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The Basque Civic Movement and Nonviolent Resistance to eta’s Terrorism

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Javier Argomaniz discusses the impact that the Basque civic movement had in the civil resistance against the armed separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (eta).

Image courtesy of interviewee. June 12, 2024

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This video is a transcription of a conversation discussing a study on the Basque civic movement and its impact on violent conflict in the Basque Country, Spain. The dialogue features a researcher, Javier, who elaborates on the motivations and context for his research.

Key points from the discussion include:

1. **Motivation and Context**: The researcher aims to analyze civil resistance against the terrorist organization ETA, focusing on how civic movements can be studied in contexts of non-state violence.

2. **Literature Review**: The existing literature on civil resistance primarily focuses on non-democratic regimes; however, there is an emerging interest in how communities respond to non-state violence. The researcher seeks to fill this gap by examining civil resistance against ETA.

3. **Methodology**: The study involved literature reviews, interviews with over 40 activists and leaders from various civil society organizations, and analysis of archival materials, including internal communications and survey data.

4. **Historical Context**: The civic movement in the Basque Country emerged in the late 1990s, fueled by the peace movement of the 1980s and a political agreement among Basque democratic parties to challenge ETA's violence. A significant event that catalyzed this mobilization was ETA's kidnapping of a local councillor in 1997, which led to massive civic protests.

5. **Findings**: The key findings indicate that the civic movement significantly contributed to delegitimizing ETA through the promotion of democratic norms, sustained civil resistance during politically sensitive periods, and helped preserve social cohesion in the face of violence.

6. **Conclusions and Implications**: The study suggests that civil society organizations play a crucial role in promoting non-violence and democratic values over the long term. Future research is proposed to assess the conditions under which these findings hold true in different contexts, emphasizing the need for a comparative analysis with other regions, including Northern Ireland.

The conversation highlights the complexities of civic resistance movements and their effects on societal conflict dynamics, positioning them as crucial players in peacebuilding processes.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This paper, aimed to study the impact

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of the so-called civic movement on the violent conflict in

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the, Spanish Northern region of past country.

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So this is a movement that emerged in the late 1990s,

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and it was active for our era,

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and it was a very important part

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of the civil resistance against the armed separatist

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organization, bus, homeland and freedom.

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If you look at the literature on, civil resistance,

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well, it's been growing quite a lot in the last few years,

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mostly because of this increase in nonviolent

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mass movements across the world.

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But you see that most of the

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literature is just focused on those contexts

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where a non-democratic regime is the oppressor

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and the oppressed are civilians who struggle

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nonviolently against government forces.

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However, more of, more, more recently, we,

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we will witness emergence of a body of literature

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that has started examining other expressions

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of resistance in response to,

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this time non-state violence.

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So they look at, at insurgencies, civil wars,

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communal violence, organized crime,

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even land owners struggles.

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So what I wanted to do with this paper is to contribute

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to this growing, growing body of work, right?

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So I wanted to look at civil resistance against a terrorist

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organization, so a known state armed group

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that targets civilians, but unlike insurgencies

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or the sites in a civil war doesn't hold territory.

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So I wanted to see what we can learn from these types

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of settings for our broader understanding

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of civil resistance to non-state violence.

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The methodology that I used for my study, it was,

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well apart from, media reports, scholar literature

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where I used to carry out more than 40 interviews, in,

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in bus country with activists

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and leaders of the civic groups, peace organizations,

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victims associations,

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and other relevant civil society organizations

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that could tell me something relevant

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or interesting about the civic movement.

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I also went through, a lot of material

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that these groups have produced, like leaflets, newsletters,

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internal communications.

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Um, so I have to go through, quite a lot

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of archive material, some of it from official archives, some

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of that from the internal, the actual personal records

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of some of my interviewees.

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And I also look at survey data just to see,

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the evolution on the views on the leg legitimacy

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of political violence, and also on,

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the vary trends on public processions about Etta the s

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of the BA movement.

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There are in two major developments from the 1980s.

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So one is emergence of the peace movement.

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Um, in the mid 1980s, more or less it grows.

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That's a movement. It grows very quickly.

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By the end of the decade, it

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Starts to attract a very large audience.

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And this is very important

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because for the first time, we start to see constant

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and persistent contestation of it violence in the streets

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of bus country, which is something

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that we didn't see before.

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It was more intermittent.

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Um, most times it was fairly muted.

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And that's, that's, that's one key development.

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The other one is a broad political agreement that we,

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that it was signed in 1988 by all bas democratic parties.

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So in indeed, they agreed for the first time

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to form a united political front to challenge Etta violence.

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And the reason why these two developments are important is

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because they work in parallel, right?

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Uh, they, there's a synergy between these two.

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They, they, and what we see is that, we,

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can, that there is, so, there is,

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the marginalization of the political movement,

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or ETA's political movement with Carle.

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And we also see the social deli de legitimization

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of ETA's terrorism.

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So we see that ETA's violence is being legitimized both

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at the social and the political level.

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So these two developments that set the conditions

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for the arrival of the civic movement at the end

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of the 1990s.

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But there was one more thing.

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There was one trigger event

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that was necessary for this as well.

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So this came on the 10th of July, 1997, with,

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etes kidnapping of Lan Blanco.

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Now, Blanco was a fairly unremarkable, young man.

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He was a local counselor from a small industrial

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town called Irma.

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And he had recently joined the Spanish Conservative Party,

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party of popular who was also in government in Madrid.

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So Etta used this abduction as a bargaining chip.

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So they set a 48 hour ultimatum for the government

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to carry out a full transfer of older prisoners to, ba.

