Founded as a cultural group Eta later embraced violence for more than 40 years killing more than 820 people

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The Basque terrorist group Eta, which laid down its arms in 2011 after a campaign spanning more than 40 years, is expected to announce its complete dissolution within the next few weeks.



Speaking on behalf of the International Contact Group, which oversaw the disarmament process, Agus Hernán told El País newspaper that Eta would be “definitively, clearly and conclusively” dissolved by-mid-June at the latest.



He added that the group was looking for formal international recognition of the decision to disband. Eta announced its definitive ceasefire in October 2011 in the presence of then UN secretary general Kofi Annan, the former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams and Bertie Ahern, then president of Ireland.

Eta, an acronym translated as “Basque homeland and freedom”, was founded as a cultural organisation in 1959 but went on to become one of Europe’s most violent and enduring terror groups.



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From 1968 to 2010, it killed more than 820 people, nearly half of them civilians, while also maintaining a campaign of kale borroka (street action) that consisted of rioting and vandalism.



Its biggest coup was the 1973 murder in a car bomb attack of prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco, who was the dictator Francisco Franco’s chosen successor. However, the murder of civilians cost it popular support, especially after the 1987 bombing of the Hipercor supermarket in Barcelona in which 21 people died.



A turning point came in 1997 with the kidnapping and murder of the young politician Miguel Angel Blanco that provoked widespread anger and revulsion across Spain. In the Basque country, it led directly to the rise of the anti-Eta movement known as the “Spirit of Ermua”, named after Miguel’s birthplace.



In 2006, Eta member Francisco García Gaztelu and his girlfriend Irantzu Gallastegi were jailed for 50 years for Blanco’s murder.



Unlike the 1998 Good Friday agreement that marked a before and after in the Northern Ireland troubles, Eta’s formal dissolution is not expected to trigger an amnesty for the group’s members, of whom 230 are serving long jail sentences in Spain and a further 57 in France.



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Amaia Fernández, the secretary general of the Basque Popular party, said her party believed that it was “necessary that Eta prisoners repent for the harm they have done so that future generations can see that terrorism is not legitimate. Eta’s disappearance can facilitate this”.



In 2007, Basque nationalists announced plans for a referendum on independence but it was ruled as unconstitutional by Madrid. However, Basque separatism remains a powerful political force. EH Bildu, an alliance of several leftwing and nationalist groups, is the second largest party in the Basque parliament after the Basque Nationalist party.



The Basque region, along with Catalonia and Madrid, is one of Spain’s most prosperous, with a GDP nearly double that of Andalusia in the south.

