Spain marks 15 years since the end of ETA terrorism

Fifteen years ago today, on 20 October 2011, the Basque armed group ETA announced the “definitive cessation” of its armed activity. The statement came three days after an international peace conference at Aiete, in San Sebastián. Since then, ETA has not carried out a single attack: it said it had completed its disarmament in April 2017 and announced its dissolution on 3 May 2018.

Its last victims in Spain were killed in 2009. The very last was a French police officer, Jean-Serge Nérin, in March 2010.

A generation that has never known the fear

Anyone turning 15 today has grown up in a Spain and a Basque Country where ETA no longer kills. For those who lived through the decades before, with bodyguards, threats, extortion and kidnappings, the change is huge.

In an institutional statement today, the Basque Government said that for fifteen years “nobody has felt threatened for defending their ideas”. It called for the anniversary to be marked “without triumphalism”, remembering the victims who were “murdered, kidnapped, coerced or threatened”, and warned that “a hidden pain persists that must come to light”.

The streets called for peace

ETA’s end was also the result of decades of public pressure. From 1985, the Gesto por la Paz movement held 15-minute silent gatherings after every killing, in town squares across the Basque Country and Navarre. During kidnappings, its members wore a blue ribbon, which became a symbol against violence.

In July 1997, the kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco, a young councillor from Ermua, sparked mass demonstrations across Spain, including in the Basque Country. It became known as the “spirit of Ermua”.

A demonstration against ETA in Madrid’s Plaza de Colón in January 2000, after the killing of Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Antonio Blanco ended the group’s truce. Photo: César Astudillo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

In January 2011, nine months before the announcement, more than a thousand people marched through Bilbao with Gesto por la Paz to demand that ETA disappear. Their banner put it plainly: “definitive and unconditional”. Its mission accomplished, the movement dissolved in 2013 after 28 years.

A Gesto por la Paz banner on the steps of Bilbao City Hall after the march of 29 January 2011: “ETA, disappear. Definitive and unconditional”. Photo: Javierme / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

Remembering the victims

ETA killed more than 850 people (the exact figure varies by source) and left thousands injured. According to victims’ associations, more than 300 of those murders remain unsolved.

Fifteen years without attacks is good news for a whole country. But this anniversary belongs above all to those who suffered the violence, and to those who never stopped calling for peace on the streets.