Basque terrorist group disbands, but says conflict is not over

ETA, the Basque terrorist group, formally announced its dissolution yesterday, declaring the “end of its journey”.

In a letter released to Spanish media, the group – which officially disarmed last year – said it had abolished its infrastructure and that its fight for an independent Basque Country was now “finished”. But, in a warning that will anger many, it said the Basque conflict with Spain was not over.

“This decision closes the historic stage of 60 years of ETA. But it does not overcome the conflict that Euskal Herria [The Basque Country] maintains with Spain and with France. The conflict did not start with ETA and doesn’t finish with the end of ETA’S journey,” the group said in its letter.

In the Basque town of San Sebastian yesterday, dozens of victims and activists released a manifesto accusing ETA of attempting to win sympathy and advance the nationalist cause.

“For us this is a trick, it is a circus, it is a whitewashing of its history”, said Consuelo Ordoñoz, whose brother Gregorio, a local politician, was killed by ETA in 1995. “Of course they are not going to renounce their project, of course they are going to continue, and on top of that now they are going to sell themselves as the good ones.”

The ETA letter is expected to be followed by a video to be broadcast today, featuring ETA leaders speaking from an institute in Geneva, and a ceremony tomorrow in Bayona, across the border in the French Basque region.

ETA was founded in 1959 amid Basque anger at political repression under Francisco Franco, the military dictator. More than 850 people were killed by the group before it officially abandoned armed activity in 2011.

Yesterday’s letter also cast blame on the Spanish authorities for “the lack of will to resolve the conflict”, which ETA said “has caused the lengthening of the conflict and has multiplied the suffering of the different parties.”

Mariano Rajoy’s government insisted there would be no concessions to the group – in particular on its key demand of the release of more than 200 ETA prisoners. Earlier this week, Spain’s National Court announced it was ready to try four ETA leaders for crimes against humanity, one of whom, Josu Ternera, is still on the run.

Paddy Woodworth, a senior lecturer at the University of Dublin, who has written several books on the Basque question, said that the dissolution “marks the very end of a 50-year strategy prioritising violence by radical Basque nationalism”.

But in a stridently polarised environment, where both sides “stick to such exclusive narratives of their own moral rectitude”, he said, “there is little prospect of reconciliation”.

Additional reporting by

James Badcock