About the Report

This report analyzes the long-drawn-out process toward the 

disarmament and dissolution of the violent Basque separatist 

organization ETA, and extracts lessons for policymakers and 

mediators engaged in efforts to pry armed groups away from 

violence in other contexts. It draws on the author’s book 

Endgame for ETA: Elusive Peace in the Basque Country (Hurst 

and Oxford University Press, 2014), the research for which was 

supported by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

About the Author

Teresa Whitfield has been senior advisor to the president of the 

International Crisis Group since January 2015. While a fellow 

at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation 

from 2008 to 2014, she also served as a senior advisor to the 

Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. Previously, 

she was director of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum at 

the Social Science Research Council and spent five years as an 

official of the UN’s Department of Political Affairs. She is the 

author of Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuría, and the Murdered 

Jesuits of El Salvador and Friends Indeed? The United Nations, 

Groups of Friends, and the Resolution of Conflict, 

among other publications.

2301 Constitution Ave., NW • Washington, DC 20037 • 202.457.1700 • fax 202.429.6063

Special Report 384 December 2015

© 2015 by the United States Institute of Peace. 

All rights reserved.

Contents

ETA and the Basque Problem 2

Violence, Conflict, and Its Costs 3

Counterterrorism and Negotiation 5

Zapatero’s Process 7

Virtual Peacemaking 8

A Protracted Ending 10

Lessons Learned 11

Teresa Whitfield

UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE www.usip.org

SPECIAL REPORT

Summary

• The violent separatist group Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) emerged in 1959 in response to 

General Francisco Franco’s repression of Basque identity during and after the Spanish Civil 

War and pursued the independence of a Basque homeland, Euskal Herria, that extends 

across seven administrative units in Spain and France. 

• ETA’s continued violence after Spain’s transition to democracy reflected support within a 

wider community of radical nationalists that believed the transition had been incomplete. 

• Disagreement on the problem that ETA represented—criminal terrorism or the violent manifestation of an unresolved political conflict—had a direct impact on Spain’s difficulties in 

establishing a clear strategy against ETA. 

• ETA’s violence was met by increasingly effective counterterrorism efforts by Spanish and 

French security forces, robust application of Spanish post-9/11 criminal law, and a slow but 

powerful mobilization of civil society against it. 

• Three attempts were made to arrive at a political solution. The third, and most audacious, 

was launched by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2005. Each attempt 

involved an ETA cease-fire that subsequently broke down. 

• When ETA’s violence finally ended in 2011, it could be attributed to multiple factors—counterterrorism and the activism of civil society, changes set in motion within ETA’s political 

base after the collapse of Zapatero’s peace process in 2007, and limited but essential 

assistance by international actors. 

• Although no direct negotiation took place and no peace agreement was signed, the unusual 

trajectory of the Basque peace process offers important lessons for others who seek to 

persuade violent actors to return to the channels of democratic politics.

Introduction

The violence perpetrated by the Basque separatist organization Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque 

Homeland and Freedom, ETA) was for many years an anomalous feature of Spain’s transition to democracy. ETA claimed some 840 lives over fifty years. It was reviled as a terrorist 

criminal band inside Spain and listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States 

The Basque Conflict and ETA

The Difficulties of an Ending
2 USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384

and the European Union. Yet its own perception of its long campaign was that of an armed 

conflict appropriate to a disciplined political-military organization, sustained by the support 

of a broader social and political movement. Spain’s counterterrorism, reinforced by essential 

cooperation from France and complemented by vocal and organized opposition to ETA from 

Basque and Spanish society, succeeded in significantly reducing the number of ETA’s victims. 

But despite three major efforts to seek a solution through negotiations—the third broke 

down after ETA bombed Madrid’s Barajas airport in December 2006—ETA persisted as the last 

organized armed insurgency in western Europe.

ETA and the Basque Problem 

The Basque Autonomous Community, or Euskadi, enjoys a high degree of autonomy within 

Spain. Yet, for thirty-five years, it has been shadowed by the existence of ETA and the 

complex relationship of its violence to an underlying “Basque problem” of two dimensions: 

the differences among Basques and between Basque and Madrid regarding the nature of the 

relationship between the Basque Country and the contemporary Spanish state. 

The problem is rooted in distinct versions of Basque history. One version is informed 

by what Diego Muro has termed “the mobilising myths of Basque nationalism.”1 It draws 

on Basques’ perception of themselves as a people and nation with a unique language and 

culture and a long egalitarian tradition vested in customary rights (fueros) and autonomy. 

The other version sees the Basque trajectory as integral to Spain’s development as a unitary 

nation-state. Within this tradition, Basque society, like others, has developed as a consequence of the evolution of elite interests, at times in conflict with centralizing forces in 

Madrid and at times not. 

Between these—inevitably oversimplified—paradigms, Basque political life is characterized by both polarization and pluralism.2 Political divisions are in part between nationalist 

and so-called non-nationalist (pro-Spanish) Basques. They also reflect the great diversity with 

regard to Basque descent, the Basque language Euskera, social class, and rural-urban origin 

among Basques, as well as the multiplicity of Basque political parties. In recent decades, the 

non-nationalist population has generally supported the arrangements for regional autonomy 

introduced during Spain’s transition to democracy. Moderate Basque nationalists associated 

with the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV)—which has led the Basque regional government 

since 1980, except between 2009 and 2013—pursue self-determination or a “right to decide” 

through options that range from reform of the Basque autonomy to full independence from 

Spain. Radical nationalists in the izquierda abertzale, the nationalist Left movement in ETA’s 

orbit, seek independence of the Basque homeland Euskal Herria and for years accepted, or at 

least would not publicly condemn, ETA’s use of violence to achieve it. 

The early consolidation of the French state and the relatively little nationalist sentiment in 

the French Basque territories have centered the Basque drama in Spain. There, the emergence 

of ETA in 1959 reflected both the distinctive form of Basque nationalism that its founder, 

Sabino Arana y Goiri, introduced in the late nineteenth century and Franco’s repression of 

Basque identity during and after the Spanish Civil War.3 Meanwhile, the endurance of Franco’s 

regime beyond 1945 contributed to a significant historical anomaly. Elsewhere in Europe, 

nationalist movements collaborated with Nazism and lost legitimacy with its defeat. In Spain, 

as Sebastian Balfour and Alejandro Quiroga have observed, “stateless nationalisms...gained 

political legitimacy precisely because they opposed a Fascist dictatorship.”4

ETA emerged from a group of young Basques who, during the 1950s, became increasingly 

disgruntled by what they saw as the passive opposition to Franco that the PNV-led Basque government-in-exile offered. Defining itself as “a political organization that practices the armed 

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily 

reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace, 

which does not advocate specific policy positions.

To request permission to photocopy or reprint materials, 

e-mail: permissions@usip.org.

About the Institute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, 

nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress. 

Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, 

promote postconflict peacebuilding, and increase conflict 

management tools, capacity, and intellectual capital 

worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others 

with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct 

involvement in conflict zones around the globe.

