For the Basques, Nothing Has Changed

...The silence in the woods near the border at night is broken by owl-like whistles from contact men sent to pick up escaping ETA refugees and escort them to safety in France...

...In recent months, squads of right-wing thugs, such as the Guerrillas of Christ the King, have made their appearance in Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa provinces, where ETA's support is strongest, and in the organization's refugee sanctuaries in southern France...

...Nowhere is liberal sentiment in the clergy more firm and widespread than in the Basque country, where more than 60 per cent of the people attend Sunday mass (as opposed to a national average of 30 per cent...

...It doesn't matter how many of our militants they murder," says Etxabe...

...The tactical difference between ETA and the IRA or PLO is that the Basques take extreme care not to engage in indiscriminate terrorism—their victims are always carefully selected government officials or police accused as torturers...

...While the regime's attitude has softened since, the Basque language is still banned from radio and television, no Euskera classes are offered at state-run schools, and, aside from a handful of church-sponsored magazines, a Basque-language press is non-existent...

...Hundreds of Basque priests fought and died alongside their parishioners against Franco...

...Juan Etxabe, owner of the cafe that bears his name, was once ETA's supreme military commander...

...past year alone, have claimed the lives of a score of policemen and an equal number of ETA militants...

...They killed my brother in Spain, they planted a bomb in my car here, and blew up my elder brother's restaurant in Bayonne...

...Etxabe is not far from the truth...

...Their demand for Basque political autonomy is sparked by Madrid's systematic repression of their homeland...

...Larzabal is of Spanish Basque descent...

...The future belongs to the rifle...

...they can be relied on to keep their mouths shut...

...Our struggle is to expel the Spanish fascist police who have invaded the Basque homeland...

...There are special commando units," says one ETA member, "being trained and armed in Libya, Ireland, and Algeria...

...Our objective is political independence for a suppressed minority...

...The Basque people and their priests maintain a special close relationship," says Father Pierre Larza-bal, head of the Basque refugee organization Anai-Artea in St...

...More than 700 of the thousand or so Basques exiled in France are ETA members," says one of the guerrillas, although he declines to reveal how many are fighting the police south of the border...

...The changeover in power in Madrid means nothing to us—our struggle continues as before...

...Jean-de-Luz, a little French Basque fishing village battered by the stormy Atlantic...

...They speak the language of the people and share an intimate knowledge of their problems...

...But the guerrillas unanimously agree that their goals stretch far beyond the limitations of the Statute: They want total independence...

...In Madrid, the first post-Franco cabinet speaks with unabashed enthusiasm about restoring civil liberties and opening the road for democratic reform after forty years of dictatorship—a dictatorship which every member of the new Cabinet had a hand in perpetuating—but not even the most optimistic dares to suggest it will find a political solution to the Basque question...

...We are not anti-Communist, but we are not Communists either...

...We should mount a broader and more precise fight, more closely linked to the people...

...The organization has refused, so far, to link up with any of the Left democratic fronts—Junta Democratica or Convergencia Democratica—or with socialist groups that are organizing the anti-monarchist fight...

...The Basque bishops, appointed by the government, are staunch supporters of the hand that feeds them...

...If it wasn't for the support of the Basques, ETA would long ago have ceased to exist...

...The Spanish government has always relied on the Catholic Church as a faithful supporter of its right-wing doctrines, but that support is rapidly crumbling...

...It is an extreme position which has placed ETA in political isolation...

...The victim was accused of being a police informer...

...ETA also denounces the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), with headquarters in Paris, as a "club of decrepit pro-Republic toadies...

...Given the challenge of violence from the extreme Right, it came as no surprise that after a month-long uneasy truce, while Franco lay dying in Madrid, ETA wasted no time in moving into action...

...This is the rendezvous for those militant members of ETA—the Basque nationalist movement Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Liberty)—who were lucky enough to escape to France...

...The ultra-rightists have attacked ETA bookshops, liberal lawyers and priests, Basque nationalist sympathizers, and ETA militants themselves...

...At Anai-Artea's six-room apartment in downtown St...

...Nothing has changed in Madrid," says one of the ETA guerrillas...

...Two right-wing terrorists, posing as plainclothesmen, forced their way into the woman's home in Zarauz, near the French border, and pistol-whipped her and two of her children...

...Consequently, Euskera is a dying language, spoken by a dwindling minority of peasants, nationalist intellectuals, and ETA militants...

...Jean-de-Luz, a group of hooded militants reveal what ETA thinks of the new government in Madrid and the organization's plans for future action: "We know that no Spanish king is going to meet our demands," says one of the guerrillas, a militant in his early twenties, judging from his voice...

...While ETA fights for a "socialist and independent Euskadi," the movement insists that it is not Communist-inspired: "This," says one militant at Anai-Artea, "is the blanket accusation Madrid pins on all opposition groups...

...Most ETA militants are taught the art of guerrilla warfare at secret bases in Spain...

...Each year less than 5 per cent of the federal tax money collected in these hilly, rain-soaked provinces is plowed back into the Basque economy...

...When Juan Carlos proclaimed a partial amnesty for political prisoners, only one of the seven priests in Zamora was released, although he was re-arrested before he reached home...

...During the state of martial law proclaimed in the Basque country a year ago, the government gleefully proclaimed that ETA was desperately low on funds...

...Larzabal estimates that more than 80 per cent of the Basque priests sympathize with the nationalists...

...An important component of ETA's popular support is the Basque clergy...

...Hardly a week goes by without a Spanish priest being arrested and fined for reading an anti-government sermon...

...Each time the front door latch clicks open, the dominoes fall lifelessly on the polished mahogany tables, and several pairs of eyes in the dimly lit room cast an inquiring glance at the door...

