It is unthinkable that the Spanish government would say it has “no selfish or strategic interest” in the Basque Country

While the IRA also broke its 1994 ceasefire in 1997, thereafter the Sinn Fein leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness maintained strict and ruthless internal discipline until well into the peace process. The Basque separatist movement has no such clear leadership. Arnaldo Otegi, the leader of Batasuna, is currently imprisoned on charges of “glorifying terrorism” and it is in any case, by no means certain if the political wing of he movement has ever been able to tell the armed wing how to act.

ETA's bomb at Barajas airport that ended thier ceasefire in 2007.

Finally, the Northern Ireland Peace Process had its end result mapped out well in advance – power sharing between nationalists and unionists within an autonomous administration in Northern Ireland. There is no such clear solution to the Basque question.

Part of the historic Basque Country already has extensive autonomy. Self determination of the Basque Country is not something that the Spanish government will permit –nor could it, in any case, legislate for the French Basque provinces. Moreover, while Northern Ireland is a major financial drain on the United Kingdom (up to 70% of the six county economy comes from British public spending), the Basque Country is one of the richest parts of Spain and a net contributor to its tax base.

It is, as Irish journalist Paddy Woodworthhas pointed out, simply inconceivable that Spain would say of the Basque Country, as Britain did of Northern Ireland, that it, “has no selfish or strategic interest” there.[9] The best that ETA are likely to get out of any negotiation would appear to be an exchange of arms for the release (or at least repatriation to the Basque Country) of its 800 odd prisoners. For Batasuna (banned in 2001) and the wider separatist movement, legalisation and their return to politics is the short term priority.

Whatever the result of the current phase of politics in the Basque Country and in Ireland, the links between Basque and Irish separatists have proved strong and enduring. There is, as this article has argued, important common ground between the two movements and such links will no doubt continue in the future.

You can read another article by John Dorney on the Basque peace process in Fusion Magazine, April 2010, page 24, at http://www.gcd.ie/assets/Uploads/mediawork/FusionIssue3web.pdf

You can read his MA thesis on cultural conflict in the Basque Country here.

Notes

[1] Desmond Fitzgerald, The Memoirs of Desmond Fitzgerald, p80

[2] Podríamos decir con cierta ironía que es la tenacidad en la lucha
por la libertad la que nos mantiene vascos http://www.uv.es/pla/terrorisme/etamarco.htm

[3] Gara, 6/9/10 http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20100906/219143/eu/Euskadi-Ta-Askatasunaren-agiria-Euskal-Herriari

[4] Mar-Molinero, Clare, Smith, Angel, Nationalism and the Nation in the Iberian Peninsula, Berg, Oxford 1996. page 213

[5] Ernie O’Malley, On Another Man’s Wound, p370

[6] Aretxaga, Begona, (2005), States of Terror, Begona Aretxaga’s Essays, University of Nevada. P246

[7] Mikel Azurmendi, La Herrida Patriotica, 1998, p64-66.

[8] For Basque–Irish links in the early 20^th century, see Daniel Leach, Fugitive Ireland, European minority nationalists and Irish Political Asylum, p52-58

[9] Paddy Woodworth, Why Do they Kill?, The Basque Conflict in Spain, World Policy Journal April 2001 http://www.allbusiness.com/public-administration/national-security-international/896365-1.html

John Dorney

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