Board of Directors

Stephen J. Hadley, (Chair), Principal, RiceHadleyGates, LLC, 

Washington, DC • George E. Moose (Vice Chair), Adjunct 

Professor of Practice, The George Washington University, Washington, DC • Judy Ansley, Former Assistant to the President and 

Deputy National Security Advisor under George W. Bush, Washington, DC • Eric Edelman, Hertog Distinguished Practitioner 

in Residence, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International 

Studies, Washington, DC • Joseph Eldridge, University Chaplain 

and Senior Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, School of International 

Service, American University, Washington, DC • Kerry Kennedy, 

President, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human 

Rights, Washington, DC • Ikram U. Khan, President, Quality Care 

Consultants, LLC., Las Vegas, NV • Stephen D. Krasner, Graham 

H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford 

University, Palo Alto, CA • John A. Lancaster, Former Executive 

Director, International Council on Independent Living, Potsdam, 

NY • Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, George Mason 

University, Fairfax, VA • J. Robinson West, Chairman, PFC 

Energy, Washington, DC • Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice 

President, Leadership Conference on Civil and 

Human Rights, Washington, DC 

Members Ex Officio

John Kerry, Secretary of State • Ashton Carter, Secretary of 

Defense • Gregg F. Martin, Major General, U.S. Army; President, 

National Defense University • Nancy Lindborg, President, 

United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting)
USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384 3

struggle,” ETA was from its creation a clandestine organization.5 It advocated an independent 

socialist state for Euskal Herria, the “land of the Basque speakers” that straddles the borders 

of Spain and France around the Bay of Biscay. Today, the seven administrative units of this 

homeland include the three Spanish provinces—Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya—of Euskadi; 

the Spanish autonomous community of Navarre; and three French Basque provinces—Basse 

Navarre, Labourd, and Soule—in the département of Pyrénées Atlantiques. 

ETA’s early years were characterized by lengthy ideological discussions, numerous splits, 

and a gradual escalation of propaganda, sabotage, and armed action before it claimed its 

first victim in 1968. Spanish security forces came down hard on ETA from the beginning. But 

even as its militants suffered imprisonment, torture, and exile, ETA drew legitimacy from the 

virulence of Franco’s response in a cyclical process of “action-repression-action.”6 Boosted 

by its spectacular assassination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco—Franco’s prime minister—in 

1973, ETA was the most audacious force in opposition to the waning Franco regime.

After Franco’s death in 1975, ETA and its supporters sought a complete break with the 

past rather than engagement in the negotiated reform on which Spain’s transition rested. 

The organization saw betrayal of the Basque cause on two fronts. The democratic opposition abandoned earlier commitments to self-determination for the territories recognized as 

Spain’s “historic nationalities” of Catalonia, Euskadi, and Galicia in the new constitution. 

The PNV reluctantly accepted the creation of a Basque autonomous community—one among 

seventeen autonomous communities within Spain—that did not include Navarre. 

Spain’s constitution was negotiated under the threat of intervention by the army and 

against the background of two unwritten arrangements. The first, the pacto de olvido (pact 

of forgetting), ensured that no formal accounting of the violence inflicted by Franco’s forces—no “truth” for Franco’s victims or “reconciliation” between opposing forces in Spanish 

political life—was ever pursued. The second was unnamed but left many core institutions 

of the state—including the army, police, and judiciary—in the control of Franco’s officials, 

with cadres of torturers, abusive secret police, and complicit judges still in place. The constitution’s final text embraces a fundamental ambiguity: Article 2 defends “the indissoluble 

unity of the Spanish nation, the common and indivisible country [patria] of all Spaniards” 

but it also “recognises and guarantees the right to autonomy of the nationalities and 

regions of which it is composed and the solidarity among them all.”7

Basque nationalists abstained from the 1978 constitutional referendum. As a result, the 

constitution was supported by only 31 percent of the Basque population. However, the PNV’s 

negotiation of the autonomy statute the following year brought with it an implied acceptance of the constitutional framework. It also formalized an irrevocable parting of the ways 

with radical nationalists. ETA and the broader Movement for Basque National Liberation 

(MLNV), of which it was now a part, opposed Basque autonomy as insufficient and Spanish democracy as illegitimate. After a sweeping political amnesty, Spain’s security services 

returned to many of their old ways in their treatment of ETA, and the violence continued. 

Violence, Conflict, and Its Costs

ETA understood itself to be embarked on what it called a revolutionary war before it had 

killed a single person.8 All Spanish governments, however, have rejected the idea that its 

terrorist violence bears any relation to a formal armed conflict. 

The distinction is sensitive even in internal conflicts where the threat is such that a government is forced to mobilize its armed forces, as in Colombia, Sri Lanka, or Northern Ireland. 

Recognition of an armed conflict both elevates the problem above internal security that can be 

appropriately handled by national actors and triggers the application of international humani-
4 USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384

tarian law. At a political level, it also vests a degree of legitimacy on the opponent, suggesting 

an equivalence that might open the door to negotiation.9 (In Colombia, President Álvaro Uribe 

insisted that insurgencies be addressed solely in terms of terrorism; for his successor, Juan 

Manuel Santos, recognition of the existence of the armed conflict has been a cornerstone of 

the peace process launched in 2012.) The issue has been especially delicate in Spain given the 

low level of ETA’s violence, the state’s comparatively moderate and unmilitarized response to 

it, and a particular pride in the country’s post-Franco transition. 

ETA clearly and consistently used terrorism to further its political goals and perpetrated 

violence that was unjustifiable under Spanish democracy. A terrorist, as Joseba Zulaika and 

William Douglass observed in 1996, “becomes the inhuman bestiality, the quintessential proscribed or tabooed figure of our times.”10 Yet an oversimplified dismissal of the terrorist Other 

in the Basque case ignores the social and political reality within which ETA was grounded. 

“The ‘terrorists’ and the social environment surrounding them are not socially marginalized or 

pathological characters, nor abstract and distant external enemies who can be portrayed as 

the personification of evil,” wrote the Basque anthropologist Begoña Aretxaga. “The ‘terrorists’ 

turn out to be one’s neighbors, acquaintances or family members—people who are too close 

and whose lives we know, and who we cannot disregard so easily.”11

Between 1968 and 2011, ETA and related groups killed approximately 840 people, wounded 

2,500 more, and kidnapped eighty.12 The violence peaked in 1980, when ETA itself claimed 

ninety-two lives, but declined after Spain began to secure counterterrorism cooperation from 

France in the late 1980s. The count remained low during much of the 1990s, before an escalation in 2000 prompted a particularly robust crackdown in the early 2000s. ETA’s death toll 

was zero between 2003 and late 2006, and only twelve between 2006 and the cessation of 

violence in 2011. But forty years of killing and the attendant effects of kidnapping, extortion, 

and other threats had a corrosive effect on Basque society and were a persistent challenge to 

Spanish democracy. 

After the capture of its leadership in 1992, ETA confronted the possibility of military 

defeat for the first time. In response, it took steps to “socialize the suffering.”13 It shifted 

its targets from those associated with Spanish security forces to include politicians, local 

authorities, businessmen, academics, and journalists. The change contributed to the growing prominence of ETA’s victims (victims had been all but invisible in the early years of the 

transition, partly in reflection of many Basque nationalists’ ambivalence toward the agents 

of the Spanish state that ETA targeted), as well as a broader mobilization of civil society 

against ETA’s violence. Two organizations assumed particular prominence: Gesto por la Paz 

(Gesture for Peace), founded in the mid-1980s, became known for its silent protests against 

all kinds of political violence. Elkarri, formed in 1992, was closer to Basque nationalism and 

specifically dedicated to promoting dialogue to resolve what it—unlike Gesto—recognized 

as “the Basque conflict.”14

Another shift was the intensification of a distinct form of urban street violence, kale 

borroka, perpetrated by radicalized youth associated with the MLNV. It involved aggressive 

attacks on Basque police, rioting, and sabotage of public property. Polarization within the 

Basque Country intensified. The kidnapping and killing in 1997 of a young counselor from 

the center-right Popular Party (PP), Miguel Ángel Blanco, prompted outrage across Spain and 

proved a turning point. A new strand of more overtly antiterrorist and anti-Basque nationalist (constitutionalist) activism rose to the fore in the Foro de Ermua (Ermua Forum)—named 

after the Basque town represented by Blanco—and social platform Basta Ya! (Enough!). 

