ETA ended half a century of terror in October 2011 and disbanded in May 2018. Without this, Euskadi has moved towards normalizing political, social and coexistence, one of the highlights of which has been general participation in the institutions of the nationalist left. But the same Abertzale leftist, supported by EH Bildu, still does not clearly confront its past of political collusion with the terrorist group. The latest example of this moral debt was given on Monday by Pelo Otxandiano, its candidate for Lehendakari in Sunday’s elections on SER, with his resistance, full of euphemisms, to recognize that ETA was a terrorist group and without any The criminal history of the excuse was condemned. Which resulted in more than 850 deaths.
In recent years, the Sovereignty Coalition has made notable steps toward reaching out to victims – with a recognition that their pain should never have happened – and rejecting violence. But this is pending clear recognition that ETA should never have existed, that terrorism was never justified and that Abertzel sided with it politically for too long, even though in the end it contributed to its disarmament and disintegration. Eliminating this deficit first coincided with Sortu, a key party in the coalition, which is the successor to Batasuna and whose statutes reject political violence, a move that allowed its legalization by the Constitutional Court in 2012. Other members of the coalition, such as Aralar or Eusko Alkartasuna, have a clear track record of condemning terrorism.
Bildu is considering the possibility of winning Basque elections for the first time and has launched a campaign focused on the daily problems of citizens. Their strategy – now torpedoed by Otxandiano himself – suits a society, especially its younger generation, for which terrorism has come to seem somewhat distant and concern about ETA is almost zero. But turning the page does not mean forgetting, and the memories of the victims and the story of what the horror was like cannot be dictated by those who have the most to repent.
The government and the PSOE, especially the Basque socialists, reacted with the necessary firmness to Pelo Otxandiano’s words, despite the contradiction of Bildu’s parliamentary support for the executive of Pedro Sánchez. The criticisms raised by it should not forget that the coalition is completely legal, that the PSOE does not co-govern with it anywhere, and that other parties, including the PP, have matched their votes with the nationalist formation on several occasions. . All democratic forces should be interested in repaying all their debts to democracy once and for all rather than turning this issue – which fortunately refers to a dramatic time gone by – into a part of a partisan fight.