The vote on autonomy was designed to placate the centralists whilst granting certain privileges to the nationalist core on the periphery. It did not attempt to debate the nature of independence as the completion of the democratisation process, under the platform of “coffee for all,” was always meant to be the main goal (de Antonio 1991: 153). The first major signs of discontent were to emerge with the formalisation of a nationalist electoral front, HB, under the KAS Alternative statement. It consisted of former cultural militants, ETA-m, the radicals of the Basque neighbourhood associations, Basque Communists and the PNV (Zirakzedah 1991: 197). Due to the diversity and the lessons of the past they did not owe allegiance to a specific power bloc, but, rather to their constituted set of demands called the KAS Alternative. A document that demanded the full withdrawal of the Spanish police and military forces from the Basque Country, the release of prisoners of war and the political independence of all four Basque provinces. The PNV and the PSOE moved into damage control mode and quickly sought to place autonomy at the centre of their political platforms in order to counter the ground made by the entering of ETA, under the guise of HB, into the political arena (Kaplan 1980: 126).

HB insistence on campaigning on the base of the radical KAS statement was justified as they recorded a remarkable 15% of the total vote in the 1979 elections (Shubert 1990: 248). The fact that they received three deputies and one senator, compared to the EE’s one deputy in 1977, suggested that the Basque people were still far from adverse towards adopting a revolutionary stance (Mujal-Léon 1979: 101). It also lead to the death knell of the reformed constitutionalism of the EE, as the Basque people found it hard to come to terms with the EE’s new role outside their traditional field of terrorist action (Gilmour 1985: 223).

The PNV was losing ground with the younger generation of disassociated youth, as the negotiation process over autonomy dragged on. In a last minute attempt of placating nationalist demands, the PNV withdrew from the Cortes so as to speed up devolution (Janke 1980: 15). In July 1979 this act in itself would break the impasse with the centre devolving powers to Bilbao, through Suárez renegotiating concessions to the Basques in return for the PNV granting legitimacy to the democratisation process (Gilmour 1985: 220). The move to form connections with the centrist UCD and the conservative successor of the Falangist bureaucracy, Alianza Popular (the Popular Alliance) was viewed as collusion with the very unitarist forces that the movement had for so long defined as the enemy (Zirakzedah 1991: 142). As an ex-ETA activist assured me:

It was hard for us to accept the good will of the UCD, PSOE and Alianza Popular when they remained loyal to Spain first. We are Basque first. So they are the enemy.1

The 1979 election results highlighted this with over 77% of all Basque natives and 66% of all Basque speakers supporting the regionalist/nationalist line according to public opinion research conducted by Gunther, Sani and Shabad (1986: 352). The fact that of the immigrants who supported regionalist parties, up to 59% belonged to leftist revolutionary groups, suggests that the link of individual social justice and national parity were strong enough for them to vote with a joint leftist and nationalist ticket (ibid.). This suggests to me the revolutionary nature in which nationalism was perceived as a doctrine of change by all aspects of Basque society. Even amongst non-traditional spheres of support nationalism was strong enough to fall into Tilly’s (1993b) perception of national movements being the mode to communal social liberation. This led to the emergence of the belief amongst Euskara speaking Basques, that the Basque national parties were the legitimate voice of the Basque people as long as they remained loyal to the integral values held by the overall national movement:

The Basque party system stood out from the other regional party systems, both because of the far greater strength of micronationalist parties and because of its greater degree of polarisation and fragmentation. A dynamic of polarisation over centre-periphery issues existed not only between statewide parties and the more strident nationalist forces of Euskadi, but also among Basque groups themselves. Indeed, the nationalist bloc encapsulated within itself all other salient societal cleavages- left- right, class, clerical-secular, and generational, in addition to divisions over the regional question.” But the problem with this lay in the fact that this made it virtually impossible for them to create a census over Basque autonomy (ibid.: 387).

The failure of the Basque representatives to pass the Amnesty Bill by 296 votes to 2, with 18 abstentions in the Congress of Deputies, and 196 to 0 with 6 abstentions in the Senate in the wake of an upswing of state policing in the North suggests that the Basque population were far from convinced that the Autonomy Statute would resolve the nationalist question (Clark 1984: 251). On June 29 1978, the PNV Parliamentary Spokesperson José Angel Cuerda had correctly warned in Parliament, that it would be unwise to neglect the nationalist aspirations of much of the movement as there were signs in Bilbao that the reintroduction of the Law for the Prevention of Terrorism was being interpreted as a move by the centre towards a recentralisation of the state (ibid.; Grugel & Rees 1997: 184-185). In fact, a new cycle of violence in reaction to harsh policing would suit certain elements of the national movement. Throughout October and December of 1978 ETA’s attacks on the military and Guardia Civil increased substantially (Clark 1984: 248). The goal was to utilise the new state repression as the raison d’être for a further radicalisation of the conflict.

Spain was falling into the classic example of a state polarised by its own attempts to ideologically counter radical peripheral mobilisation through what della Porta and Tarrow (1986) recognise as a heightened responsiveness to threats on their own legitimacy. This, in my opinion, is derivative of the periphery’s ability to successfully ‘mimic’ the state to a stand still. A situation whereby the centre is at a loss of how to react outside a further radicalisation of its own counter-insurgency. Unless of course the state could co-opt certain militants, in order to weaken the support base of Basque extremists (López Garrido 1982). This new redefinition of Spanish political participation seemed to be working by 1979 (Clark 1984; della Porta & Mattina 1985).

Mario Onaindía, a principle theoretician of EIA and a former “Burgos 16” defendant, said that both ETA-m and ETA-pm’s support for violence was in fact counter-revolutionary given the precarious nature of the democratisation process (Reinares 1993: 614; Núñez Astrain 1995: 85). This would be the first of the state centre’s attempts to demilitarise certain wings of the militant movement in order to weaken the justification by ETA-m for the continuation of VDA against the state within their repertoire (Llera 1993: 172). The cycle of violence-repression-action was to play its role in the exhaustion of ETA-pm which eventually dissolved by the mid-1980s taking opportunities offered by the government in the amnesties (Reinares 1987: 121-129; Zirakzedah 1991: 200). ETA, that is the 1972 coalition of ETA-V and EGI, however, would survive.