Between 1996 and 2004, Prime Minister José María Aznar, who had been victim of an 

ETA attack in 1995, placed victims of ETA—frequently described as if they represented a 

homogeneous block—at the center of counterterrorist policies, which were burnished by the 

Between 1968 and 2011, 

ETA and related groups killed 

approximately 840 people, 

wounded 2,500 more, and 

kidnapped eighty.
USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384 5

moral authority the victims brought with them. Their prominence contrasted starkly with 

the invisibility of those who would come to be referred to as “other victims”—of the state 

or shady paramilitary structures. These victims were fewer in number than the victims of 

ETA, but their recognition was denied for a long time, as were their rights in many cases.15

A study of human rights violations commissioned by the Basque government in early 2013 

found that ninety-four people had been killed by agents of the state and seventy-three by 

extreme right and para-police groups, seventy-seven cases still required investigation, and 

approximately 1,172 individuals had been wounded.16 Most notoriously, in the mid-1980s, 

a “dirty war” pursued by the antiterrorist organization Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación 

(GAL), later proven to have direct ties to senior officials of the socialist government, claimed 

the lives of twenty-seven people—nine of whom were not associated with ETA.17

The existence of these victims, and Spain’s resistance to acknowledging them, continued to 

mobilize the radical nationalist community. No less significant was the persistence of credible 

and repeated denunciations—regularly reinforced by investigations by international human 

rights organizations—of the torture of ETA prisoners to extract confessions.18 Many Basques 

also saw Spain’s dispersion of political prisoners to locations far removed from their families—

a strategy it adopted in the late 1980s as a deliberate element in its counterterrorism—as a 

vindictive act that meted out additional punishment on the prisoners’ family members. 

Counterterrorism and Negotiation

Approaching ETA’s violence exclusively in terms of terrorism meant a dominant framework of 

counterterrorism. It also encouraged Spain to see all Basque nationalism as tainted at some 

level by terrorism and not the deep social and political issue that it remains today. But from the 

beginning, this narrow approach was difficult to maintain. Before 2012, all Spanish governments 

embarked on talks or dialogue with ETA that implicitly accepted the existence of a conflict 

of some sort. In each case, a failure to agree on the nature and scope of the problem to be 

addressed—ETA’s terrorism or the Basque conflict writ large—prevented their advance. 

ETA found support within the complex web of political and social organizations that developed within the MLNV. These were not all created by ETA nor directly bound to it, but their 

existence was predicated on its military activity and hegemony. Other than ETA, the most 

significant actor was the political party Herri Batasuna (later Batasuna), which contested all 

Basque elections after 1978 and consistently garnered around 15 percent of the Basque vote.

The possibility of negotiation was always present, even as successive Spanish governments 

insisted that they would not negotiate with terrorists. Exploratory contacts began soon after 

Franco’s death, but other than a successful effort to reintegrate former members of a dissident 

ETA wing in the early 1980s, they did not prosper. ETA insisted on preconditions for negotiations that no Spanish government would contemplate.19 Political differences on approaches to 

ETA abounded, not least because of ambivalence among the mainstream of Basque nationalism 

toward the group. Additionally, conceptual and tactical confusion on the part of Spanish governments contributed to incoherent and at times counterproductive policies. After 1982, the 

socialist government turned to practices of the Franco era in its own counterterror campaign 

(notably in its backing of the GAL). It also pursued contacts with ETA that encouraged expectations that political negotiations were a realistic goal when they never were.20

The 1988 Pact of Ajuria Enea was the first consensus among political parties—other than 

Herri Batasuna—on a shared approach to ETA. It included strong commitments to counter 

ETA’s terrorism through police action, as well as the possibility of dialogue with those who 

had decided to abandon violence, as long as political questions were addressed among legitimately elected representatives, not in negotiations with ETA.21 It was on this basis that 

A study of human rights 

violations commissioned by the 

Basque government in early 

2013 found that ninety-four 

people had been killed by agents 

of the state and seventy-three 

by extreme right and para-police 

groups, seventy-seven cases 

still required investigation, and 

approximately 1,172 individuals 

had been wounded.
6 USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384

formal talks between ETA and the government took place in Algiers in early 1989. However, 

they soon broke down: The gulf between the limited terms on which the government hoped 

it might secure “peace for prisoners” and ETA’s wider political goals was insurmountable. ETA 

returned to violence convinced that it could force the government back to the negotiating 

table. Meanwhile, the government strengthened its efforts against the group. 

The Aznar government introduced radical change in policies adopted against ETA. At their 

core lay a determination to defeat terrorism using the police and not to countenance contacts, 

dialogue, or negotiation with its perpetrators.22 Paradoxically, Aznar’s staunch opposition to 

dialogue was one of several factors that contributed to movement toward a peace process 

structured along pan-nationalist lines. Others included the influence of the developing process 

in Northern Ireland (ties between Basque nationalism and Irish republicanism are long and 

deep) and the mobilization of civil society in the Basque nationalist orbit. A broad range of 

nationalist parties, including Herri Batasuna, and other actors such as Elkarri announced the 

Estella-Lizarra Declaration in September 1998.23 On the basis of confidential agreements with 

the PNV (which the PNV later contested), ETA declared a cease-fire. Aznar authorized talks 

between his representatives and ETA but in a single meeting in Switzerland found ETA no 

more disposed to compromise on its core demands than it had been in the past. ETA ended its 

cease-fire in late 1999.

The PP returned to power with an absolute majority in 2000. After the attacks of September 

11, 2001, and the advent of the “global war on terrorism,” Spain introduced changes in its legal 

framework to facilitate the prosecution of the social and political organizations in the MLNV 

(“Everything was ETA,” the PP insisted) and increased its counterterrorism cooperation with 

France and the European Union. New “special measures” validated Spain’s expansive conception 

of terrorism and facilitated the prosecution of ETA and the nationalist Left. But the illegalization 

of activities under a vaguely defined understanding of collaboration or glorification of terrorism 

at times fell short of the serious crimes that should constitute a terrorist offense.24

In 2002, the Spanish Parliament voted to amend a law on political parties to ban Batasuna. The tough legal measures complemented police action against ETA and, by 2003, had 

clearly eroded ETA’s operational capacity. Yet ETA still had the capacity to kill on a sporadic 

basis, and Aznar’s offensive against ETA and the MLNV, deep antagonism to the PNV, and 

growing intolerance of other regional demands had widened the gulf with Madrid and among 

the democratic forces in the Basque Country. 

These unpropitious circumstances did not stall initiatives to move ahead. Most prominent 

among them was a controversial proposal introduced by the Basque president, Juan José 

Ibarretxe, for a relationship of “free association” for Euskadi with Spain.25 It was complemented by the continuing efforts of Elkarri. Meanwhile, far from the public eye, a series of 

discreet conversations had begun between Arnaldo Otegi, the spokesperson and leader of 

Batasuna, and Jesús Eguiguren, the president of the Basque Socialist Party (PSE). The two 

men met regularly in a remote Basque farmhouse to analyze the reasons for the failure of 

earlier peace efforts and to explore the possibility of moving beyond the political impasse.

