[The European Conservative] Revolving Doors

Twelve years since officially forswearing violence, ETA terrorists have mastered the political fray.

When José Antonio Torre Altonaga, nicknamed “Medius,” joined the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) sometime in the waning days of Franco’s 40-year rule, he never thought that the Basque terror group would instruct him to attack — of all things — a nuclear power plant. Medius joined just as ETA went on its most violent binge. Far from dissuading it, Franco’s death in 1975 and the adoption of Spain’s new democratic constitution three years later, emboldened the group’s butchery. The ETA soon had a foothold in regional — later national — politics that was unthinkable under Francoism. This two-track strategy has been the group’s modus operandi since. Attacks in the 1980s, for instance, were chalked up by the media to “ETA militar” as opposed to “politico,” distinguishing terrorists from the scores of Abertzale activists lawfully pursuing the group’s selfsame goals: an independent and socialist Basque republic. The two years following the transition’s culmination in 1978 are remembered to this day as “the years of lead,” an abnormal burst of brutality accounting for shy of a third of ETA’s total murders. Along with 379 still unresolved killings since it officially foreswore violence in 2011, this paradox of violence — namely that it went on a rampage simultaneously with its entry in the democratic process — remains one of the group’s most jarring mysteries in its 52-year history. Who would have thought democracy begat violence?

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