This new upswing of VDA was a calculated strategy of protest repertoire expansion in periods of closed door negotiation between the centre and non-ETA representatives of the national movement (Calamai 1978). Each killing of a politician was aimed at obstructionist figures within the Basque community (Conversi 1997: 248-249). The assassination of the mayors of Galdacano and Olaberria in February 1979, and the ex-Mayors of Echarri-Aranaz in January 1979 and Bedia in September 1979, were messages to the rest of the community that any public commitment to the reform process and the Statute of Autonomy, whilst ETA was excluded, would be considered national treason (Clark 1984: 138). ETA wanted inclusion as the legitimate army of the Basque people. Any continued refusals of the centre to recognise them as such, would suggest that they were to remain a marginalised and criminal movement on the fringe of Spanish society (Núñez Astrain 1995: 92-98). ETA had calculated correctly:

The intrinsic confrontational character of Basque mobilisations, a partial fulfilment of the ‘action/repression/action theory’ envisaged by ETA’s first theorists, has in some way handicapped any peaceful solution of the conflict. Since repression was needed to hold such an eclectic movement together, ETA was also needed as a continuous trigger of both ‘state violence’ and ‘nationalist counter-violence’- and as a bonding agent for the nationalist movement (Conversi 1997: 158).

An anonymous PNV leader interviewed by Gunther (1992: 65-66) in 1979 made it clear that the ideological, if not physical, closeness between ETA and the more moderate wings existed concerning the issue of state repression, only seemed to highlight ETA’s reliance as a response to Spanish statist militarisation of the crisis. As well as the legitimate role in which ETA fulfilled in an overall national movement:

I perfectly remember French patriots who fought against Pétain. Then, they were called terrorists. Well, the Vichy government called them terrorists of ETA, but I would never speak of ETA terrorism (ibid.).

Though the PNV had steered the boat to autonomy, for the average ETA activist, this was insignificant; so long as Basque national freedom was still defined within a Spanish state context (Heiberg 1984: 110). The social revolutionary struggle was, hence, still defined in opposition to that offered by the state’s ideology of ubiquitous inclusion of all (Eisenwein 1995: 266). In this context, an increase in VDA within the repertoire of ETA can been seen as an attempt to redraw the parameters of the conflict away from the state, after the state had taken the initiative of reforming the system of popular representation, through a calculated usage of counter-insurgency (Zirakzedah 1991: 11). The fact that Suárez could not win one province on March 1 1979 from where violent oppositional action emerged, suggests that the people were willing to incorporate VDA as a signal to the government (Preston 1986: 150). The problem with ETA was that, though the vast majority of non-Basques and a significant number of Basques condoned VDA as a strategy of protest during the Francoist era, they found it hard to justify when the monolith itself sought reform (Laqueur 1993: 497).

Terrorists, in a dictatorship, can claim to represent a suppressed general will; in a democratic system terrorism is the claim of a self-appointed moral and political élite to override the general will, expressed by the vote (Carr 1980: 177).

Basques were also beginning to question a movement that also placed its ideological line before the exact will of the people. With the increase of the cycle of violence between 1978 and 1979, there were parallel mass demonstrations for peace and settlement organised by the PNV and the PSOE (Kaplan 1980: 126). A new consciousness was emerging, built around state liberalisation being the guarantor of civic freedom which asked the question of ETA: liberation from whom?

Laqueur (1987: 121), rightly I feel, appraises terrorism as a tool of political activism that is designed as a campaign of “propaganda through deed” which is greatly dependent on the amount of publicity it receives. Yet, without the subsequent repression of old, ETA would rapidly lose popular support (Clark 1986b; Jáuregui 1986; Watson 1996). It was a crisis point that ETA never fully expected to meet (della Porta & Mattina 1985). Their once allies in the Left had now circumvented their participation, placing ETA out of the political process that was successfully re-socialising not just the state, but the notion of what it was to be Spanish (Kaplan 1980: 124; Aranzadi 1981; Padró-Solanet 1996: 452). Unexpectedly, ETA would find its saviour within the state they detested, with Suárez’s refusal by the end of 1978 to meet Basque and Catalan demands.

ETA greatly feared the negation of the national question once the democratisation reforms had been well under way. The new democratic centre was content to negate the national question once in power, but ETA had every intention of keeping them to their word (Jáuregui 1982: 205). At first the numbers of political killings were kept to a minimum, in comparative terms, immediately prior to the first democratic elections of 1977, with some 17 people assassinated in 1976 and a further 9 in 1977 (Reinares 1993: 617). The constitutional crisis of 1978 would provide ETA with the catalyst needed for an upswing in violent anti-state activism. In 1978 when the government was faltering on their promises the killings rose to 67, with a further 72 killed in 1979 in the period leading up to the July Agreement between Goekoetxea and Suárez (Clark 1984: 133). The cycle of killings would peak at 88 in 1980 during the lead up to the referendum. A third of those killed and a quarter wounded were from the Guardia Civil, whilst 23.7% of those killed and 15.3% wounded were the national police. The message was clear. The Autonomous Statute was no substitute for outright independence, and the Security Forces were still viewed as an occupationary force (ibid.: 136).

 

Suárez’s Last Throw of the Die: Re-Centralisation or Perish?

Throughout this period of the ‘Democratic Consolidation’ between 1977 & 1982, Clark (1986b: 127) noted that patterns of violence held a distinct structure that points to a systematic and calculated strategy of media manipulation throughout Spain. Traditionally, it is aimed not at individuals, but at whole societies (Reinares 1993: 617). This is best demonstrated in the targets chosen. They tended to target military, policing, and judicial figures during major negotiation processes between government and peripheries (Douglas & Zulaika 1990; Carr & Fusi 1993: 245; Conversi 1997: 249-250). The machine gun killing of two police officers, and the wounding of 11, whilst playing football in a field adjacent to their barracks in Basauri (Vizcaya) on November 20 1978; the machine gun wounding of eight police and three construction workers in a San Sebastián café on October 8 1979; and the killing of one lieutenant of the Guardia Civil and the wounding of 34 troops through a planted explosive in a convoy in Logroño on July 22 1980, are all examples of the psychological nature of attacks designed to send the message that one is not safe anywhere (Clark 1986b: 127-128).

