The Democratic Hypothesis What is in question here is that of a revolution, which would allow the people to regain power by overriding what would have dispossessed them of it, economic and financial power. We find it set out by Arnaldo Otegi, a high figure in the armed wing of ETA and then of the Abertzale left, who tells us that it would be the only way for the people to regain their sovereignty and deciding “of its economic, social and cultural means”. Otegi, who carried the independence struggle in all its forms and suffered all the repression (prison, torture, exile), has the Basque people in mind, of course, when he speaks to Thomas Lacoste’s camera, but not exclusively . This is the entire militant project of the filmmaker – accused of pro-ETA propagandism at the release of his previous documentary, Basque country and freedom – than to embed the Basque nationalist movement in European history in the broad sense, and more specifically that of Spain since the civil war, of which many militants believe that the abertzale struggle is a continuation. A documentary not on the history of ETA, even if it tells many of its essential stages – from the assassination in 1968 of Melitón Manzanas González, head of the Francoist political police, until April 8, 2017, the day of the unilateral disarmament operation of ETA – but an immersion through testimonies in what Basque separatism has taken on over the decades of political ideals, very marked on the left, whose radicalism has also forged by the repression and excesses of the central state in procedural and legal terms on the issue of Basque terrorism.
Of “total darkness” under Franco to the political trials during the democratic transition, and beyond: should we remember that the GAL (Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups), practicing with Madrid’s approval a “dirty war” (torture, attacks, assassinations) were created under a socialist government? This is the richness of this complex documentary and a bit difficult to follow (proper names abound), effectively committed (no word on the deleterious social effects of the movement in the Basque community for example, a subject often discussed in Spain in recent years), than to approach the question of Basque nationalism like an infernal spiral decimating in all directions. And all to the honor of Thomas Lacoste for recalling the shared obsession, by “sons and daughters of Guernica” and the central power, for the resolution: “We must not leave this unresolved conflict to our children”, finally declares an activist, before another praises the political maturity of her people. The abertzale left, indeed, can be perceived as a very long-standing imperious desire for democracy.