Antonio Remiro Brotóns and Carlos Espósito

SPAIN Antonio Remiro Brotóns and Carlos Espósito THE FIRST FEW MONTHS of the new millennium witnessed six dead victims of terrorism in Spain. After several months of false hope due to a rather long and deceiving cease-fire, ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna), the Basque Fatherland and Liberty terrorist group, resumed its outrages, killing Lt. Col. Pedro Antonio Blanco García on January 21, 2000, in Madrid. Then, a few days before the Span- ish general elections of March 12, a powerful bomb killed Fernando Buesa, a Socialist Party member of the Basque Parliament, and his bodyguard in Vitoria (Alava). On May 7, José Luis López de la Calle, a journalist specializing in terrorism and a founder of a pacifist organization called the Forum of Ermua, was shot dead near his house in Andoain (Guipuzcoa). Jesús María Pedrosa Urquiza, councilor of the city of Durango (Vizcaya), received a mortal gunshot wound in the back of his neck on June 4, only because he was a town councilor of the Partido Popular, a conservative party that has governed Spain since 1996. Next, on July 15, 2000, ETA slaugh- tered José María Martín Carpena, another councilor of the Partido Popular, who was shot six times in the parking lot of his house in 163 164 Málaga (Andalucía) in front of his wife and daughter. These are just • the latest, very sad examples of the persistence of terrorism in COMBATING Spain after more than twenty years of democratic freedom, and it TERRORISM is also the cruel evidence that counterterrorist policies have not been successful thus far. This essay presents the basic features of the counterterrorist policies adopted and enforced by Spain. The scope of the report is wide; however, we will underscore policies adopted against ETA’s terrorism from the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democracy in 1975 to the present. Regarding the definition of terrorism, we assume that it is the deliberate employment of violence or the threat of violence by subnational groups and sovereign states to obtain radical strategic and political objectives by means of unlawful acts of intimidation.1 The strategic goal of terrorism in carrying out these unlawful acts is also important because such acts are intended to create overwhelming fear in a target population larger than the civil- ian or military victims actually attacked or threatened.2 We will proceed by introducing the domestic sources of terrorism in Spain and giving a brief background history of ETA—its origins and evolution as a terrorist group. Next we identify the main counterterrorist governmental policies and evaluate them according to such criteria as efficacy, legality, and legitimacy. Finally, we address international cooperation, particularly the sometimes difficult relationship between Spain and France regarding ETA and its members. In addition, we include an overview of the legal instru- ments available to combat terrorism at the European level. The con- cluding remarks sum up the main points of the report. SOURCES OF THE TERRORIST THREAT IN SPAIN Spanish society is mainly concerned with domestic sources of terrorism—particularly with ETA, the most relevant one from any point of view. The governmental and public perception of other sources of terrorism, including global terrorism, as an actual threat to Spain is rather weak. There is no doubt that domestic terrorism has had and may still have connections with international terrorism, but these ties are rather fragile.3 Therefore, the rest of this report focuses on domestic sources of terrorism, particularly ETA. However, before the origins and evolution of ETA are described we 165 must comment briefly on another terrorist group that has been important in recent times and is still active—Grupos Armados An- Spain tifascistas Primero de Octubre (GRAPO, Antifascist Armed Group of October First).4 The GRAPO operated particularly, but not exclusively, during the first part of the Spanish transition to democracy, which began around 1975. In fact, it took its name from the first act of terrorism of the group, which occurred in Madrid on October 1, 1976. The group stems from the Reconstituted Communist Party of Spain (PCER), which included an armed division that sought to under- mine the perpetuation of Spanish dictatorship under Francisco Franco. The order to start violent activities came when the party was profoundly divided and was much alienated from the sympa- thies of the people.5 While operative, the GRAPO killed eighty-three people and kidnapped three. The group lost some of its own members for several reasons: two died in a hunger strike, seventeen died as a consequence of fighting against security forces, five died because of the explosion of a bomb, one committed suicide, one was assassinated by the GRAPO itself, and two were assassinated by un- known people. Let us return now to our central concern: ETA. The organization was set up in 1959 as a nationalist movement to resist the political oppression exercised over the Basque people since the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).6 A group of young and displeased people, known as EKIN (which in Euskera, the Basque language, means “to do”), began informal talks in the early 1950s to learn about and discuss nationalism and rediscover the Basque nationalist theories stated by Sabino Arana, who is recognized as the father of Basque nationalism.7 Arana founded the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party) in 1892. In his writings, he favored a nationalism based on the Basque race and the idea that Euskadi (his chosen name for the Basque Land) is the fatherland of the Basques. The ETA did not follow Arana’s ideology to the letter because the organization defended a nationalism grounded on the Basque language instead of giving essential importance to family names and race.8 Consequently, the defense and promotion of the Euskera and Basque cultural manifestations were the main objectives of the group from the beginning. Of course, these objectives 166 are inseparable from the more general aim of creating an indepen- • dent homeland in the Basque region, that is, a Basque state.9 COMBATING The ETA was born during difficult times for the Basque leaders TERRORISM of the Partido Nacionalista Vasco and the Basque people. Indeed, after the Spanish Civil War the Basque government was forced into exile. Its policy depended totally on its confidence in the Allied pow- ers, which it supported and helped in many ways. After World War II, however, the Allies let the Basques down and recognized the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, particularly because it was anti- communist and the Cold War had become a principal concern of the United States. Franco’s dictatorship prohibited Euskera from being spoken and some of Basque’s cultural manifestations from being displayed. Moreover, according to Jáuregui, Franco realized one of the claims of Sabino Arana’s nationalism that made possible the birth of ETA: the Spanish occupation of the Basque Land.10 Although ETA’s members were nationalists, they differed from the traditional and conservative Basque nationalists of the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), particularly because they rejected calls for moderation and passivity. The members of the ETA were committed to action. In fact, they were determined to adopt violent mea- sures several months before the death of Txabi Etxebarrieta, the first casualty of ETA, and the killing of Melitón Manzanas, the chief of the Political and Social Brigade of San Sebastián, in August 1968. The killing of Melitón Manzanas was followed by indiscriminate re- pression from Franco’s government, which, added to the famous “Burgos trial” in 1970, created the image of ETA as a leftist political group fighting against Franco’s dictatorship.11 That somewhat benevolent vision of the band reached its peak with the assassination of the powerful prime minister Carrero Blanco in December 1973, causing tremendous damage to Franco’s regime. Carrero Blanco’s assassination revealed another important, lasting element of ETA: the military organization controls all other aspects of the revolutionary fight, political, social, and cultural. The superiority of the military over the political leadership has not always been eas- ily accepted within ETA, as the internal leadership struggles of the organization show. Ever since its formation, ETA has gone through many significant internal conflicts.12 Now we have to underscore the important cri- sis that arose during the Sixth Assembly in 1974, which ended with the split of ETA into two factions: ETA/Political-Military and ETA- 167 Military. The basis of this partition can be found in diverse political and strategic approaches and in ideological differences as well.13 Spain Nevertheless, the major basis of disagreement was over the use of armed force. Consequently, almost all the members of the political faction of ETA abandoned violence and formed a new political party known as Euskadiko Ezkerra or EE (Basque Left Wing). The military faction, which was the largest part of the organization, continued its strategy of violence. That strategy, however, has changed since the early 1970s. For instance, ETA brought into play new forms of violence such as abductions.14 It also altered the range of the strategy of violence from a selective to an indiscriminate one. The explosion of a bomb in a popular coffee shop in Madrid in September 1974, which killed twelve people and injured seventy-two, provides evidence of that change. That strategy had its most horrible manifes- tation

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