The fact that some 52.2% of those killed, and 77.2% of those wounded, occurred in public places also gave a message of omnipotence to the scope of their activities; a sense that one could be killed anywhere (ibid.: 129). ETA were also not afraid of accidentally eliminating innocents; thus, heightening an awareness of the desperation of their struggle against the state. Some 13.2% of those killed and 20.3% wounded were in public bars, cafés and hotels; 19.5% and 35.1% were on city streets, parks, airports and train stations; 5.6% and 6.5% at one’s workplace; and 19.5% and 21.8% in an automobile or bus, whilst only 1.7% and 5.2% occurred at military installations (Reinares 1993: 615-642).

The goal of ETA was to force themselves into the political equation via pushing Suárez into direct negotiations with the movement (Carr & Fusi 1993: 252). ETA definitely did not want to portray themselves in front of the Basque people as incapable, or, defeatable. The fact that some 68% of all those killed and 40.5% of those wounded were part of the Security Forces, whilst 25.1% and 59.5% were civilians suggested that ETA clearly had, what I call, an ideological target (Clark 1986b: 136).

The threat of ETA to the maintenance of public order in the Basque country has risen in almost perfect correlation with the granting of more autonomy to the Basques. As regional autonomy has been extended to the Basques, the pace of ETA assassinations has risen accordingly. Finally, ETA’s attacks have been directed primarily against the agents of the Spanish military, paramilitary, and law enforcement apparatus in the Basque provinces, only secondarily against civilians, and to an even lesser extent against representatives of industrial capitalism (ibid.: 141).

It is within this context that the Spanish state, in its entirety, was seen as the bulwark to the establishment of a new Basque political order (Clark 1987; Díez-Medrano 1995). Perhaps this is the reason why the PNV refused, until the late 1980s, to condemn their political rival for their usage of terrorism as a strategy of protest and defence (Gunther 1992: 65; de Blas Guerrero 1993a: 603-606). After all the purposeful refusal, until 1988, to ridicule ETA suggested it was still viewed, in many people’s eyes, as the military wing of the one national movement (Gunther 1992: 65). That of the Basque people militant against the centre.

A new era had emerged, nevertheless, as Garaikoetxea became, in April 1980, the first Lenda-kari to rule the government in Bilbao since 1936 (de Pablo 1995: 27). Leizaola, Aguirre’s successor, had returned home on December 15 1979, and the new PNV Government set about establishing channels with the Madrid Government. 89% of the 61% Basques who had voted at the October 1979 autonomy referendum upheld the Statute (Vaca de Osma 1995: 268; Conversi 1997: 145). The state, however, was not placated by this vote and soon new pushes for recentralisation would find a voice in the form of González’s PSOE reformist government at the 1982 general election.

 

The Ascendancy of Garaikoetzea.

With the death of the Juan Ajuriaguerra, the long established Basque President, a generational shift would emerge within the PNV leadership between the radicals, called the Sabinianos, who were opposed to constitutional negotiations, and the Rightists who feared any break from the constitutional path would entice a pro-Soviet ETA to undertake a full confrontational revolutionary strategy (Gilmour 1985: 222). With the emergent battle between Garaikoetxea, now the leader of the PNV, and the conservative Xabier Arzallus, who would replace him, the question of strategy would become as important as political demands for autonomy (Ekin 1992: 78).

Garaikoetxea could not move fully away from the nationalist issue as independence had for a long time been central to his political doctrine. His moves to create a wider front for the Cortes by attempting to open up channels with the EE, which had by 1980 undergone a leadership change, saw the political rehabilitation of Mario Onaindía and the ex-ETA soldier Roberto Lertxundi, two Burgos Trials’ dependents whose death sentences had been commuted (Gilmour 1985: 223). The EE responded by giving tacit approval of Garaikoetxea’s desires for re-examining the national question with Suárez (Preston 1986: 125).

ETA reacted by implementing a new bombing campaign in the period preceding the spring 1980 elections and referenda (Reinares 1987: 126, 1993: 617). These were aimed at increasing awareness amongst the population that the military wing did not consider the battle over (Arango 1985: 182). It was also designed to show that any solution that would not be solely resolved within the Basque national polity would only be viewed as a legitimation of the unitarism that is inherent within the Spanish state (Morata 1995: 118). This heralded a period whereby the targets of reprisal would no longer be limited to non-Basques, but, also Basque industrialists, who were perceived as perpetuators of centralist policies expressed through economic reform (Heiberg 1989: 110). The method chosen to determine the loyalty of the new middle classes was their compliance to the impuesto revolucionario, the new “revolutionary tax” (Arango 1985: 182).2

This new initiative of ETA was rapidly met with the re-implementation of the repressive Law for the Prevention of Terrorism, on December 1984 (Clark 1984: 253; Ekin 1992: 94). Contrary to government claims, the remnants of the radical Basque movement were still convinced that they were isolated from the process of political negotiation over the future of the Basque Country (Clark 1984: 253). The government saw this new ETA campaign as a chance to pressure the periphery through again criminalising association with ETA activists. The government was attempting to complete the cycle through ‘mimicking’ ETA (EH 1994: 27-28, 1995: 3-6). Soon clandestine pro-government organisations were being formed such as the Guerrillas of the Christ-King (GCK), Basque Spanish Battalion (BSB), Anti Terrorist ETA (ATE), the Anti-ETA Group and Apostolic Association of Anti-Communists (Korn 1989; Miralles & Arques 1990; Alvaro Baeza 1995b). Their directive was to increase the pressure on ETA until either they were arrested or collapsed from within, as Clark (Clark 1984: 253) suggests:

Vigorous antiterrorist legislation provided the juridical framework for strengthening police and paramilitary operations aimed at total suppression of ETA.

