Terrorism: Spain's Basque

The Basque rebels are linguistically distinct from the Indo-European/Romance/Spanish speaking government, and likely everyone else.

There is much debate concerning the origins of the Basque language, and it is reasonable to say that it represents an isolated case, a language with no clear relatives. In this way it is alone in Europe.

The Basque country is in northeastern Spain, home of the autonomist/secession ETA movement, and in southwestern France. Its identity as an area where the Basque language is spoken goes back to before the common era. The Basque country in France, Pays Basque , was part of Aquitaine/Guienne, which for a time had a history different than that of much of the rest of France, however, its move to the British sphere under the Plantagenet Kings was directly a function of the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to the British King, and did not, as far as I can tell, have anything to do with the Basque language.Most of the violent history of the last 50 years has been in Spain. Franco declared the Basque language illegal, Jerrold Post said that this "set the stage for the ETA."

The ETA claims to represent the Basque language speaking areas of northeastern Spain in their efforts to secede from Spain and form the leadership of a Basque homeland. Their political party, Batasuna, has been outlawed for not repudiating violence as a method of statecraft. This, of course, came from the Prime Ministership of Jose Maria Aznar .

On March 11th, 2004, several trains in Madrid were bombed, killing and wounding close to 2000 people. This was only a few days before a major Spanish election. Prime Minister Aznar quickly declared the attack was the responsibility of the ETA. When it very soon after was determined that the attack was the responsibility of Muslims angry at Spanish involvement in Iraq, the result was a defeat for the Aznar's Popular Party in Spain. The socialist party which took over quickly withdrew Spanish forces from Iraq.

Aznar was the only major leader of a non-English speaking country to join the war in Iraq. His "Popular Party" was founded by Fraga Iribarne, longtime Minister in the fascist Franco government of Spain. His last role was as Minister of the Interior. The Interior Ministry in Spain was responsible for killing and disspearing 100s of thousands of Spaniards during Franco's rule, although certainly not so much when Iribarne was in charge. Iribarne was the founder of the Popular Party, which for a long time didn't gather more than 5% of the vote in Spain. This is, to any anti-Fascist. a more-than-a-bit damning origin for the political party in Spain that brought that country to Iraq.

So, from the inheritor of the brutal regime that killed 100s of thousands of Spaniards for political reasons, we have a law that says no political party is valid unless it repudiates violence. At least, ladies and gentlemen, irony is not dead.