Any possibility of outside involvement in the Basque issue was resisted as an unacceptable infringement of Spanish sovereignty, but Basques had nevertheless begun to turn 

elsewhere for new ideas. Elkarri invited international experts to visit the Basque Country. It 

reached out to U.S.-based conflict resolution experts who had followed the Basque situation 

since the early 1990s and to prominent figures in the peace process in Northern Ireland. 

Among them was Fr. Alec Reid, a Redemptorist priest who had facilitated talks between 

Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin and John Hume, of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, in the 

early days of the peace process in Northern Ireland and had ties to Batasuna going back 

a decade. Meanwhile, other international actors—including the Geneva-based Centre for 
USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384 7

Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), which established contact with ETA in late 2003, and 

South African lawyer Brian Currin, whom Sinn Féin commended to Batasuna at a similar 

time—also began to get involved.

Zapatero’s Process

On March 11, 2004, Islamic extremists launched a terrorist attack on Madrid commuter trains 

only days in advance of Spain’s general election. The PP had featured its successes against 

ETA prominently in its campaign, and Aznar’s officials quickly declared ETA to be responsible. 

As evidence accumulated to contradict this assertion, the government stuck to its story. The 

Spanish electorate sensed that it had been lied to and, on March 14, handed José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) a solid electoral victory. 

Zapatero’s first term was characterized by the introduction of social changes and more 

controversial attempts to reform arrangements regulating Spain’s autonomous communities. 

Scarred by its electoral loss, the PP offered vehement opposition. At the center of the political battlefield was dialogue with ETA, for which Zapatero sought and received the approval 

of parliament in May 2005. 

The new peace process was framed in accordance with proposals put forward in November 

2004 by Otegi, on Batasuna’s behalf, in terms that built on his discussions with Eguiguren. 

These proposals foresaw two strands of negotiations. One was toward agreement on pacification between ETA and the Spanish and French states—including the technical issues of 

demilitarization, prisoners, refugees, and victims—and the other between Basque social 

and political forces on future political arrangements for Euskal Herria.26

Initial talks between Eguiguren and representatives of ETA began in May 2005. They took 

place in Geneva and Oslo in conditions of secrecy and with the benefit of facilitation by the 

HD Centre. They prepared the way for ETA’s announcement of its first permanent cease-fire 

in March 2006, on the basis of confidential commitments and “guarantees” agreed upon 

between the parties.27 From then on, the process would be beset by leaks and rumors seized 

upon by Zapatero’s political opponents. The PP and some victims’ organizations led a series 

of demonstrations against the government’s policies. Zapatero was assailed as a traitor to 

ETA’s victims and an enabler of terrorist violence. 

ETA and government representatives met at regular intervals during the remainder of 2006. 

However, far from progressing to substantive talks, the parties became stuck in mutual recrimination that revealed fundamental differences in their understanding of the agreed guarantees 

and the political underpinning of the process. Difficulties were exacerbated by opposition from 

the PP, a related increase in activity against ETA and Batasuna by Spanish judges, and—behind 

the scenes—divisions within ETA, whose top commanders supporting the negotiations had 

been arrested just as the peace process was beginning. Violations of the cease-fire multiplied. 

In September and October, the PSE, Batasuna, and the PNV held confidential meetings 

at the Jesuit sanctuary of Loyola in an attempt to move toward a political agreement. 

The three arrived at proposals that recognized the Basque people as a “nation” and Euskal 

Herria as a social, historical, and cultural reality. They agreed that decisions “freely and 

democratically adopted by Basque citizens should be respected by the institutions of Spain” 

and that these could include independence. They also agreed to promote the creation of a 

new “common institutional entity” encompassing Euskadi and Navarre, subject to approval 

in separate referenda in the two existing autonomous communities. What, in practical and 

political terms, this common entity would do was not specified, however.28

The Loyola agreement went further to recognize the demands of Basque nationalism than 

anything that had preceded it. Yet when ETA pressured Batasuna to introduce changes—the 
8 USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384

development of a single statute of autonomy for the new institutional entity—the talks 

broke down. Meanwhile, on the technical track, talks between ETA and the government 

had also become increasingly complicated. After ETA broke its cease-fire with an attack on 

Madrid’s Barajas airport on December 30 that killed two Ecuadoreans, the government pronounced the process finished. Yet it maintained contact with ETA through the HD Centre and, 

in May 2007, agreed to sit down with it again. This time, a new format allowed the presence 

not only of Batasuna but also of international actors—representatives of Sinn Féin and the 

governments of Norway and the United Kingdom—as well as the HD Centre. 

Unlike those in the past, the May 2007 talks brought the two tracks on which the process 

rested under a single roof: Representatives of the government and ETA discussed technical 

issues as well as Batasuna and PSE political issues. That ETA now insisted that the Socialist 

Party publicly commit to a common institutional entity and a single statute and campaign 

for this outcome was unacceptable to the government. The talks ended in the early hours of 

May 22. On June 6, ETA declared its cease-fire at an end.

Virtual Peacemaking

Spain quickly increased its pressure on ETA and the nationalist Left. Otegi was imprisoned 

days after the end of the cease-fire. In October, twenty-three members of the leadership of 

Batasuna were also detained. Two months later, ETA returned to killing, assassinating two 

members of the Guardia Civil in France. But arrests kept mounting up. By the end of 2009, 

with substantial cooperation from France, some 277 alleged members of ETA had been 

detained, including its leadership, as well as 195 others on charges related to kale borroka.29

Alfredo Rubalcaba, Zapatero’s minister of the interior and the architect of government 

policies against ETA, explained his strategy in this period as a simple one: “By police means 

pursue them fully, and politically give them nothing.”30 The government drew on a broad 

consensus that ETA could never again be trusted to abide by a cease-fire and that no further 

negotiations would be pursued. Zapatero’s critics argued that the peace process had legitimized ETA as a political actor, provided scope for it to rearm, and encouraged it to raise its 

demands.31 But ETA was in a weakened state, and its domestic and international standing 

was at rock bottom. In time, the dynamics set in motion by the peace process would be 

shown to have had lasting impact. 

The general elections in March 2008 were closely fought but returned the PSOE to power 

for a second four-year term—one dominated by Spain’s growing economic crisis. Meanwhile, 

in Euskadi, a surge in support for Basque Socialists—partly as a consequence of their efforts 

to achieve peace—led to PNV’s loss of control of the Basque government. 

The end of its cease-fire had exposed internal divisions within ETA, as well as between 

ETA and the leaders of Batasuna. It marked the frustration of a process that had taken years 

to prepare. The government’s campaign against Batasuna reduced its capacity to consider 

next steps. But when Otegi reemerged from prison in August 2008, he and others entered a 

period of reassessment that would lead to significant changes. This process had at its center 

recognition of the depth of social opposition to continuing violence and the realization that 

unless the nationalist Left moved beyond the armed struggle, it was “inexorably heading for 

a precipice of political marginalization and ideological drift.”32

The path Otegi and others took brought them into direct confrontation with the leaders 

of ETA. It was influenced by peace processes elsewhere and had elements in common with 

the shift from armed struggle to nonviolent political action that made those processes possible. However, as the possibility for the kind of negotiated processes experienced in Northern Ireland or South Africa—the two processes with which the Basques had the most direct 
USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384 9

experience—was blocked, the nationalist Left was forced to pursue a strategy not directly 

comparable to any of them. By mid-2009, Otegi acknowledged that the government and 

public opinion were both “fundamentally against the idea of negotiation.” Yet it still seemed 

logical that “only through some kind of negotiation” could Batasuna pursue its goals. The 

challenge he and others were struggling to address was how to find “some creative way to 

get over this impasse.”33

Otegi and a few other leaders of Batasuna maintained contact with the international 

actors who had been engaged in the earlier process.34 In addition to members of the HD 

Centre, these included their old allies in Sinn Féin, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan 

Powell (who had been present at the May 2007 talks in Geneva), and Brian Currin. Otegi was 

imprisoned again in October 2009, improbably charged with reconstituting Batasuna under 

ETA orders. But the work continued, now under the leadership of Rufi Etxeberria, another 

prominent leader of Batasuna with authority within the MLNV. 