Garaikoetxea now began to become more independent of the centrists and increasingly more interventionist, almost “socialist,” in his policies (Zirakzedah 1991: 142). The nature of the centralist culturo-political repression in creating a radicalism steeped in anti-statist activism in the Basque Country, was an aspect of the movement’s development that Garaikoetxea had to accept as legitimate (Corcuera 1984: 37-54). This was symbolised in the PNV’s refusal to form a democratic front against terrorism in early 1980, after intensive lobbying by the Basque Socialists (Zirakzedah 1991: 142). As pointed out to me by former PNV activist and EA representative Arruti Begoña

They refused to sign the anti-terrorist pact in Madrid, because they believe that they had to achieve a fundamental base between all the nationalist movements in the Basque Country so they could go to Madrid not only with that, but with a lot of other questions. They [Madrid] are against terrorism, but we believe terrorism is but a political route to the attainment of independence.3

In response, the Basque Council decided to form a coalition with the socially conservative Popular Coalition and the Union of the Navarrese People (Ekin 1992: 69). Yet, the Basque nationalists in Navarre refused to accept the new pro-Spanish line. They were already isolated from the new political provinces, and as such a move away from VDA would leave them as marginalised a political community as the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, since Navarre held a slight Castilian-Navarrese majority. The PNV realised that the violent push for independence went a long way in forcing the Government to accept autonomy as a compromise in the face of continued ETA insurgency (Vaca de Osma 1995: 269). Secessionism was used as a bargaining chip by the broad-Left in order to ensure the development of autonomy as a gesture of peace to the radical wings of the Basque movement (Linz & Stepan 1992: 126). However, even if one accepts the UCD’s premise of varying fixed results between regional and nationwide elections, one would be wrong to perceive the success of cross national electoral parties as having any bearing on the cultural specific machinations of the Basque political environment.

Garaikoetxea had to face not only pressures from the radicals within, but more significantly, the creation of two opposing Spanish state identities. One was steeped in the culture of the Falangist (Eisenwein 1995: 226). The other, equally unitarist in nature, in the processes of Spanish democratisation and Leftist oppositional assertion (Padró-Solanet 1996: 453). It was the former that would prove the more difficult to succumb. The reintroduction of the counter-terrorist groups signalled that even the centre maintained much of the Army’s ideological frameworks and views to the nature of state identity: Rightist, clerical and culturo-politically Castilian (Calamai 1978: 61; Kaplan 1980: 105). Integration, however, was no longer their main strategy. The total defeat of ETA was to replace it. ETA now found themselves responsible for the militarisation of the state’s ideology (Kaplan 1980: 105). At once, polarising the conflict, rather than the competing communities. In the face of a radicalisation of the centre Garaikoetxea chose to appease Suárez. Though it was later recognised by the PNV that this was a tactical error:

The scandal of the Security Forces of Spain helped the HB because they can say to the people Spain is not a democracy, the Spanish Security Forces have been killing us. In the end that can only help HB and ETA.4

Suárez sought control, yet it proved increasingly difficult for his UCD’s pan-Iberian nationalism to attract Basques. The UCD’s ending of the Pact of Moncloa in December 1978, in response to neo-fascist organised mass rallies and demonstrations against the ratification of the democratic constitution, was seen by Basques as retrogradist (Carr & Fusi 1993: 248-249). Popular opinion held that Suárez himself was virulently anti-Basque, as his disdain for going to the region to negotiate became more obvious. Time after time, this was shown by Suárez’s refusal to acknowledge the ETA crisis was in fact a problem of the state’s perceived illegitimacy amongst the periphery (ibid.). The most prominent occasion was when in October 1980 no media commentary was made by Suárez after an accident in Ortuella, Vizcaya, when 50 schoolchildren were killed in a road accident, when even the Queen had visited the region to give her condolences (Gilmour 1985: 228). In fact, the first time he visited the Basque Country was a month before he lost power. In response to Suárez’s visit ETA killed two prominent Guipúzcoans in the UCD, but Suárez did not attend the funeral suggesting to many Basques an absolute disdain for the region (ibid.: 228).

The greatest mistake I feel that the centre had made was, and here I concur with Padró-Solanet (1996: 452-453), that they believed the Basque region, as well as Catalonia, voted Left due to civic principles, and as such, a solution would be found within the formation of a Leftist Government, perhaps led by the PSOE, rather than nationalism. What they did not realise was that the people voted Left because in the Basque Country the national movements tended to place their rhetoric on a leftist platform.

The core value of the movement was the nationalist aspirations of statehood and never simply enfranchisement within a Spanish context. This is borne out in the insistence of all contemporary moderate and radical parties alike of keeping the attainment of independent statehood as central to their movement’s strategies (EA 1987: 7-8, 1990: 11-13; EAJ/PNV 1995a: 45-46, 1995b: 4-10). Like Irish Republicanism, socialism and democracy were seen as ideological tools of protest repertoire expansion, that were to be a shaper of the movement’s direction in engaging the state, rather than a core political value. Under such circumstances they ‘mimic’ the social conditions that the centralist rule created. The state as oppressor was the raison d’être for initial, and continued, movement mobilisation. Radical movement nationalism was, hence, the collective symbol of resistance to the political reality as dictated by the centre from a cultural, political, and social perspective. One whereby the nature of the cultural interpretation of protest was integral to the essence of Basque political identity.

The allocation of legal rights to the Basque region does not merely result from a legally regulated cascade of rights from central government to local government, but reflects the status of that conflict. The conflict is one between two kinds of power, the control of extensive resources including armed forces (held primarily by the Spanish central government) and the power to mobilise large numbers of people willing to act collectively (held primarily by the Basque activists) (Coleman 1995: 5).

However, new problems emerged. The nature of the conflict began to influence the movement’s identity. ETA under the leadership of Miguel Angel Apalategui, came to realise that the cycles of protest had indeed polarised the movement’s identity within the dynamic relationship between centre and periphery (Gilmour 1985: 225). It also ran the risk of becoming antiquated, due to its employment of rhetoric best suited for Francoist times (Gilmour 1985: 225). The Basque political panorama was rich with a variety of divergent colours including pacifist, militant, labour, literary and cultural movements (Hooper 1995: 399). For ETA to survive it had to reshape itself according to these new societal pressures (Conversi 1997: 150-155). Taking this into account, between 1982 and 1986 approximately 250 ETA activists accepted a government amnesty (Zirakzedah 1991: 181).

What was to emerge was a new era of self-evaluation. ETA could no longer rely on the innate militancy of the Basque nation when the state now openly courted their demands (Rüdig 1990: 137-139; Núñez Astrain 1995: 85-87). ETA had survived two variations of the one unitarist ideology. VDA had influenced strategy as well as reform. More significantly, however, was the way conflict had polarised, and thus created, two competing statist paradigms in direct conflict with each other (Hooper 1995: 399-403). At the core of this development was the perpetual shaping and reshaping of state and movement, as the movement to ‘mimic’, action for action, frame for frame, each move by the state to co-opt or reject peripheral demands. It was within the cleavages created in the cycle of protest that ETA was able to create space in order to proffer a statist alternative. Yet, at the core of this mobilisation was always the state.

