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Article Excerpt
This article considers the history of the Spanish political pacts against
terrorism and the political contexts in which they have been implemented since the beginning of the 1980s. This sociohistorical approach is necessary in order to understand the current Spanish unanimous repudiation of terrorism. It suggests that these political pacts helped build a consensus that has frozen the political field in Spain. Such a perspective takes into account some of the arguments of the CASE manifesto "Critical Approaches to Security in Europe" related to the need to proceed through meticulous examination of the logics of exceptionalism and decisionist politics that neutralize politics. KEYWORDS: Spain, political pacts, democracy, consensus, ETA, terrorism, political violence
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There are many academic (and nonacademic) publications on the politics of contemporary Spain. (1) Most focus on Spain's evolution toward a parliamentary democracy, on the dynamics of regional politics and nationalist demands, on Spanish foreign policy inside and outside the European Union, on ETA's history and bloody career since the Francoist period, and on the Spanish police and judicial responses to violence. Concerning this last issue, it has been widely demonstrated that even though Spain has followed the trend of other European countries in dealing with political claims using violence since the end of the 1970s, Spain has also established the most impressive antiterrorist arsenal in Europe. (2) This arsenal was so important that Spain did not need to adopt any special antiterrorist legislation following the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Indeed, the Spanish state already had enough laws and rules of procedure to deal with the arrest and interrogation of those suspected of organizing and carrying out the March 11,2004, bombings in Madrid and of preparing for any future attacks. (3)
None of these publications ignore the fact that it was really only in the second half of the 1980s, and under the socialist government of Felipe Gonzalez, that the Spanish antiterror capacities were enlarged. The second half of the 1980s was also the time of the Antiterrorist Groups of Liberation (GAL). This death squad was created and financed by the socialist Spanish government in order to settle the diplomatic controversy with French authorities over asylum and extradition of members of the Basque separatist group ETA who lived in France by killing them directly on French territory. (4)
Despite this impressive literature on Spanish response to ETA, little attention has been paid to understanding the political background of the unanimous condemnation of terrorism in Spain through the implementation of antiterror political pacts and the constitution of antiterror political alliances. Most of the publications on contemporary Spain, whatever their scholarly value, focus on the bloody evolution of Basque terrorism to explain the Spanish political consensus on terrorism.
At first glance, this widely accepted argument about the causes of and appropriate responses to ETA's violence has a compelling logic: the violence of ETA was so unacceptable that unanimous condemnation came very naturally. This understanding follows the multiplication of ETA actions after the end of the Francoist regime. However, it is not clear that this action/reaction's explanation is sufficient to understand and analyze how the entire Spanish political class came to condemn ETA unanimously, to the extent that in 2002 Spain provided an instrument to render constitutionally illegal a political party that would fail to condemn terrorism. (5)
In the history of contemporary Europe, there is no other example of such a political instrument. In the Northern Ireland conflict, British authorities never banned Sinn Fein, even if they were occasionally tempted to do so. Very pragmatically, British authorities (including Margaret Thatcher) always thought that one day the enemy might become a partner in a peace-negotiation process. Spanish management of political violence constitutes an exception to this pattern, and one would expect the literature on contemporary Spanish politics to offer at least a few words on this point. Especially given that the "war on terrorism" is now so pervasive, the Spanish case invites closer scrutiny in order to understand what it might mean to work toward a political consensus against terrorism and zero tolerance policies of violence management.
This article thus has two objectives. First, it seeks to provide a historical account of the political background of this unanimous Spanish condemnation of terrorism by examining events in the early 1980s so as to put the current peace process in the Basque country in perspective. At that time, the possibility of a political negotiation with ETA was not yet completely excluded by either Madrid or the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). (6) The political dynamics aimed at establishing unanimous consensus against radical violence included many difficulties and strong opposition. The various Spanish antiterrorist pacts express both a history of tensions, interferences, and political agreements between the Basque country and the central government on the issue of Basque autonomy and a history of a performative antiterrorist political stance that was able to redefine the scope of democratic legitimacy.
