In 2011, when Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (‘Basque Country and Freedom”) — better known as ETA — the Basque group pushing for separation from Spain announced a “permanent and general” ceasefire, the move was greeted by and large with scepticism from the government. The announcement of a ceasefire five years before that had failed to stop a bomb going off in the parking lot of Madrid’s Barajas airport, killing two people in December 2006 — which ETA subsequently claimed responsibility for, putting the number of deaths they had caused to well over 800.

A separate move in 2014, in which it handed over three pistols, a Heckler and Koch G3 rifle, detonators and plastic explosives to mediators — in a symbolic gesture — also received a muted response from the Spanish government, being seen partly as an attempt to get some of their members out of custody.

Further steps, including leading French authorities in 2017 to a place where weapons, explosives and ammunition were hidden, also did little to convince authorities in Madrid that change was on its way.

The Spanish government has been particularly cautious when it comes to ETA, founded in the late 1959s in response to repressive efforts of the Franco government (not least the infamous bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, carried out by the German Luftwaffe in 1937 at the behest of Franco and captured on canvas by Pablo Picasso).

It carried out high profile political killings, with a chilling degree of persistence and determination — including the 1973 assassination of Franco’s chosen successor Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco, via explosives that it had packed into an underground tunnel dug beneath a street that the leader’s car was expected to drive down.

However, it was its targeting of civilians that swiftly dented any potential support, including the bombing of a supermarket in Barcelona that killed 21 people, while the XX murder of Miguel Angel Blanco, who was kidnapped and then killed despite public protest led the formation of anti-ETA movement Foro Ermua that also pushed heavily against any efforts to conduct negotiations with the group.

The combination of strong anti-ETA sentiment nationally, as well as the long-standing unified-Spain, anti-secessionist sentiment that has dominated the country from the Franco days, has limited the government’s willingness to engage with ETA (with reason, the group’s tendency to renege on a ceasefire would suggest).

Whether that could change remains to be seen. Last week, in a step that was widely hailed as significant, ETA, in a statement published by Basque newspaper Gara , apologised for the pain it had caused in its decades-long conflict. “We are aware that during this long period of armed struggle we have created a lot of pain, including much damage for which there is no solution. We want to show respect for the dead, those injured and the victims that were caused by the actions of ETA…we truly apologise.”

“Such apologies from non-state armed groups are typically very rare and are typically precursors to disbanding or the ending of an armed campaign. The ETA apology adheres to the same principles as seen from groups like FARC or the [Provisional IRA] after peace deals, wherein seeking reconciliation is a key element,” says Matthew Henman, head of Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre at IHS Markit.

Separatist cause

The move was welcomed by the Spanish government as a development that — while coming many years later than it should have — highlighted the “strength of the rule of law” and was a victory for the government by the “weapon of democracy.”

However, its dissolution as a force of armed conflict will not put a stop to its attempts to continue to champion the separatist cause: ETA’s statement is also almost certainly being seen as a prelude to a move into the political realm.

“It certainly seems likely that there will be a transition to achieving the group’s goals through political means. The apology is very clear that from the group’s perspective there remains a political conflict in place in the Basque region that requires resolution, and it is likely that the group will wish to be involved in this,” says Henman.

It is far from the only former armed terror group globally to have attempted to make the foray into formal politics. Sinn Fein, the republican Irish party, once linked to the IRA, has been the largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland assembly, while in Columbia, the left wing guerilla group FARC, reborn as the People’s Alternative Revolutionary Force, recently announced candidates for presidential election and congressional elections this year: under the terms of the peace agreement it is guaranteed a number of parliamentary seats at the minimum.

However, it remains to be seen what ETA’s success could be in politics. The Basque region’s economic prosperity in recent years has somewhat nullified the discontent and anger the group had once lived off. Potential supporters are likely to be fully aware of the struggles that the Catalan independence movement — non violent though politically heated — has had in winning allies even beyond its borders.

The EU and its constituent states have stood determinedly by the Spanish government through the political stand-off, with the Catalan separatist movement that has intensified over the past year — reiterating their respect for Spanish unity, while Germany, on behalf of the Spanish government, is pushing to extradite former leader Carles Puigdemont back to Spain to face charges there. With little prospect of support from the EU as an independent state, separatist causes across Europe are struggling to gain ground. “The Spanish government will certainly look to position the [ETA] apology and upcoming disbandment as a major victory for both democratic politics and law enforcement in the country, emphasising the illegitimacy of violence in achieving political goals,” says Henman.

Wherever things head now, it remains the case that the last bastion of violent separatism in Europe has been vanquished.

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