ETA let it be known that it required three things to be persuaded that the new direction was 

viable: consultations within the radical nationalist base, political alliances to create mass support, and international involvement.35 As the internal consultations advanced, and steps were 

taken toward an alliance with nonviolent but pro-independence Basque parties, Currin worked 

hard to engineer an international statement in support of the changes under way. In March 

2010, six Nobel Peace Prize winners were among those who put their names to the Brussels 

Declaration, calling on ETA to declare a permanent and verifiable cease-fire.36

ETA responded in September 2010 and announced a halt to its offensive armed actions; it 

declared a permanent cease-fire the following January, but the government remained skeptical. In February 2011, Batasuna presented the statutes for a new political party, Sortu (Create), which clearly rejected violence and ETA’s violence explicitly. For Madrid, this was still not 

enough: The government presented stiff opposition to the ability of any party that shared ETA’s 

goals to pursue them while ETA was still alive. In the Basque Country, by contrast, demands for 

the recognition of the changes under way were becoming more pressing. 

The nationalist Left’s next move—to contest the municipal and local elections in May 

2011 in a coalition, Bildu (Reunite), formed with legal political parties—was again opposed 

by the Supreme Court. A last-minute approval by the Constitutional Court allowed the 

nationalist Left to return to democratic politics energized by the obstructions that had been 

put in its path. Bildu won 25 percent of the vote in Euskadi’s May 2011 elections, a better 

result than the nationalist Left had ever secured and one that effectively ended its internal 

debate with ETA. Spaniards were left struggling to comprehend that a counterterrorist campaign they had believed would conclude with the “defeat” of ETA had been accompanied by 

a resurgence of radical nationalism.

By July 2011, members of Batasuna who led the internal debate with ETA believed they 

had achieved all they could without movement from the government.37 ETA, though severely 

weakened, insisted on government assurances regarding the terms of cessation of its armed 

activities. These assurances centered on legalizing Sortu and securing conditions to benefit 

its seven hundred-odd prisoners. A maximalist demand for amnesty was still being floated, 

but Batasuna maintained that many measures could be taken within existing laws—bringing 

prisoners closer to the Basque Country, releasing sick prisoners, and revising a controversial legal measure called the Parot doctrine that in early 2006 had introduced retroactive 

increases to the sentences of many prisoners.38

Moving forward required an unusual form of virtual peacemaking, never acknowledged by 

the government, and involving communication—but no direct talks—among the nationalist 

Left, ETA, and the government through trusted international facilitators.39 Only later would it 

emerge that this effort had centered on the agreement of a confidential road map that set out 
10 USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384

steps to be taken by the government and ETA. These included early release of sick prisoners and 

gestures by the nationalist Left in September and October 2011 that included formal dissolution of Ekin, a hard-line group reported to act as a sort of political commissar for ETA within the 

MLNV. In public, meanwhile, international involvement was growing. An International Contact 

Group had been formed earlier in the year, and a new International Verification Commission 

(IVC)—its functions limited to verifying ETA’s cease-fire—was announced in September.40

At the road map’s center was a tightly choreographed international conference held in 

the Aiete palace in San Sebastián on October 17, 2011. In what appeared to the public as a 

hastily assembled event—but was in fact a critical step forward, carefully planned with the 

assistance of international actors—distinguished international leaders, with former United 

Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan at their head, issued a declaration calling on ETA 

to announce the end of its violence.41 Three days later, as previously agreed, ETA responded 

by declaring the definitive end of its armed activities.42 It was a signal moment in Spain’s 

contemporary history—all the more significant for the fact that Spanish and French security 

forces soon confirmed the validity of the shift away from violence. 

A Protracted Ending 

ETA and the nationalist Left had hoped to move forward on the basis of the road map they 

had agreed to with the outgoing government and international encouragement of the process 

spelled out in the Aiete declaration. This was not to be, however. The PP, with Mariano Rajoy 

at its head, won general elections in November 2011 with an absolute majority, and progress 

slowed almost to a halt. The one notable exception was the decision by the outgoing Constitutional Court to legalize Sortu in June 2012, securing the return of the nationalist Left to 

democratic politics.

As Spain grappled with its most profound economic and institutional crisis since the 

transition, few political benefits were to be gained from the appearance of concessions to 

ETA. The government took no steps to reverse the progress made in 2011. But under pressure from right-wing sectors of the party and victims’ organizations aligned with them, it 

demanded ETA’s unconditional dissolution. It refused to do anything—such as demonstrating flexibility toward the prisoners, even by allowing them to be relocated to prisons closer 

to Euskadi—that might have helped advance ETA’s eventual end. 

Implicit within the Aiete declaration, as well as the explicit creation of the IVC, had been 

the expectation that discreet international contacts with ETA would be continued. How at 

least some of these contacts were managed would become evident in March 2013 when it 

emerged that, at the request of the Zapatero government, Norway had been sheltering three 

members of the political leadership of ETA and facilitating their meetings with the international verifiers and members of the nationalist Left.43 Faced with the government’s refusal 

to meet with or transmit messages to ETA, in mid-February 2013, Norway had expelled the 

ETA members, who were said to have taken refuge in France.44

ETA’s response to the government’s intransigence was to do nothing. Only in mid-2013 

did a possible way out of the impasse emerge: A social forum established by Elkarri’s successor Lokarri and other representatives of Basque civil society negotiated a set of proposals 

that—again with international assistance—ETA broadly accepted.45 Little moved forward 

before late October, when the European Court of Human Rights upheld an earlier decision 

that the retroactive extension of prison sentences introduced by the Parot doctrine violated 

the European Convention on Human Rights.46 The most visible of the victims’ organizations 

were outraged, and Rajoy dismissed the ruling as “unjust and wrong.”47

The release of sixty-three prisoners in compliance with the European Court’s ruling helped 

difficult internal discussions advance. On February 21, 2014, the IVC reported that ETA had 
USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384 11

sealed and “put beyond use a specified quantity of arms, ammunition and explosives.”48

For ETA, this was a major step. However, the IVC’s attempt to corroborate ETA’s actions 

underlined the limits of a unilateral peace process and the informal structures established 

in its support. ETA released a video showing a small collection of weapons and ammunition 

laid out for inspection by two IVC members. The media heaped criticism on ETA, and the 

IVC members were summoned before the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s antiterrorism court. 

Internally and across the broader nationalist Left, however, a taboo had been broken. ETA 

confirmed in a formal statement that the process to decommission its weapons, munitions, 

and explosives would go “to the end, to the last arsenal.”49

The episode brought with it some sobering lessons. Most obvious, that decommissioning 

and disarming require an entity with the authority to certify that weapons and munitions 

have been put beyond use and to receive any that might be handed over for destruction. In 

ETA’s case, the involvement of both the Spanish and French governments would be required 

if independent international verifiers were not to risk arrest. Spain made no sign that it 

would shift in its determination not to engage with ETA. But ETA kept going. In July, it 

claimed that it had dismantled its logistical and operational structures and taken steps to 

conclude the sealing of its weapons it had begun earlier in the year.50

As the end of the Rajoy government came in sight—general elections were scheduled 

for December 2015—ETA’s painfully slow movement toward disarmament went underground. 