Second, the article seeks to explore the more general question of political consensus against terrorism in a democracy. In the Spanish case, these antiterrorist pacts became instruments for excluding the acceptability not only of terrorist violence but also of players or parties who neglected to denounce, or indeed condoned, such violence. In the Spanish case, one must ask questions about the space given to negotiations. The symbolic force of unanimous condemnation and embattled narratives of "war" may cast long shadows over specific political contexts and over the principles of any democratic order facing violent claims. From a more theoretical point of view, the main concerns involve the consequences of exclusion from the political field and the impact of any inclusion or authorization of radically dissenting opinions. (7)
"Pacification and Democratic Normalization" of the Basque Country, 1983-1985: Initial Proposals and Failures
Since the end of the dictatorial Franco regime in 1975, questions about the place that should be given to nationalist claims have been an important political element of Spanish efforts to establish a democratic parliamentary system. As the Basque nationalists' quest for in dependence was outlawed during the Franco regime, the new political context led the already existing Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) to reaffirm its existence. (8) The ambiguous behavior of moderate Basque nationalists toward the radical nationalist line, and the way in which ETA played the symbolic role of the official opposition party to the Franco regime or Spanish Madrid according to the circumstances, did impact for a while the policy of the PNV and that of the PNV-controlled Basque government. As long as the PNV expressed its hostility toward the central government and its policies of violence management while also acting openly with ETA and its sympathizers, relationships between Madrid and Vittoria were very delicate.
In the 1980s, the support or at least the tolerance of political violence in the Basque country lost ground, so that toward the end of the decade fewer political leaders publicly identified with ETA, (9) except the left-wing parties mostly represented by Herri Batasuna (HB). This clear position of the nationalist left-wing Basque parties and furthermore its absence on the benches of parliament subsequently favored the reinforcement and the progressive rapprochement of PNV and the Basque socialist party (PSOE-PSE) for electoral reasons, against Basque radical nationalism.
This election alliance was reaffirmed by the political institutionalization of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, which postponed ambitions for immediate independence.
The leading position of the PNV in the Basque country and the relative instability between PNV and PSOE-PSE--the two major Basque parties--did certainly ultimately help to form this antiterrorist agreement aiming at excluding both the players and the sympathizers of radical political violence from the Basque and the Spanish political arenas. (10) Furthermore, the building of an autonomous Basque police (the Ertzaintza), trained for antiterrorist purposes, fed the belief of some ETA Basque political leaders that ETA violence and ETA itself would disappear when the Basque police, with its double nationalist and local identification, would be entirely in charge of the whole security of the Basque country.
However, in the 1980s the political will to gain total management of the political space, including the repressive modalities of an autonomous police force, came with a rationale of opposing Madrid's centralism and unilateral measures. Implementation of the autonomous Basque police force did not occur smoothly and it crystallized tensions between Madrid and Vittoria that had been fueled since the end of Franco's regime and the constitution of autonomous political regional spaces by opposing views about centralized and local treatment of security concerns. This caustic and sometimes reciprocal tension lasted during the end of the 1980s. The failure of the peace roundtable in 1983 is largely explained by this configuration.
In January 1983, the head of the Basque government (Lehendakari), Carlos Garaikoetxea, had suggested the implementation of a peace roundtable (mesa por la paz) and invited the three most important Basque parties, the PNV, PSOE-PSE, and HB, to discuss five major issues: the end of violence, the legalization of independent options; the study of the situations of those who had abandoned armed struggle; the question of Navarre regarding the Basque autonomous community, and the reinforcement of resources for the government of the Basque country. Despite publicity for this initiative, political divergences prevented the roundtable from happening. HB blamed PSOE for ties with the Spanish government and PSOE blamed HB for being the legal front of ETA. The Euskadiko Ezkerra (EE) party blamed PNV for excluding it from the roundtable. On February 14, 1983, PSOE withdrew from the roundtable.
In a book written with the journalist Pedro Altares, the PSE-PSOE secretary general, Jose Maria Benegas, explained the failure of this roundtable as a...
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