions.
Sánchez’s Socialists, meanwhile, 12 of whom were killed by Eta, were instrumental in ensuring the group laid down its weapons and were in power in 2011 when it did so.
This raises the question as to why the parties of the right have been so intent on presenting themselves as the enemies of terrorism while casting the left as its indulgent bedfellow.
The PP’s belligerent rhetoric on Eta is a way of whitewashing its original sin, the discomfort of the main party of the right at the fact it was the creation of a group of Franco ministers
— Political scientist Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca
The political scientist Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca believes that, by taking on the self-assigned role of Eta nemesis, the PP has sought to strengthen its own, rather creaky, democratic foundations. The party’s original incarnation was founded by members of the regime of Francisco Franco after the dictator’s death, and half of its MPs did not vote in favour of the 1978 constitution.
“The PP’s belligerent rhetoric on Eta is a way of whitewashing its original sin, the discomfort of the main party of the right at the fact it was the creation of a group of Franco ministers,” Sánchez-Cuenca noted.
Terrorism victims’ groups have at times expressed anger at the exploitation of their grief in the political sphere. The son of Juan Romero Álvarez, who was killed by Eta in 1993, posted a plea on Twitter for Díaz Ayuso to “stop saying atrocities”, and added: “Save me the pain of seeing that Eta remains alive in your mouth.”
However, as Spain enters its most bitter and divisive election campaign for decades, such requests are likely to go unheeded.