Political competition between the Basque parties intensified in the run-up to local elections held in May 2015. These saw radical nationalists lose ground to both the PNV and the 

new political party Podemos and underlined the need for all Basques to complete the peace 

process. A few weeks before the May vote, Euskal Herria Bildu had introduced a proposal 

for the destruction of ETA’s weapons under the supervision of an independent international 

commission.51 The proposal was met with stony silence from Madrid, and the government 

continued to arrest ETA militants when it could. It is hard not to surmise that in almost any 

other context—including perhaps that of a new government in Spain—such a commission 

would be welcomed as a practical step toward dissolving an anachronistic armed group 

actively pursuing ways to be rid of its arsenal.

Lessons Learned

The tortuous progression toward its end reflected a persistent ambivalence regarding the 

problem ETA presented. On the one hand, ETA was an illegal armed group and a terrorist 

band that directly threatened the lives of Spaniards and some—mainly non-nationalist—

Basques. On the other was the more inconvenient truth that ETA had long represented, as 

Rubalcaba had candidly observed in February 2012, “a certain guarantee for those of us who 

are not [Basque] nationalists.”52 The persistence of ETA had prevented the formation of a 

broad alliance among Basque nationalists and allowed successive governments in Madrid 

to dismiss those nationalists’ demands. Action against ETA had therefore rested on a tacit 

understanding in some quarters that the continuation of ETA’s violence at a manageably low 

level was possibly the least bad option available. 

This understanding meant that when ETA eventually ended its violence, it could not be 

embraced as a full-bodied success; nor was there an obvious short-term incentive for the 

PP government to engage with ETA to secure its end. In the long term, though, particularly 

in light of a resurgence of secessionist demands in Catalonia and the broader institutional 

crisis facing Spain, the wisdom of this decision is open to question. In 2015, Spain’s major 

political parties were challenged by the populist Podemos party and the more conservative 

Ciudadanos (Citizens) party, as well as continuing demands for independence from nationalist parties in Catalonia. Meanwhile, Rajoy’s immobility on the subject of ETA had contributed 

The persistence of ETA had 

prevented the formation of a 

broad alliance among Basque 

nationalists and allowed successive 

governments in Madrid to dismiss 

those nationalists’ demands. 
12 USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384

to a large nationalist majority in the Basque Parliament and buried the future of the PP as 

a regional force.53

ETA’s endgame, when it eventually came into sight, was as singular as the conflict it had 

waged and the state had refused to recognize. No direct negotiations took place and no peace 

agreement was reached in a process that saw unilateral, carefully negotiated, and discreetly 

communicated steps, both within and by a political-military organization and the broader 

structures of its political and social support, directly informed by actions of the state, pressure 

from Basque and Spanish society, and the involvement of international actors. 

Ten lessons from the Basque case stand out.

1. It is difficult, if not impossible, to solve a problem without first acknowledging 

what it is. Disagreement on the nature of the problem ETA represented had a direct 

impact on Spain’s difficulties in establishing a clear strategy, broadly shared among all 

democratic parties, to address it. Good reasons for confusion were rooted in opposing 

perceptions and experiences of Basque history and identity that may never be resolved. 

But the confusion was extended and distorted by an overly simplified discourse of the 

war on terrorism appropriated by the government of José María Aznar. The truth, of 

course, was that terrorism and the Basque conflict were not mutually exclusive: ETA 

used terrorism to further the ends of what it perceived and experienced as a conflict. 

That it operated on the basis of being engaged in an obviously ideological conflict 

with the Spanish state could not be ignored by any attempt to resolve the immediate 

problem its violence represented. 

2. Robust security or counterterrorist measures have their role, but politics is required 

to bring sustainable peace. Groups formed for organized resistance embark on a 

violent path when they conclude that no political option is available to them. If 

outright victory is impossible, they end violence if and when they can accept this fact 

and be assured that they have either a political future or another opportunity to achieve 

the changes they fought for. Increasingly effective counterterrorism eroded ETA’s 

operational capacity but never succeeded in eliminating its ability to kill at a reduced 

level or in vanquishing the cause of Basque national liberation. It is unrealistic to think 

that armed groups that still command social support will end their violence without 

police or—when the scale of the conflict determines it—military pressure. However, to 

be effective, this pressure must be accompanied by a strategy for conflict resolution 

that allows for political goals to be pursued peacefully and democratically. 

3. The law is central to counterterrorism, but should be tightly circumscribed to the 

serious crimes that constitute a terrorist offense, and can also complicate a peace 

process. Exceptional measures of counterterrorism bring not only operational benefits 

to a state’s counterterrorist campaign but also risks related to protecting human rights 

and the institutions charged with implementing them. An expansive understanding of 

terrorist activities in Spain allowed for prosecutions to be based on association rather than 

individual responsibility and contributed to the introduction of exceptional legislation and 

practices (such as prisoner dispersion) that then became the norm. The PP in particular, 

but all Spanish governments, repeatedly used a politicized judiciary to pursue political 

aims against ETA and Basque nationalism. Actions such as the introduction of the Parot 

doctrine, the spike in arrests during 2006, the arrest and prosecution of Otegi and the 

others detained in October 2009, and the contested legalization of Sortu contributed 

to an erosion of this judiciary’s credibility. At the center of the legal battle against ETA, 

the political parties law isolated Batasuna, curtailed its access to public finances, and 

eventually contributed to the pressure on ETA to call a halt to its violence for good.

However, banning the political expression of a movement articulated around both a 

Disagreement on the nature of 

the problem ETA represented 

had a direct impact on Spain’s 

difficulties in establishing a clear 

strategy, broadly shared among all 

democratic parties, to address it. 
USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384 13

political and military strategy hindered efforts to resolve the conflict and disenfranchised 

a sector of the electorate infinitely larger than could be directly linked to ETA. 

4. Victims should be afforded full respect and rights but not allowed a veto over 

policy decisions. ETA’s victims were for a long time wrongly neglected by both 

Basque and Spanish governments and civil society. This isolation was followed by 

robust legislation enacted to address victims’ rights consistent with international 

best practice. The victims acted with admirable restraint—never engaging in acts 

of vengeance, for example. However, their elevation to a position of moral arbiter 

undermined efforts to develop coherent policies toward ETA or grant recognition 

to the victims of the state, the GAL, or other rightist armed groups. The role some 

victims’ organizations played in the counterterrorist struggle undermined Zapatero’s 

policies toward ETA and had a disproportionate influence over the PP government 

of Rajoy. Meanwhile, the legacy of Spain’s inability to address the issue of victims 

(including Basque victims) under Franco, its fear of establishing equivalence 

between two sides in a conflict it did not acknowledge, and antipathy to the idea 

that terrorists or those associated with them could be victims too—for example, of 

torture—contributed to a hardening of the conflict divide. 

5. A normative approach to human rights, founded on the principle of equal 

protection for equal violation, could help build trust. One of the more surprising 

aspects of Spain’s actions was its reluctance to engage more actively on the issue of 

human rights, including with the international community, to minimize the nationalist 

Left’s sense of victimization. This reluctance was perhaps evidenced most clearly by 

the government’s failure to investigate allegations of torture or to adopt measures 

to prevent it recommended by international bodies such as the European Committee 

to Prevent Torture, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a variety of UN 

special rapporteurs. This failure helped degrade the human rights protections that 

Spain is committed to uphold and was a missed opportunity to demonstrate Spain’s 

democratic credentials. 