This is akin to how both Melucci (1992a, 1992b) and Giddens (1979, 1994) tend to view the more successful oppositional movements as those that adopt the structures of state placed before them as a means of creating a counter-point to state identity. A scenario that exemplifies Tarrow (1995) and Tilly’s (1993b, 1994b) belief that the state is more than a fulcrum of popular discontent, rather it supplies the raison d’être for initial and continuous movement mobilisation.

ETA realised the significance of the state, and as such ‘mimicked’ it accordingly (Krutwig 1963; Zabilde 1963, 1964, 1968). This is why Zabilde’s cycle of action-reaction was imperative, not just strategically for ETA, but in also defining the essence of Basque protest activism and movement oppositional identity. ETA radicalism, hence, was a by-product of the cycle of state reformation. The 1960s integration campaigns brought a rise in VDA; the Burgos trials a similar radicalisation of the periphery (Clark 1986b; Ercegovac 1996: 15-16). Each reform process, would be followed by an increase in ETA activity. More significantly, each process that excluded ETA from the negotiation stages, such as the 1977 elections, the 1978 ratification of the constitution, and the 1979 Suárez-Garaikoetxea talks over autonomy, saw an even greater increase in militantism (Reinares 1993: 615-616). In my opinion, this was symbolic of how the state, through selective inclusion and exclusion, sought to redevelop the nature of centre-periphery relations to their advantage.

It is, thus, the state, not the political opportunity structures of state, but the state as the historic catalyst of societal formation, which is at the core of the need to rebel. What the statist ‘cycles of protest’ paradigm grants the study of such movement activism is an historicity that is unattainable to those movements studied from a ‘Resource Mobilisation’ or ‘New Social Movement’ paradigm. Be it the July 1981 Laws for the Harmonisation of the Autonomous Process (Hanum 1990: 263-279), or the failed February 1981 coup (Busquets 1981; Cid Cañaveral 1981; Morales 1981), the centre’s role in defining the essence of Basque radicalism and protest, and hence Basque identity vis-à-vis the state, was to act as the controller of the pace of cyclical change through processes of coopting some and excluding others (Preston 1990).

It was this problem, of placating certain peripheral demands and ignoring others, that was to be the core of the state’s attempt to reshape the political opportunity structures offered the periphery in order to further isolate the periphery (Rokkan & Urwin 1993: 166). The cycle of action-reaction-action had not only peripheralised ETA’s identity but solidified the notion of the necessity for a conflictory state engendered Spanish identity in direct opposition to the perennial conflict on the periphery of state (Calamai 1978; Cazorla 1993: 72-84; Eisenwein 1995). ETA, by 1982, would now have to face a similar crisis of identity when confronting what I call the second Spanish state ideology. One of seemingly greater tolerance, and even more determined to absorb national cleavages through an extension of democracy. For ETA the decline of one nationalism, the Falangist unitarist variety, would soon be countered by its replacement in the form of the national ideology of Gonzalez’s PSOE Government (Hipsher 1995).

 

The Second Spanish State Ideology and ETA’s Spiral into Continuous Revolution.

By 1982 both HB and EE came to realise that the revolutionary stance would not be accepted in a political environment that would see the emergence of Spain within the European Economic Community and the sudden move of the majority of the population away from poverty (Linz 1985: 234). In October 1982, the electoral victory of the PSOE was viewed with positivity throughout Spain, though the Basque Country was still wary of committing itself to an all-Spanish solution. Especially, considering the PSOE’s inability to create the desired autonomy sought in 1978 (Shubert 1990: 248; Montero 1993: 143). The nature of oppositional and elite coalitions were to leave a mark on the collective psyche of a community which was still fighting many civil rights issues; including the right of Basque political activists to be interred within the Basque Country, education reform and the demilitirisation of the local and national police strategies in the Basque Country.

What had developed in Spain was a variance in the perceptions of democracy and the form it should take, and hence two interpretations of the form that Spanish state development should be formalised (Coleman 1995: 5). This is a concept that not only falls within a nationalist paradigm, but, one that also embraces the varying class and social allegiances that permeates all societies, not just the Spanish ones (Linz & Stepan 1992; Ost 1994; Przeworski et al.: 1995). Democracy may be considered as merely a guarantee against any return to an authoritarian regime, or the perceived right to keep the government accountable, either through direct lines made available by party political organisations themselves or through the electoral lobby (Przeworski 1985). In the Basque country, it is equated with the right to separate political development towards modernity (Laqueur 1987: 6). As Montero (1993: 159) states:

The quality of democracy thus depends not only on the support that citizens to the rules of the democratic game, but also to the closeness-of-fit between citizens’ understanding of these rules and their perceptions of the political world to which they apply.

The advantage that the Franco era had given the fledgling democracy was an inherited tradition of ‘visible’ protest which leads to a highly visible and symbolic usage of democratic processes in order for elites to achieve legitimacy (Gunther et al. 1986; Gunther 1992). Yet the two main streams of ‘visible’ democracy that have developed have been those of “participatory” democracy and “social” democracy (Montero 1993: 159). This has meant that the term political liberty has more often than not been equated with democracy. Consequently, leaving communities such as the Basques not feeling that liberty, and hence democracy, since it is the current system they oppose that does not recognise the inordinate right of the Basque national state to exist separate from the Spanish whole (Arango 1985: 136). González Spain was a social-democratic European Spanish state, but, to Basque nationalists a unitarist Spanish state nonetheless.

The Spanish state elite’s mistake was that they wrongly perceived, when HB had lost one seat in the 1982 elections, the issues of the limited autonomy granted in Article 151 were now superseded by the notion of greater European integration and the modernisation of Basque economic, social and cultural life within a Spanish framework (Shubert 1990: 247). This was important to ETA, as many conservative commentators had wrongly believed that they would fail to attack the state after the October 1982 PSOE electoral victory (Fusi 1985: 125). This was not to be the case as ETA would now use a twin campaign of VDA augmenting electoral action. What had not changed, from a Spanish integrationist perception, was the determination of the PSOE to use extra-parliamentary means to deal with terrorism (Díaz Herrera & Durán 1996: 171-210; Esteban 1996: 71-113). The alliance between the PSOE and PNV would lead to a radicalisation of state response, in order to placate a dishonoured Spanish military (Ekin 1992: 95; Conversi 1997: 147). In 1983 the González Government set up the state run Liberation Anti-Terrorist Groups (GAL)5 to work as a counter intelligence and terrorist organisation that would act extra-constitutionally through increasing civil restrictions on known ETA activists (Llera 1993: 173-174).

