ETA, an acronym for ('Basque Homeland and Liberty'ETA BASQUE ORGANIZATION, Encyclopaedia Britannica 20 October 2011 or 'Basque Country and Freedom' in Basque), was an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization active in Spain and France between 1959 and 2018. It was founded in 1959, during Francoist Spain, by a group of Basque nationalist students seeking to promote Basque identity and independence. Over time, ETA evolved into a clandestine paramilitary group that conducted a campaign of assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings primarily in Spain, particularly in the Basque Country and surrounding regions. ETA was considered the main organization of the Basque National Liberation Movement and played a central role in the Basque conflict, in which more than 850 people were killed, 2,600 were wounded, and nearly 90 were kidnapped. The group announced a definitive end to its armed activity in 2011 and formally dissolved in 2018.
ETA's motto was ("Keep up in both"), referring to the two figures in its symbol, a snake (representing politics) wrapped around an axe (representing armed struggle).Quiosco | El Mundo en ORBYT. Elmundo.es. Retrieved on 30 January 2011.ETA, una serpiente vacilante. elmundo.es. Retrieved on 30 January 2011.De patrulla por Vitoria. elmundo.es (24 March 2006). Retrieved on 30 January 2011. Between 1968 and 2010, ETA killed 829 people (including 340 civilians) and injured more than 22,000.Peace at Last? | People & Places|Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonianmag.com. Retrieved on 30 January 2011. ETA was classified as a terrorist group by France, the United Kingdom, the United States,Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). Retrieved on 16 April 2013. Canada, and the European Union. This convention was followed by a plurality of domestic and international media, which also referred to the group as terrorists.Spain's rail ambitions: Ave Madrid. The Economist (5 February 2009). Retrieved on 30 January 2011.Spanien: Mutmaßliche Eta-Terroristen gefasst – SPIEGEL ONLINE – Nachrichten – Politik. Spiegel.de (2 July 2007). Retrieved on 30 January 2011. , there were more than 260 imprisoned former members of the group in Spain, France, and other countries.
ETA declared ceasefires in 1989, 1996, 1998 and 2006. On 5 September 2010, ETA declared a new ceasefire that remained in force, and on 20 October 2011, ETA announced a "definitive cessation of its armed activity". On 24 November 2012, it was reported that the group was ready to negotiate a "definitive end" to its operations and disband completely. The group announced on 7 April 2017 that it had given up all its weapons and explosives. On 2 May 2018, ETA made public a letter dated 16 April 2018 according to which it had "completely dissolved all its structures and ended its political initiative".
Structure
ETA was initially organized in extreme hierarchy: a leading figure at the top, delegating into the logistical, military and political sections. Reports from Spanish and French police point towards significant changes in ETA's structures in its later years. ETA divided the three substructures into a total of eleven. The change was a response to captures, and possible infiltration, by the different law enforcement agencies. ETA intended to disperse its members and reduce the effects of detentions.
The leading committee comprised 7 to 11 individuals, and ETA's internal documentation referred to it as , an abbreviation of (directorial committee). There was another committee named that functioned as an advisory committee. The eleven different substructures were: logistics, politics, international relations with fraternal organisations, military operations, reserves, prisoner support, expropriation, information, recruitment, negotiation, and treasury.POLÍTICA – ETA ha modificado su estructura interna por motivos de seguridad. El Correo Digital (1 December 1997). Retrieved on 30 January 2011.
ETA's armed operations were organized in different s (groups or commandos), generally composed of three to five members, whose objective was to conduct attacks in a specific geographic zone. The s were coordinated by the ("military cupola"). To supply the , support groups maintained safe houses and (small rooms concealed in forests, garrets or underground, used to store arms, explosives or, sometimes, kidnapped people; the Basque word literally means "hole"). The small cellars used to hide the people kidnapped are named by ETA and ETA's supporters "people's jails".«El técnico» construyó loss zulos de ETA , La Razón, 18 October 2004. The most common commandos were itinerant, not linked to any specific area, and thus were more difficult to capture.Riding, Alan. (11 July 1992) OLYMPICS – OLYMPICS – Keeping Terrorism at Bay in Barcelona|work=The New York Times. Retrieved on 30 January 2011.
Among its members, ETA distinguished between / ("legal ones"), those members who did not have police records and lived apparently normal lives; ("liberated members") known to the police that were on ETA's payroll; and ("supporters") who gave occasional help and logistics support to the group when required.
There were also imprisoned members of the group, serving time scattered across Spain and France, that sometimes still had significant influence inside the organisation; and finally the ("burnt out"), members freed after having been imprisoned or those that were suspected by the group of being under police surveillance. In the past, there was also the figure of the deportees, expelled by the French government to remote countries where they lived freely. ETA's internal bulletin was named ("Column"), replacing the earlier one (1962) ("Standing").
