Spain: The Basque Rebellion

Most of the characteristics that distinguish the Basques of Spain are mysterious. In vain, linguists have studied their tongue-trilling language, still spoken by a million Basques, for similarity to any other recorded speech. Medical researchers are still at a loss to explain why proportionately more Basques carry the Rh-negative blood factor than any other people. But since the days of ancient Rome, anyone who tried to subjugate the people of Euzkadi, or Basque Land, has quickly learned one fact about them: the Basques want to govern themselves. Finally brought under Spanish and French domination in the 19th century, the Basques have maintained one of the most virulent separatist traditions in Europe. Of late, it has exploded into a campaign of deadly terrorism.

State of Exception. Though they have posed a nuisance problem to police for years, Basque terrorists began striking in earnest only last spring. Since April, they have exploded dozens of plastic bombs, set fire to one mayor’s home and financed their movement with the proceeds of five bank robberies. Then in early August, a bearded gunman staked out the home of Meliton Manzanas Gonzales, 58, the tough police chief of Spain’s Basque region and an unpopular representative of General Francisco Franco. When Manzanas ar rived home from work, the assailant gunned him down from ambush with a volley of pistol shots and escaped across the nearby border to France.

Franco, hated by Basque separatists since the Spanish Civil War when he crushed their attempt to form an independent nation, retaliated with a series of harsh emergency measures. Under a “state of exception” decree, police are staging nightly search raids at Basque homes throughout the province of Guipúzcoa, hauling off truckloads of suspects for detention. To pry out information about the underground terrorists, cops have resorted to torture. They have beaten some prisoners, forced others to stand chest-high for long periods in pools of ice water, ordered a few to bend to the floor and draw a circle around themselves until they passed out. Under another decree that swept the terrorists beyond the pale of civil justice, conspirators are liable to capital punishment for military rebellion.

Priestly Aid. Credit for the terrorist campaign has been claimed by Euzkadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Land and Liberty), an outlawed movement that started in 1953 as a youth group. It has since split with the Basque Nationalist Party, which has worked peacefully for independence since the late 19th century. E.T.A. now campaigns on behalf of what it calls “colonized and oppressed” Basques with nightrider tactics and a Marxist vocabulary. “We have gathered our forces to form a national liberation front,” says one of its leaders. “We will not stop until we have achieved the creation of a truly democratic socialist state.”

Some of its members and funds travel across the Pyrenees from France, where there are 150,000 French Basques. Though generally less restive than their brethren in Spain, many French Basques firmly endorse the drive for independence and rarely miss a chance to let Charles de Gaulle know it. On the day he proclaimed, “Vive le Québec libre!”, Basques broke out signs reading “Vive Euzkadi libre!” They also employ as graffiti an equation that at first glance is almost as incomprehensible as their language: “Three plus four equals one.” It means that France’s three Basque provinces plus the four in Spain should be one nation.

The Spanish membership, though highly secret, numbers at least in the hundreds and probably includes several young Roman Catholic priests. In fact, many Basque priests advocate separatism as bluntly as E.T.A. guerrillas, defiantly fly the illegal Basque flag and chafe under Spain’s state-supported church hierarchy. Two weeks ago, 47 young priests staged a vigil in the bishop’s palace in Bilbao for six days, left only when the church agreed to demote their vicar-general and name a committee to study their demands for freedom from “temporal interference.”