From 1982 to 1984 this upswing in aggressive policing had the effect of pushing the government towards viewing ETA as an anathema to state consolidation (Reinares 1993: 638). The centre had come to realise that the only way to withdraw from the cycle of action-repression-action was by indeed ceding the rights of enforcement to the Basque police, in a bid to neutralise the radical Basque movement through playing the old colonial doctrine of divide and rule (Fusi 1985: 123). It would be a mistake to believe that ETA were not revising much of their strategies on VDA, especially concerning viable targets. In a vain attempt to show their contemporaneous nature, ETA also began targeting ‘environmental colonialists’, starting with the assassination of José Maria Ryan, the chief engineer of the local nuclear power plant (Rüdig 1990: 212-213). The fact that this was condemned even by EE is not as important here as the fact that even in their attempts to embrace contemporary issues such as environmentalism, feminism, and minority rights, ETA still justified all their actions with nationalist rhetoric.

The IRA similarly attempted this coalition of social movements, yet the reliance on VDA would nevertheless separate them from more moderate nationalists. Gonzalez would introduce a new strategy of “coffee for all”, that encouraged the PNV to be a major symbol in the ‘New Spain’, in order to utilise the cycle of action-reaction-action to isolate ETA from the very Basque community it supported (de Antonio 1991: 153). Just as Major and Thatcher had attempted to isolate the IRA during the 1980s by lifting the profile of Hume, and the SDLP, as the “true” representatives of the Nationalist community throughout the Anglo-Irish Agreement’s negotiation process (Sharrock & Devenport 1997: 231-257).

ETA facing the impossibility of inciting revolution against a state that had seemingly co-opted a significant number of Basque nationalists had to again show their relevance in conciliatory times (Chaffee 1988: 565). Public rallies and demonstrations would be the new choice in strategy (Preston 1986: 125). Yet, whilst the PSOE was seemingly tolerant, it was simultaneously waging a clandestine war against the radicals; as shown when in 1984, the body of the ETA soldier José Arregui was found mutilated after intense torture by the Spanish police (Gilmour 1985: 227). The next day a wave of strike action and protest swept the Basque Country in support of ETA, and demands for self-determination echoed through the streets. ETA’s tactic of attacking, then waiting for the public outcry to die down, comfortable in the knowledge that the state had over-reacted, worked. Even Federico Krutwig, the ETA theorist behind the strategy of action-repression-action, in 1984 admitted that González had missed the opportunity of breaking the cycle, as popular opinion held ETA now as no better than gangsters (Gilmour 1985: 228).

The November 1984 killing of the ETA member Santiago Brouard by GAL was a sign that the government would not back down (Fusi 1985: 124). Garaikoetxea, was also coming under consistent attack in the Basque National Council throughout the autumn of 1984 for his staunch nationalism. Garaikoetxea eventually won a slim majority and proceeded to negotiate with the PSOE on December 4 1984. The PNV rebelled and asked for his resignation, to which he angrily complied (Zirakzedah 1991: 143; Hooper 1995: 403). Within two years Garaikoetxea formed a new political party with the disenchanted Aranaists, nationalists from Navarra and Guipúzcoa, lawyers and business groups, called Basque Solidarity (EA)6 (EA 1987: 1-10). These events demonstrated that the greatest problem in formulating effective nationalist oppositional movements lay in unifying strategy when confronted with movements grounded in nationalist traditions that offered divergent paths in engaging the state.

The 1986 schism would push ETA further onto the periphery. The nature of elite convergence, and the trap of democratic bargaining, would allow little room for radical movement options. ETA was no longer the sole movement that dealt with nationalism. EA, due to Garaikoetxea could now portray themselves as the middle road between the radicals of ETA and the conservatives of the PNV (Conversi 1997: 152).

Many nationalists now rejected ETA’s revolutionary ideology feeling that they had become entrenched within the very cycle of action-reaction-action they so believed in (Ammann 1995: 28). Yet, the movement by the González Government to negotiate with the PNV that produced a conditional loyalty of the PNV to the Spanish state, was seen as an embracement of an all-Spanish political framework (Hooper 1995: 403). This was to further isolate the PNV from the nexus of the nationalist core since the PSOE demanded that the PNV sign a legislative pact that would abandon any notion of ‘semi-loyalty’ to the Spanish democratic regime (Gunther 1992: 41-42; Ekin 1994: 3). This led to an opening of channels between Bilbao and Madrid, and to the forming of a new pact against ETA. For the fledgling EA, and ETA as well, this was a tacit recognition that any hope for a Basque nation-state was lost (EA 1987: 10-13). The PNV had presumed that nationalism as a cultural doctrine could not survive as a political ideology without overt centralism acting as a catalyst to rebellion (PNV 1992: 5-23). The PNV leadership had followed Tilly’s (1993b) premise that it was a movement to liberation rather than an end point of rebellion. The November 29 1986 Basque parliamentary elections would provide the showdown.

 

The Final Cycle, or a Continuation of the Same? The Stratification of ETA’s Conflict and the Re-Consolidation of the Centre as the Means to Conflict Resolution.

1986 would prove a watershed year. Not only was HB legalised in June, but an important split was to emerge along similar generational lines towards the events of 1959 between the ETA-m elite, now called los Históricos, and a younger generation of activists (Núñez Astrain 1995: 98-109). At the centre again was the role of the state as the initiators of the cycle of reform-protest-reform. The old guard, led by Txomin, sought to regroup along cultural lines. Yet, by the summer of 1986 they were sent into exile (Conversi 1997: 250-251). A new generation of radical activists, schooled in the rhetoric of revolution, and frustrated by the failures of autonomy to grant independence, now sought redress in the inability of the PNV to gain more from its new pact with the PSOE. A general discontent with the downplaying of the issue of independence that one ex-PNV activist, but current ETA exile, related to me:

Autonomy, has not given us anything substantial. What we needed was a war, as in Croatia, that could mobilise us and finally end the Spanish problem.7

Simultaneously, popular opinion had swung behind the nationalist middle ground of EA as Garaikoetxea had been able to win 14 seats in the Basque parliamentary elections of November 1986, equal in number to the seats won by the PNV (EAJ/PNV 1992: 12; Ekin 1992: 81). The message was simple, nationalism as an alternate ideology to the centre’s was still viable. Onaindia’s recognition that ETA existed in a normalised political environment, without overt centralism, would spark a new wave of attacks that would seek to engage a state not willing to ‘openly’ fight the periphery (Núñez de Lara 1995: 85). HB would form a new social movement that embraced punk, gay, trade union and artistic groups that felt limited by the nature of post-democratisation socialisation (Blasco 1987: 12-30; Rüdig 1990; Lahusen 1993; Morata 1995). When HB unexpectedly won 40 000 votes to become the largest listed party not represented in the June 1986 Catalan elections (Conversi 1997: 151), the symbol of ETA as a resistance to state encroachment upon peripheral civil society, even amongst non-Basques, was complete. The cycle had turned full circle.

