Gold medals and determination in Euskal Herria
By Teresa Toda
The brightest gold medals of the World Athletics Championships held in Seville undoubtedly go to the two fake Giraldillas (Giraldilla was the Championship's mascot) who, for over 20 minutes during the inaugural ceremony, exhibited on the main stage slogans calling for the repatriation of Basque prisoners. The event was televised live to a worldwide audience and the heir of the Spanish throne was present in the stadium.
The two daring Giraldillas climbed on the stage unhindered, and there they revealed the slogans on their chests, while three other youths descended from the highest levels of the stadium and another handed out leaflets to the international press with full explanations, in English, of the situation of Basque prisoners. The Basques were arrested and freed pending trial.
The outcry in the Spanish media was immediate. How could such a thing have happened? Where were the security controls? But the Spanish government, rather embarrassed, suggested that the best thing to do was to minimise what had happened and forget it. In the Basque Country, there was general applause for the stunt among nationalists and especially among left-wing abertzales (Basque nationalists).
What happened in Seville reflects the total incapacity of conservative José María Aznar's government to respond positively to the new scenario created in the Basque country almost a year ago with the Lizarra-Garazi Declaration and ETA's ceasefire. Events over the last two weeks confirm that the Spanish government has advanced only in how it presents its permanent ``no'' position, while in Euskal Herria (the Basque Country) nationalists are trying to break the impasse that has set in on the political scene.
Summer has been rife with ``leaks'' to the media, from sources close to the Spanish cabinet, about a forthcoming second meeting between representatives of the Spanish government and ETA. Speculation has also centered on presumed ``difficulties'' in Herri Batasuna (independentists) after its national executive was finally freed in July. The experts in that sort of smear job had a field day, once more, with the ``hawks'' and ``doves'' scenario.
Then, last week, Prime Minister José María Aznar said that there were no talks between his government and ETA nor between his representatives and Herri Batasuna. Aznar laid the blaim on Basque nationalists, who, he repeated over and over again, ``fear peace''. The official doctrine is that the ``peace-process'' is only about ``peace'' (that is to say, absence of political nationalist violence) and the future of prisoners, but that the problem is that both ETA and HB/EH and the Basque nationalist parties ``do not want peace, but national construction''.
HB replied recalling how, after a first encounter in December 1998, a second one had been fixed for January 1999, and that the Spanish government had been asked to officially recognise it had met with HB, not with ``the abertzale milieu'', as government spokespersons repeatedly said. As such a condition was not fulfilled, HB called off the meeting.
ETA explained that the government's lack of discretion in regard to the first meeting and its exploiting of it for electoral purposes were the main reasons for not holding the second meeting. ETA, which has declared itself ready to continue talking and searching for new and discreet channels of communication and to maintaining the cease-fire, blames the Spanish government for using contacts with the armed organisation ``to gain time and for police purposes''.
Last Sunday, 29 August, a long ETA document published in Basque papers made public the armed organisation's view of the present political situation. ETA is worried by the attitude of certain groups within the PNV (Basque center nationalists), rather fearful of the changes the party's overall compromise with national construction may imply. ETA deems that Euskal Herria faces a ``crucial'' moment, and insists on the development of a new political framework as part of the way towards sovereignty.
Aznar's government replied to this latest development by insisting on its official line, setting all the blame on ``those who fear peace'' and, by the by, on all Basque nationalists.
other idea the government repeats ad nauseum is that the Lizarra-Garazi Agreement and what stems from it is ``dead'', and that the political parties who signed it were defeated in the elections held in June. That is not so, since nationalist parties in the Basque Country, in spite of the loss of PNV votes, gained more votes than the ``constitutionalists'', as the Spanish parties like to describe themselves.
d the Lizarra-Garazi Agreement is far from dead. In fact, when its first anniversary is marked on 12 September, there will be launched a new phase of its strategy for a democratic political solution to the ``Basque Question'' with Spain and France.
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