6. Dialogue and engagement should not be stigmatized as “talking to terrorists” 

or confused with negotiation. Despite its atypical trajectory, and its origins in the 

breakdown of a more conventional process of negotiation, the Basque process confirms 

the value of engagement and dialogue at multiple levels. Indeed, it suggests that more 

rather than less engagement with ETA—a closed, extremist organization inherently 

suspicious of outsiders but urgently in need of greater communication with those 

capable of giving a blunt assessment of the possibilities open to it—would have been 

desirable, perhaps especially during its period of greatest isolation under the Aznar 

government. It is, of course, difficult for democratic governments to talk to those who 

have been designated as terrorists, and usually necessary for them to begin to do so 

either through third parties or in secret. The issue, the Basque case suggests, is not 

whether contacts with an illegal armed group are desirable but how, when, and to what 

end they should be pursued. 

7. Change is difficult and requires leadership and a clear and unambiguous strategy. 

ETA’s long history illustrates how difficult it is for groups whose existence has been 

defined by the armed struggle to leave violence behind. Change when it did come 

was intimately related to the leadership of representatives of Batasuna and top ETA 

commanders and their ability to maintain internal cohesion. A unilateral process—

impelled by broad opposition from civil society to continued violence and fortified 

by international support and the validation it received from its old allies in Sinn 

Féin—was, on the one hand, all that was available to the nationalist Left. On the 

Despite its atypical trajectory, 

and its origins in the breakdown 

of a more conventional process 

of negotiation, the Basque 

process confirms the value of 

engagement and dialogue at 

multiple levels. 
14 USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384

other hand, it allowed for autonomy of decision and action that was impervious to the 

disappointment of unfulfilled agreements with the government. As events between 

2012 and 2015 demonstrated, it also imparted a degree of resilience in the face of 

Rajoy’s refusal to take up the opportunities presented by the Aiete declaration.

8. Civil society and social forces have a responsibility and role. Civil society and 

broader social forces play multiple roles in the validation of, or opposition to, armed 

struggle. In the Basque case, organized civil society was slow to mobilize against 

ETA’s violence. However, it became an important vehicle for wider public rejection of 

ETA as it actively pursued ways out of the impasse. Civil society actors led the way 

in articulating the demand for an end to terrorism and in denying the organization 

the legitimacy it required to pursue its armed struggle. Not to be overlooked in this 

process was the role the nationalist Left constituency played: Opinion polls over the 

years suggested increasing doubts within this community regarding the efficacy of 

ETA’s violence. Meanwhile, organizations such as Elkarri and later Lokarri prioritized 

the role that dialogue could play as an alternative to violence and encouraged 

perspectives derived from other peace processes. 

9. Even when formal international involvement is not possible, international actors can 

fulfill a variety of useful functions. The international involvement that reached its 

apogee at Aiete in October 2011 played a limited but nonetheless critical role. What might 

have appeared to many as at times haphazard international efforts and statements were in 

fact carefully planned and discreetly coordinated steps—which were largely successful—

to encourage ending violence forever. International facilitation was essential to the peace 

process Zapatero initiated in 2005 but easier to contemplate when offered by a discreet 

private organization such as the HD Centre than by a state. To secure the unilateral 

process it embarked on in 2009, the nationalist Left made adroit use of its international 

contacts to boost its leverage with ETA and to develop a channel of communication with 

an initially skeptical socialist government. Zapatero’s government maintained a public 

position of distance, even as very few government officials maintained relations of trust 

with individuals in direct but essential communication with Batasuna and ETA. 

10. A peacemaking process is necessary. Finally, the atypical trajectory taken in the Basque 

case confirms the need for a peacemaking process of some kind. As ETA was readying itself 

to abandon its armed activity for good, it needed a way to do so with some dignity intact. 

Nor did the need for a process evaporate after the Aiete declaration of 2011. Although 

hopes for the road map the nationalist Left had agreed to with the outgoing socialist 

government were dashed by the immobility of Rajoy, the pressure for forward movement 

remained. The problem was political but also practical: An armed organization dissolving 

clandestine structures, weapons, and explosives on its own faces real obstacles. Rajoy 

and the PP can point to a degree of success in their refusal to engage with ETA, which 

has been forced to move forward unilaterally toward its disarmament. But the continuing 

arrests and lack of a response to ETA’s offers to hand over its weapons kept open the 

possibility of splinter groups in the future—a risk made more current by the persistence 

of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland nearly twenty years after the conclusion of a 

peace agreement. Above all, Spanish intransigence meant that four years that might have 

been used to work toward the definitive end of ETA and much-needed reconciliation in the 

Basque Country have been lost. Spain’s actions and inaction have instead helped ensure 

that Basque society will remain deeply polarized and significantly hostile toward it. The 

Basque “problem” is likely to persist for many years to come. 
USIP.ORG • SPECIAL REPORT 384 15

Notes

1. Diego Muro, Ethnicity and Violence: The Case of Radical Basque Nationalism (New York: Routledge, 2010), 137. 

See also Marianne Heiberg, The Making of the Basque Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), xi.

2. Francisco J. Llera Ramo, “La Transición y la autonomía actual,” in Historia del País Vasco y Navarra en el siglo XX, 

ed. José Luis de la Granja and Santiago de Pablo (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2002), 129–36.

3. Gúrutz Jauregui, “ETA: Orígenes y evolución ideológica y política,” in La Historia de ETA, ed. Antonio Elorza 

(Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2006), 173.

4. Sebastian Balfour and Alejandro Quiroga, The Reinvention of Spain: Nation and Identity Since Democracy (New 

York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 44.

5. Cited in Iker Casanova, ETA 1958–2008: Medio Siglo de Historia (Tafalla: Txalaparta, 2007), 9.

6. Ibid., 51–54, 62–64.

7. Article 2, Preamble, The Constitution of Spain, www.tribunalconstitucional.es/en/constitucion/Pages/Constitucion

Ingles.aspx#I1.

8. José María Garmendia, “ETA: Nacimiento, desarrollo y crisis (1959–1978),” in Elorza, La Historia de ETA, 118.

9. I. William Zartman and Guy Olivier Faure, eds., Engaging Extremists: Trade-Offs, Timing, and Diplomacy

(Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2011).

10. Joseba Zulaika and William A. Douglass, Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables, and Faces of Terrorism (New York: 

Routledge, 1996), 6.

11. Begoña Aretxaga, “The Intimacy of Violence,” in States of Terror: Begoña Aretxaga’s Essays, ed. Joseba Zulaika 

(Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2005), 166.

12. For slightly different accounts of the victims of ETA by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, (www.interior.gob.es/

failecidos-por-terrorismo), Rogelio Alonso, Florencio Domínguez, and Marcos García Rey, Vidas Rotas: Todas las 

víctimas de ETA (Madrid: Espasa, 2010), and in Manuela Carmena, Jon Mirena Landa, Ramón Múgica, and Juan 

Maria Uriarte, “Informe-base de vulneraciones de derechos humanos en el caso vasco, (1960–2013)” (VitoriaGasteiz: Basque Government, June 2013).

13. This idea was introduced by Herri Batasuna in the Oldartzen document it developed in 1994 and 1995. 

14. Egoitz Gago Anton, “The Analysis of the Framing Process of the Basque Peace Movement: The Way Gesto por la 

Paz and Lokarri Changed Society,” ICIP Working Papers 2012/1 (Barcelona: Institut Català Internacional per la 

Pau, January 2012).

15. It was only at its third attempt, in 2010, that the Basque Parliament finally recognized the existence of this 

community of victims in a report that provided the basis for a decree approved in 2012. 

