ETA: the history of a conflict, from 1959 to its dissolution in 2018

ETA explained impartially: origins under Franco, attacks and victims, supporters and opponents, end of the armed campaign, disarmament, dissolution and legacy.

It is impossible to talk about the Basque Country over the last sixty years without mentioning ETA. This article does not take sides: it brings together the established facts, the positions of the various parties involved and the current situation, and it cites its sources.

Birth under Franco (1959–1975)

The name ETA — Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, ‘Basque Country and Freedom’ — first appeared publicly on 31 July 1959. The organisation was born as a resistance movement against Franco’s dictatorship. Its first known violent action was an attempt to derail a train, on 17 July 1961.

Initially close to Catholic circles, ETA adopted a Marxist-Leninist ideology in the mid-1960s; in 1974 it split into two branches, one military and one politico-military.

7 June 1968: José Pardines became the first person killed by ETA.
2 August 1968: assassination of the police officer Melitón Manzanas, after the death of the ETA leader Txabi Etxebarrieta.
December 1973: assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco’s expected successor.

Democracy, and the violence continues (1975–2000)

After Franco’s death Spain became a democracy, but ETA pursued its armed campaign for the independence of the Basque Country.

1983–1987: the GAL (Antiterrorist Liberation Groups), which waged a ‘dirty war’ against ETA and those around it, committed 27 murders, mainly in the French Basque Country (Iparralde); their funding was linked to senior officials in Felipe González’s Socialist government. In 1998, in the Marey case, two former Interior Ministry officials, José Barrionuevo and Rafael Vera, were sentenced by the Supreme Court to ten years in prison, then partially pardoned the same year.
19 June 1987: the attack on the Hipercor supermarket in Barcelona killed 21 people.
May 1991: the attack on the barracks in Vic killed 10 people.
July 1997: the kidnapping and murder of the young town councillor Miguel Ángel Blanco left a deep mark on public opinion.

Several attempts to find a way out failed: the Algiers talks (1987–1989), the Estella-Lizarra pact (12 September 1998) followed by a truce from 16 September 1998 to 28 November 1999, and a new ceasefire in 2006.

Who supported it, who opposed it

Supporters. The Herri Batasuna coalition (1978), which called for ‘independence and socialism for Euskal Herria’, was long accused of being ETA’s political front: ETA called on people to vote for it, members of the organisation appeared on its electoral lists, and it was the only major Basque force to refuse to condemn violence. Refounded as Batasuna in 2001, it was dissolved in 2003 by the Supreme Court, together with Euskal Herritarrok, under the 2002 Law on Political Parties.

Opponents. On 12 January 1988, the Ajuria Enea Pact brought together Alianza Popular, the CDS, the PNV, Euskadiko Ezkerra, the Socialist Party of Euskadi, Eusko Alkartasuna and the lehendakari (the Basque president) around the ‘eradication of ETA terrorism’, within the framework of the law and leaving the door open to dialogue with those who renounced violence. In civil society, Gesto por la Paz (1986–2013) held fifteen-minute silent gatherings in some 130 places across the Basque Country and Navarre the day after every violent death; its ‘silence’ was meant to be pacifist, pluralist and independent, although some criticised its neutrality on political questions. Victims' associations, such as the AVT (Asociación Víctimas del Terrorismo), remain prominent in the debate today.

The human toll

According to the Memorial Centre for the Victims of Terrorism (Centro Memorial de las Víctimas del Terrorismo), ETA murdered 853 people between 1968 and 2010, injured about 2,600 people and carried out more than 80 kidnappings, not counting an unknown number of people who were threatened or forced into exile. Counts vary depending on the sources and the criteria used (829 according to French Wikipedia, 864 according to Spanish Wikipedia). ETA also lost 113 members, who were killed in clashes or died in prison, according to French Wikipedia.

The end of the armed campaign (2011–2018)

October 2011: in San Sebastián (Donostia), the Aiete conference brought together Kofi Annan, Gerry Adams, Bertie Ahern and Gro Harlem Brundtland, among others, who called on ETA to renounce violence and on Madrid and Paris to engage in dialogue if it did so.
20 October 2011: ETA announced the definitive cessation of its armed activity.
16 December 2016: in Louhossoa, five civil-society activists were arrested while preparing to neutralise around 15% of ETA’s arsenal; they were released four days later.
8 April 2017: in Bayonne (Baiona), the Artisans of Peace (Artisans de la paix) — activists from community associations and trade unions in the French Basque Country — organised the disarmament: ETA handed over the locations of its arms caches, amounting to about 120 firearms, three tonnes of explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, warned that ETA members should expect ‘neither preferential treatment nor impunity’.
3 May 2018: ETA announced that it had dismantled all its structures.
4 May 2018: in Cambo-les-Bains (Kanbo), an international conference formally took note of the dissolution. Kofi Annan spoke there of ‘the end of Europe’s last conflict’; Gerry Adams called for gestures towards the prisoners. The French and Spanish governments were not represented; Mariano Rajoy reiterated that there would be no amnesty and called for the victims to be remembered one by one.

And today?

Politics. EH Bildu, set up in 2012 as a coalition and turned into a federation of parties in 2014 (Sortu, Eusko Alkartasuna, Alternatiba), is the main force of the pro-independence left. Its coordinator Arnaldo Otegi (since 2017) expressed his regret to the victims in December 2021, citing the Aiete declaration. In the 2023 local elections, EH Bildu won the most votes across the Basque Autonomous Community and Navarre as a whole. Victims' associations have condemned the presence on its lists of candidates convicted of ETA-related offences; in 2023, the public prosecutor’s office rejected requests for the party to be banned.

Prisoners. Since October 2021 the Basque Government has run the prisons in the Autonomous Community. On 24 March 2023, the transfer of the last five prisoners concerned to Basque prisons brought to an end the policy of dispersal of ETA prisoners far from the Basque Country and Navarre. The AVT condemned these transfers closer to home, which in its view cause the victims ‘infinite and needless pain’.

Memory. As the Memorial Centre for the Victims of Terrorism points out, the traces of this history do not disappear overnight: justice and memory remain open questions.