In 1987 the last great spectacle of Basque unity was to occur in a final action of protest against the concept of Spanish unitarism at the funeral of the last legend of the Basque resistance during the Civil War, Telesforo Monzón. A former minister in the Basque Government of 1936, and respected widely for his break from the PNV in the 1960s on the nationalist principle, Monzón had the rare quality of being able to appeal to all Basque citizens across class, religious and political lines. Being anti-communist and anti-capitalist, he once told a Spanish jury that he could not recognise it because the only courts he could answer to were those of “God and the Basque Country” (Tuñon de Lara 1992: 390). As his coffin was lowered, the scene of part of the crowd crossing themselves, the other section raising their clenched-fisted hands in a revolutionary salute, was to evoke powerful imagery of a final signal from a bygone era (Grugel 1990: 107). An era whereby, the state could unify these people in symbolic opposition. It also could divide, as the desired reforms were bringing around new structures that could absorb these dissident movements in ways that the exclusive monolithic Francoist state could never achieve (Maravall 1985).

The symbolic unity shown throughout the funeral procession of Telesforo Monzón was to prove to be a significant final stand of a national movement, that hence forth, fractured into strategically irreconcilable sections over the role of the Spanish state in appeasing the nationalist goals of the movement (Aretxaga 1988). The state had seemingly won, due to its ability to be equally flexible in repertoire as the movement (Grugel 1990: 107).

Yet, the political environment had changed. The state monolith was no more, and ETA, that had formulated its repertoire in order to combat a state centre that was organised along the lines of populist movement itself, had to now confront an ever more sophisticated democratic state system that possessed a formalised political system of national and regional institutional redress (Tezanos 1993: 433-489; EH 1994: 1-6). The development of civil courts had changed the environment significantly enough for a re-evaluation of the practicality of VDA as an adjunct to more formalised political actions to occur. Processes of negotiation and devolution had created a greater fluidity between centre and periphery (Aja et al. 1986; Embid 1987; Hernández & Mercadé 1987); whilst the separation of powers had ensured a justification for the need for a unified Spanish state as a bulwark against Falangist retrogradist reactionism (Ortega 1993: 694-700).

The more the PNV moved towards the centre, the more HB was able to convince the periphery that the PNV had lost its core nationalist ideology (Grugel 1990: 107). This policy was to bear fruit when HB won four seats, a doubling of their last results, during the 1986 general elections; whilst in the regional parliament they had gained a further two seats from the PNV to have a total of 13.15% of the vote (Shubert 1990: 248). Much of this success occurred due to its willingness to adopt feminist, anti-nuclear, and environmental rhetoric mixed with a nationalist consciousness that appealed to younger generations searching for newer, more socially relevant, nationalist representatives (Ekin 1992: 78-84; EH 1994: 23-24 Hooper 1995). A point borne out in a study of polls conducted by Grugel (1990: 110), that demonstrated 77% of Basques rejected the belief that either ETA or HB were a law and order problem.

Nationalism as an expression of anti-state peripheral movement formation was still viable. The EA felt that even if they controlled the autonomous parliament in Vitoria, this would not bring enough reform if the price of political inclusion was a compromise on the issue of independence (Grugel 1990: 108). The EA would become an electoral party based on the ideals of movement activism against cultural Castilianisation that emerged throughout the 1970s (Watson 1996: 31). Yet ETA, saw this as a sign of submission, as it did with every Basque who took up the political opportunity structures placed before them (Pérez-Agote 1990; see also Ortzi 1991). ETA’s new wave of attacks, instigated by the new elite under the control of twenty four year old Juan Carlos Yoldi, would shock the state into retaliation (Núñez Astrain 1995: 86-87). Hence, creating new political opportunity structures for ETA to redefine the notion of nationalist revolution within the inability of the PSOE state to deal with a competing ideology foreign to their own centralist leftist state paradigm (Esteban 1996: 107-111). The solution would be a period of further consolidation of democracy.

PSOE democratic consolidation was to be an alliance of leftist social movements defined in terms of placing Spanish pluralism at the core of the new state identity (Hooper 1995: 428-432). It was felt that the nationalist question had been sufficiently resolved enough to shift the emphasis of state ideology towards incorporating peripheral notions of Spanish state restructuration (Ammann 1995: 28). Thus the Pacto de Ajuria-Enea was promulgated between the PNV, PSOE, EA, EE, Partido Popular (PP) in order to create a new “politic of consensus” that would ostracise those who took military action (Grugel 1990: 174). HB refused to sign. In Guipúzcoa the EE-EA coalition held power and in Alava, as well as Vizcaya, PNV-PSOE coalitions were formed (Barandiarán 1994: 10). The Alava election results in 1990 even showed the emergence of a pro-provincialist party in Unity of the Alavesas, suggesting the frustration that many provincialised Basques felt for the cities’ inability to come to terms with their own expectations (Conversi 1997: 152).