...Two days after Juan Carlos was sworn in as Spain's first ruling monarch in forty-four years, a two-man ETA commando squad gunned down the mayor of a small Basque town on his doorstep...

...Ironically, it was true: In the first three weeks of martial law, ETA recruited more than 150 new volunteers to train and arm...

...We are still living under fascism...

...In retaliation, a few days later, an eighteen-year-old suspected ETA militant was killed by the Guardia Civil in a farmhouse near the French border...

...Militant Basques point to the government's policy of draining the rich Basque iron ore, shipping, and timber industries to prop up a shaky economy in the rest of Spain...

...Now, at thirty-five, he is "burned out," a familiar face in Spanish police mug files, but he is still involved in the organization's secret activities...

...Finally, not the least of the causes of the Basques' hostility against Madrid is the fact that hundreds of Basque political prisoners are in jail...

...Today he is a staunch supporter of ETA and defends its use of violent tactics...

...The Spanish Bishops' Council recently begged the people's pardon for backing Franco in the civil war...

...The other six—all Basques— are still sitting out sentences totaling 102 years...

...Most are young, middle-class, articulate revolutionaries with well-defined objectives...

...We Basques are a suppressed minority fighting for our national identity," he says...

...This repression takes economic, cultural, and political forms...

...Christ used violent means to expel the merchants from the Temple, and Joan of Arc, France's patron saint, led an army against the English...

...As a first step, ETA insists on the reinstatement of the 1936 Basque Statute, which made Euskadi an almost autonomous state under the Spanish Republic...

...Hence such cities as Bilbao, which is likely to become Europe's largest port within five years, have decayed into industrial slums—polluted, overcrowded, ramshackle replicas of Nineteenth Century Birmingham or Liverpool...

...A soft-spoken, white-haired village priest in his sixties, Larzabal was a Resistance fighter against the Nazis in World War II...

...The second major cause of Basque nationalist rebellion is the official suppression of Euskera, the mysterious Basque language of unknown origin, which belongs to none of the world's recognized linguistic families When the Basque provinces fell to Franco's Italian mercenaries in 1937, it became a punishable offense to speak Euskera on the streets...

...Others crawl through snow-covered, hidden mountain passes...

...The "they" to whom Etxabe refers are a menacing new wrinkle in the battle between ETA and the Spanish police...

...Despite Spanish newspaper accounts to the contrary, ETA militants are not maniacal gunslingers who operate for Mafia money or Manson-type thrills...

...We are not against all compromises," says one of the militants, "but history has shown us that true changes are accomplished through revolutionary means...

...Such auxiliary bishops as Setien of San Sebastian and Larauri of Pamplona have repeatedly run into trouble with Madrid for their pronounced pro-Basque views...

...The Bourbon dynasty, represented in the person of His Catholic Majesty, King Juan Carlos I, is not noted for its policies of regional decentralization...

...The number of active ETA guerrillas is a well guarded secret, unknown even to most of the organization's members themselves...

...Like Larzabal, most Basque priests come from small farming and fishing villages...

...The armed struggle must continue...

...Some have to wait for hours, neck-deep in the Bidasoa River that separates Spain from France, until darkness closes in and they slip across the border...

...I hung by my thumbs for twelve hours in a Spanish jail before I could escape," says Etxabe...

...Most of these political refugees are barely out of their teens, but they are hunted men who risk violent death the minute they are spotted in Spain...

...One of the most vicious of these operations was the beating of the mother of one of the five urban guerrillas executed last September...

...ETA's repeated success in tight situations where militants were outnumbered and outgunned by the Guardia Civil suggests that as many as 30 per cent of the Basque people are willing to take chances for the organization—providing hideouts, food, money, and medical aid for wounded guerrillas...

...Liberal priests are jailed and tortured along with leftist activists, and Spain is the only country in Western Europe with a special jail for militant priests—the Concordat jail in Zamora...

...The Spanish government feels the threat posed by the Basque priests and knows they are capable of rallying mass support for the nationalist movement...

...This clerical insurrection extends, by subtle means, to the highest levels of the church hierarchy...

...But Basque nationalist sentiment runs high among the so-called auxiliary bishops, who are appointed by the Pope, a life-long enemy of the Franco regime...

...The fact that none of these assailants has been apprehended suggests close working relationship between the Spanish police and the gangs of fanatical fascists who have declared war on ETA...

...For him, "there are no borders between the Spanish and French Basque country...

...We are never at a loss for replacements because Madrid is fighting the entire Basque people, not just ETA...

...The organization's goal is simple and deadly: the political, economic, and cultural independence of Eus-kadi, the four Spanish (and three French) Pyrenean provinces inhabited by almost three million Basques...

...The rest subscribe to the theory that any trouble ETA can make for Madrid is a good idea...

...For more than a decade, the ETA has plagued Spain with bombings, bank holdups, kidnappings, and assassinations (the most successful and spectacular was that of Premier Carrero Blanco two years ago) which, in the Jules Stewart is an American correspondent based in Madrid...

...If regional separatism is the one taboo never allowed to flourish beyond the folkloric level even in such countries as Britain and France, with their traditions of democracy, what hope is there for the Basques under Spain's new monarchy...

...As a consequence, when an ETA militant is hunted by the police, he often runs to the village priest for shelter...

...His deeply lined face and haggard eyes tell the story of his encounters with ETA's ruthless enemy, the Spanish Guardia Civil...

...The exiled PNV was the party that led the wartime Basque government in 1936...

...That must be made clear...

...But they won't stop us...

...While Juan Carlos and his government attempt to set up a Center-Right coalition to ease Spain out of the rigid mold cast by Franco, ETA rejects compromise solutions...