ETA also promoted the ("street fight"), which included violence on public transportation and against political parties' offices or cultural buildings, and property destruction of politicians, members of the military or police forces, banks, journalists, and council members. Tactics included threats, graffiti of political mottos, and rioting, usually using Molotov cocktails. These groups were mostly made up of young people, who were directed through youth organisations (such as , and ). Many members of ETA started their collaboration with the group as participants in the .
Ideology ETA did not identify as Marxist from its inception, but soon after its founding it did gain such coloration and defined itself as a revolutionary socialist movement. The organization spoke of a distinctly Basque "national socialism" (socialismo nacional), a term that was used by numerous anti-colonial movements during the Cold War, as well as movements such as Peronism. From 1965 onwards, ETA had two distinct factions - the nationalist and socialist one, with the former subordinating class struggle to the national question, and the latter seeing the national question as subordinate to a greater class struggle. Early ETA also had European federalist influences thanks to the presence of Federico Krutwig, a Basque revolutionary who was a staunch Europhile and adhered to the views of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Menachem Begin. However, he left ETA in 1967 as Marxist factions became dominant.
The main and non-negotiable demand of the party was an independent Basque state stretching from northern Spain to southern France. It was said to combine 'conservative nationalism with communist ideology', as it centered its doctrine on Basque independence and socioeconomic struggle against capitalism, which it expressed through a slogan of "Basques as a people of workers". ETA postulated a two-fold cause for independence, based on both respect for Basque language and culture as well as the liberation of the working class. It intertwined the goal for a Basque nation-state for a socialist economy which was to consist of an equitable distribution of wealth and improved living standards for the Basque working class.
ETA defined itself as an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement. Its ideology was described as a "combination of liberation theology, separatism, Catholicism and Marxism" and as "a nationalist, third-worldist organization of Marxist inclinations, with Catholic influences, especially from the Latin American inspired theology of liberation". The vision of Basque nationalism that ETA envisioned was "based not only on the Basque culture and language but also on the centrality of the Roman Catholic Church." According to Paddy Woodworth, ETA "passed through an ideological ferment, moving rapidly from Catholic social radicalism through a spectrum of anti-colonialist positions, ultimately defining itself as a Marxist-Leninist movement commited to Basque independence and socialism", and noted profound "religious overtones" in the theoretical documents of ETA.
According to the organization's Marxist-Leninist and ethnonational doctrine, despite the Spanish transition to democracy, Spain continued to be ruled and dominated by the same oligarchy and military, whose interests continued to depend on 'exploiting the masses', including the Basques and other ethnonational minorities in Spain. According to ETA, Spain transitioned into "Francoism without Franco" and is still based on the same state apparatus and capitalism. The party also attacked the Basque bourgeoisie, arguing that it collaborates with the Spanish elites as it also depends on the continued exploitation of the Basque working class, thus having a common interest with Madrid. ETA also claimed that "one cannot be a Basque patriot unless one is also a member of the Basque working class", as the collaboration of the Basque bourgeoisie with the Spanish bourgeoisie would result in the "elimination of all signs of a distinctive Basque ethnocultural identity". Moreover, the organization claimed that the American Central Intelligence Agency aids the Spanish and Basque governments and police forces against it, referring to the Spanish and Basque officials as "occupation forces". ETA went as far as to label drug smugglers "Spanish occupation forces" as well, claiming that they secretly collaborate with police forces.
Defining itself as an "armed socialist organization fighting for the national liberation of the Basque people", ETA envisioned an independent Basque state ruled by a Marxist-Leninist regime. It stressed the need for change, arguing that continued status quo in the Basque Country will result in an "unsustainable economic crisis, unemployment, progressive margination of the Basque culture and language, savage military occupation of the whole Basque territory". It did not ideologically oppose any negotiated settlement, but emphasized that "a negotiated settlement to any conflict presupposes an attitude of mutual recognition of the negotiating parties".
Political support
The former political party Batasuna, disbanded in 2003, pursued the same political goals as ETA and did not condemn ETA's use of violence. Formerly known as Euskal Herritarrok and "Herri Batasuna", it was banned by the Spanish Supreme Court as an anti-democratic organisation following the Political Parties Law (Ley de Partidos Políticos). It generally received 10% to 20% of the vote in the Basque Autonomous Community.Elecciones en el País Vasco 2005. elmundo.es. Retrieved on 30 January 2011.Elecciones a las Juntas Generales del País Vasco 1979–2015 (in Spanish). Retrieved on 13 July 2017.
Batasuna's political status was controversial. It was considered to be the political wing of ETA. Moreover, after the investigations on the nature of the relationship between Batasuna and ETA by Judge Baltasar Garzón, who suspended the activities of the political organisation and ordered police to shut down its headquarters, the Supreme Court of Spain finally declared Batasuna illegal on 18 March 2003. The court considered proven that Batasuna had links with ETA and that it constituted in fact part of ETA's structure. In 2003, the Constitutional Tribunal upheld the legality of the law.