The PSOE had used its parliamentary majority in the first seven years of its rule to pass bills without going through normal parliamentary processes with the only recourse being an appeal to the Constitutional Court (Ormazabal 1994: 12). The result was that this created in excess of 800 court cases (Morata 1995: 118). From 1986 to 1989 the majority of cases would come down in favour of the centre, as there was no provincial representation in the Constitutional Court. Even the Senate had only 20% of its representatives selected from the provinces (Morata 1995: 118). ETA though was shifting in its stance on parliamentary participation, and in 1989 HB declared it would partake in parliamentary debate if elected (Gunther 1992: 64). This gave the PNV the green light to finally condemn ETA, as HB itself now recognised that to ignore the state as a structure of potential conflict resolution rather than just a target of mobilised discontent was an error:

Negotiations are not between a party and other parties, but between all of the state, and all the forces of the state. In the Spanish case the military is a very important force because it is the same army that had been with Franco for many years and it is really very strong in influencing the Spanish state.8

It was not until two months after the January 1990 pledge of respect to the constitution, that the PNV, for the first time, publicly proclaimed disdain for ETA initiated violence. This hints at Gunther’s (1992: 67) theory that the reason why the Basque goals were more successful now than in the 1930s was due to the fact that there no longer were 20 varying parties; rather three significant ones at the most who could more readily mobilise their energies in unison, without needing to compete for the popular vote to attain minimum participation rates. This would lead to a crisis in the creation of political identity formation as the one goal, Basque nationalism, would over ride the multifaceted schisms of old such as Left versus Right, Monarchist versus Republican, and church versus state. A matter borne out in the formation of an electoral coalition between the PNV, EA and EE after the 1990 elections (Llera 1993: 175). The ideological tensions, however, between the PNV and ETA remain tense with the PNV reluctant to deal with an organisation they believe is determined to maintain the conflict as a means of achieving their goal of independent statehood (Garaikoetzea 1994: 10). As a PNV activist assured me:

Herri Batasuna is a kind of party which is subordinated to ETA. Herri Batasuna is not independent. Herri Batasuna acts as a function of ETA, and that's the biggest problem Herri Batasuna, they are not a party to the democracy they don’t respect what people have said here within the elections.9

This has created a polarised pluralism that has left a politically fragmented ideological landscape, with the state ever more entrenched and the periphery ever more radicalised, even if somewhat more disjointed (Ercegovac 1997: 24). The Spanish state could be seen as a successful example of how to ride the cycle of reform-protest-reform through incorporating some, and marginalising others. The death of Franco had provided it with such an opportunity, forcing ETA to define itself in terms of the struggle against the state, rather than within its own community.

 

Conclusion.

In my opinion, the Spanish and Irish national movement’s, ETA and the IRA, failed because both had taken the risk of attempting to engage the state in a cycle of action-reaction-action that would eventually lead, through the exploitation of societal cleavages and discontent, to the formation of a separate political entity. Where both failed was in their inability to utilise the cycle’s up and down swings as rapidly as the state’s changing of strategic approaches via combining NVDA, VDA and PPO formalisation. Though both had successfully engaged the state and their communities in terms of polarising society, they had failed to gain full control of the cycle so as to prevent the very consolidation of the cycle itself. What occurred was the ratification of the struggle and perpetuation of the state’s legitimacy through allowing for the formation of counter-movements and through granting legitimacy via electoral participation.

The initial goal of the expansion of protest movement repertoire had been designed to challenge the state monolith. Yet, the diversification of protest action had successfully challenged the state to some extent, through creating space within the struggle and from the state itself. It also allowed for the state centre to reform in order to appease the minorities without necessarily isolating the old elites. It had, in a nutshell, allowed for the state to redefine itself so as to make itself more relevant in a changing world, thus, contemporising its own ideological reason for existence, and expanding its own support base. As long as the Basques were faced with an intransigent unitarist state entity, their ability to exploit cycles of reform would be beneficial and would achieve maximum results.

Once, however, the elites saw the benefits of democratisation, and opening of access points to the centre, then the initial polarisation needed, for the push to independence, would fail to arise. ETA, HB, the PNV and EA were then in the same situation as the IRA, Sinn Féin, and the SDLP; stuck in a perpetual dynamic relation between centre and periphery that polarised the conflict rather than the community. The democratic infrastructure of both states successfully had cut the raison d’être for the continuation of the struggle of the peripheral movement. Even if this enfranchisement was only on paper it still existed, if solely in the eyes of the centre.

Nevertheless, the engagement of the state had perpetually redefined the notion of the national movement militant through creating a space for it within the cycle of protest. The success of terrorism cast doubt in the minority community’s belief in the genuineness of the state’s efforts of reform. It is true that the Basque’s greatest chance for independence lay in the repressive nature of the Falangist state. Yet the reforms do not preclude a conservative swing back to repressive means of population control which might provide the catalyst for future national movement mobilisation and rebellion. In the North of Ireland the refusal of the Protestant community to deal directly with Sinn Féin has given much hope to those within the IRA leadership who are reluctant to forgo the armed struggle. Though a minority within the movement, their dissatisfaction has been a catalyst in the formation of the breakaway movement calling themselves the Continuity IRA. As such, the mid-November 1997 walkout of some 30 members of the IRA head command, including Michael McKevitt the Quartermaster General, suggests that whilst there is centralist intransigence there is justification for the continuation of the movement’s more militant strategies. Even if only as a backup in case the Blair-Adams talks should fail.

The recent arrest on December 3 1997 of the entire twenty-three person membership of the HB Executive throughout the Basque Country (BBC Radio News Day 4.12.1997), and the subsequent execution on a busy freeway of the body guard of the PP politician behind the arrest and instigation of court proceedings against the HB Executive, shows that in Aznar’s redefined neo-Rightist PP government, the possibility of a return to more repressive means of dealing with the national movement is a reality. What becomes clear is that the national movement must remain relevant, and only through engaging the state directly in times of state initiated pressure can the necessary polarisation of Spanish society re-emerge in order to justify future utilisation of radical paths to political activism by ETA.

As I will show in the following chapters that deal with the successful attainment of statehood by the Croat national movement, it is only through ensuring continued polarisation between centre and periphery, that marginalised national movements can successfully ‘mimic’ the state via manipulating the cycles of action-reaction-action to ensure that no other situation can arise from the regime but repression. If the state successfully incorporates any part of the periphery, through liberalisation of the political system, then the polarisation of society required for a radicalisation of the community towards independence may fail to emerge. The result, in my opinion, would be a simultaneous stratification of the conflict and a withdrawal of the demands for independence as the periphery seeks the political opportunity structures granted by an ever more flexible centre. For movements like the IRA and ETA, defined by the nature of the conflict, this leads to a further peripheralisation, and hence minimisation of their demands. They had ‘mimicked’ the state, but failed to see how the state had similarly parodied them in order to diminish the movement’s authority as an agent to socio-political reform within an overtly ideological centralist state structure.