16. Manuela Carmena, Jon Mirena Landa, Ramón Múgica, and Juan M. Uriarte, “Informe-base de vulneraciones de 

derechos humanos en el caso vasco (1960-2013)” (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Eusko Jaurlaritza/Gobierno Vasco, June 2013), 

http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/2013/06/14/informe_base_es.pdf.

17. Paddy Woodworth, Dirty War, Clean Hands: ETA, the GAL, and Spanish Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University 

Press, 2002).

18. See relevant reports of Amnesty International, Council of Europe, European Committee for the Prevention of 

Torture, Human Rights Watch, and the UN Human Rights Commission, especially those of the Commission on 

Torture and the Special Rapporteurs on the Question of Torture, and on Human Rights and Counterterrorism. 

19. Introduced in a document known as the KAS Alternative in 1978. Robert P. Clark, Negotiating with ETA: Obstacles 

to Peace in the Basque Country, 1975–1988 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1990), 80.

20. Carlos Fonseca, Negociar con ETA: Del proceso de Argel de Felipe González a la paz dialogada de Rodríguez Zapatero 

(Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2006).

21. “El Pacto de Ajuria Enea, Acuerdo para la Normalización y Pacificación de Euskadi,” La Dictadura del Terror, January 

12, 1988, www.elmundo.es/eta/documentos/pacto_ajuria_enea.html.

22. José María Aznar, Eight Years as Prime Minister: A Personal Vision of Spain, 1996–2004 (Barcelona: Planeta, 2004).

23. Estella-Lizarra Declaration, La Dictaduea del Terror www.elmundo.es/eta/documentos/pacto_lizarra.html.

24. See, for example, UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection 

of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism, Martin Scheinin, Addendum: Mission to 

Spain,” December 16, 2008, A/HRC/10/3/Add.2. 

25. Michael Keating and Zoe Bray, “Renegotiating Sovereignty: Basque Nationalism and the Rise and Fall of the 

Ibarretxe Plan,” Ethnopolitics 5, no. 4 (November 2006).

26. Batasuna, “Orrain Herria, Orrain Bakea,” Basque Peace Process, November 14, 2004, www.basquepeaceprocess.

info/?page_id=486.

27. For a detailed account of this process, see Teresa Whitfield, Endgame for ETA: Elusive Peace in the Basque Country 

(London: Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2014), especially chapters 5 and 6. 

28. “Bases for Dialogue and a Political Agreement” in annex to Imanol Murua Uria, El Triángulo de Loiola: Crónica de 

un Proceso de Negociación a Tres Bandas (Donostia: Ttarttalo, 2010). 

29. Spanish Ministry of Interior, “Lucha anti-terrorista contra ETA—VIII Legislatura (2006-2008),” www.interior.gob.

es/prensa-3/balances-e-informes-21/lucha-antiterrorista-contra-eta—viii-legislatura-2004-2008-158.

30. Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, interview, Madrid, February 2012.

31. See, for example, Rogelio Alonso, “Leaving Terrorism Behind in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country,” in 

Leaving Terrorism Behind: Individual and Collective Disengagement, ed. Tore Bjørgo and John Horgan (London: 

Routledge, 2009), 88–112; Javier Zarzalejos, “El mito del final dialogado,” Cuadernos de Pensamiento Político, 

April–June 2007.

32. Arnaldo Otegi in El Tiempo de las Luces: Entrevista con Arnaldo Otegi, ed. Fermin Munarriz (Bilbo: Gara, 2012), 100.

33. Arnaldo Otegi, interview, San Sebastián, July 2009.

34. Otegi in El Tiempo de las Luces, 73.
35. Interview with member of the former Batasuna, San Sebastián, July 2011.

36. “Brussels Declaration: Statement by International Leaders in Conflict Resolution and Peace Processes,” 

Internatiomal Conflict Group, March 29, 2010, http://icgbasque.org/documents/brussels-declaration.

37. Interviews, San Sebastián, July 2011.

38. The doctrine was named after the ETA prisoner Henri Parot, to whom it was first applied. 

39. The use of the term virtual peacemaking in this context should be distinguished both from its application to the 

use of technologies in peacemaking and the idea of virtual peace developed by Oliver Richmond, for example, in 

The Transformation of Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005). See Whitfield, Endgame for ETA, chapter 9.

40. Details of each are available on their websites, http://icgbasque.org/ and www.ivcom.org/en.

41. “Declaration by International Leaders,” Donostia–San Sebastián, October 17, 2011, http://icgbasque.org/

documents. Other leaders present included Gerry Adams; Bertie Ahern, former prime minister of Ireland; Gro 

Harlem Bruntland, former prime minister of Norway; Pierre Joxe, former French interior minister; and Powell. The 

conference was also attended by former USIP fellows Gorka Espiau and Pierre Hazan, www.usip.org/publications/

former-usip-fellows-help-foster-basque-peace-breakthrough. 

42. “Basque Cease-fire Statement,” The Guardian, October 20, 2011, www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/20/

basque-cease-fire-statement-full-text.

43. Fernando J. Pérez, “Noruega expulse a Ternera y otros dos jefes de ETA al no avanzar el desarme,” El País, March 

3, 2013.

44. Two of the three were arrested in the French Basque Country in September 2015.

45. Recommendations of the Social Forum, May 27, 2011, www.forosocialpaz.org/noticias/presentacion-foro-social.

46. European Court of Human Rights Press Release, “The Court Delivers Its Grand Chamber Judgment in the Del Río 

Prada Case,” ECHR 307, October 21, 2013.

47. Carlos E. Cué and Francesco Manetto, “Rajoy cede ante el sector duro del PP,” El País, October 27, 2013.

48. International Verification Committee “Statement of the International Verification Commission,” Bilbao, February 

21, 2014, www.ivcom.org/en.

49. “ETA confirma el proceso iniciado con la CIV con el objetivo de ‘sellar hasta el último arsenal,’’’ Gara, March 1, 2014. 

50. “ETA disuelve las estructuras de la lucha armada y refuerza las de la resolución,” Gara, July 20, 2014.

51. Euskal Herria Bildu [as Bildu was renamed after the legalization of Sortu], “Vía Vasca para la Paz,” April 2015, 9–10. 

52. Author interview, Rubalcaba.

53. The PP won ten of seventy-five seats in the Basque Parliament in 2012. The PNV and Euskal Herria Bildu together 

won forty-eight. In municipal and local elections in May 2015, the PP won a historically low 9.6 percent and 9.5 

percent of the vote in each, down from 13.8 percent in the municipal elections and 14.7 percent in the local 

elections in May 2011. See www.euskadi.net/elecinf/indice_c.htm.

Of Related Interest

• Managing Conflict in a World Adrift edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and 

Pamela Aall (USIP Press, 2015)

• Engaging Extremists: Trade-Offs, Timing, and Diplomacy edited by I. William Zartman and Guy 

Olivier Faure (USIP Press, 2011)

• Friends Indeed?: The United Nations, Groups of Friends, and the Resolution of Conflict by Teresa 

Whitfield (USIP Press, 2007)

• Reconciliation in Practice by Kelly McKone (Peaceworks, 2015)

• The Basque Conflict: New Ideas and Prospects for Peace by Gorka Espiau Idoiaga (Special 

Report, 2006)

ISBN: 978-1-60127-315-4

An online edition of this and related 

reports can be found on our website 

(www.usip.org), together with additional 

information on the subject.

United States 

Institute of Peace

2301 Constitution Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20037

www.usip.org

@usip