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And what is interesting to us is that

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what this cause is a huge wave

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of mobilization across the region and the rest of Spain.

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So we see multiple rallies

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and protests throughout the bus geography,

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and we also see the largest ever,

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demonstration in bus country.

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It brought together about half a million people,

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which is a huge figure if we consider that the population

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of bus countries about 2 million.

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So, once the menttium expired to this,

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Lanco was killed by his adductors,

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and that was a catalyst of another huge wave of protests.

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And the reason this is relevant for us is that it very much

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represents a before and

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after in the mobilization against eta.

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And for a start, it inspire a small group

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of college professors from the Basque, public university

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to create a political platform, that they call the Erma

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because of the name of the town, Blanco was from.

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So they wanted to boost civil resistance, right?

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So for these intellectuals clamoring for peace,

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it wasn't really enough

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because they saw terrorism fundamentally

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as a political problem.

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So it require a strong political discourse

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as part of the response.

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So this political platform is structured as started

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to attract quite a lot of media attention.

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Uh, there were a lot of support from a number

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of intellectuals, artists, public figures,

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and it very much become the embryo

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of the civic movement, right?

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So between 1998

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and 2001, we see that the four Erma, began to be joined

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by other organizations that were newly created, right?

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So we see intellectual platforms, activist groups,

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victims organizations that emerged, in support

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of the claims, pol

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and the political discourse

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that was coming out from the four of Amar.

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So these network of small civil society groups is what came

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to be known as the civic movement.

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The main findings from from the paper are

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basically three, right?

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So the first one is that the,

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what these civic movement achieve is

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to strengthen the delegitimization of eta,

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and they did it through the defusion of democratic norms

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and anti-political narratives.

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So over the year, intellectual from the movement,

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they helped to shape a discourse against ETA

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that explicitly defended the legitimacy of the

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existing democratic system,

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and also the high level of self-government

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that basks enjoy it.

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So they also promoted liberal values such as freedom

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of expression, pluralism, and the rule of law.

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And these discourse were very useful

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because they strengthened the capacity

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by political opponents of the, of ETA's political movement

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to challenge more effectively, not only their methods,

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not only the violence, but also their worldview

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and political, project.

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Um, so that's one mechanism

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through which they made an impact.

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Another one is, their capacity

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to sustain civil resistance against terrorism at

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a critical moment in time.

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Because activists, they have to keep alive.

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The social opposition duetta at a time when it was

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faltering, and he was waking in

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because the nationalist parties in government at

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that point in time, they were allied

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with ETA's political wing.

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So this meant, this meant

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that they temporarily stopped supporting social mobilization

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against organization.

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So activists,

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they sustained the momentum when political delegitimization

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of the, of ETA waiver due to this, to the end

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of cross-party consensus on the question of violence,

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a consensus that only was regained,

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very much at the mid, two thousands.

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So there was this period

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where their activity was really very important

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to sustain this, this, level,

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this social rebellion against Etta.

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And finally, the last mechanism

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through which they made a difference is that they helped

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to protect the social fabric of society.

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So they did so by channeling

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these grievances from the non nationalist side of society,

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into collective action that was pro-democratic

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and non-violent, right?

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So, so this was a period that,

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as I just described, when the regional authorities,

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they close their eyes to the fact

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that ETA's opponents were suffering

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suffocating persecution from ETA and its political movement

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because na vast nationalists were in control

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of the regional government,

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and they were in an in alliance with radical nationalists

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that supported Etta.

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They kind of, yeah, ignored this,

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this frustration

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and this grievances from non nationalist politicians.

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And there was a real danger here

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that these grievances about this coercion by Etta

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and the sympathizers, they would've resorted in a,

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in a violent backlash.

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And this is not hypothetical.

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We saw a bit of that in the media aftermath of the killing

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of Miche Blanco.

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So, this could have potentially fed into greater

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polarization and spirals of violence, and, and it didn't.

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And partially they didn't

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because the civil movement, they helped

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to aver this possibility, right?

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And they did so by channeling these grievances

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through democratic,

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and nonviolent means they formulated a constructive,

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empowering way to,

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channel this feelings of frustration

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and betrayal that existed within the

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non nationalist community.

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So these negative emotions that were kind

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of sublimated into the promotion

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and support of liberal values

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and democratic norms, these conclusions, they are,

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in my view, very relevant

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for the literature on civil society peace building.

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Uh, this is not something that I cover in my paper,

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but I do in the broader research project.

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This paper is part of, right, in this,

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monograph I'm, I'm working on.

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And the argument I make there is

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that if you look at the civil society peace psb in

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literature, when they look at the function, the

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socialization function

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that civil society organizations can play, they tend

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to underestimate it,

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or at least they do in relation

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to other functions like mediation

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or certain service delivery.

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And they do that because empirical evidence, it shows

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that this kind of peace socialization initiative, this kind

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of culture of peace initiatives, they

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seemed seemingly they had little effect on the

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Violence, right?

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But the problem is that the projects

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that were evaluated were generally small.

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Uh, they were short-term schemes.

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So it's not surprising to me

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that no substantial effect was found.

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But what the best case shows is

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that when this socialization work is developed over a long

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time, it can have a profound impact, right?

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But we need to understand that this is a slow process,

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that it may take years in the best case, it took decades,

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and that it's not linear, right?

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And that it requires involvement not only

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of civil society groups,

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but also a variety of other social actors like media

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or political figures, or political parties as well.

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So I think perhaps the most important practical implication

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from this work is to highlight the, social,

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the, the very impactful work

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that civil society organizations can play in socializing a

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community, a society, into non-violence

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and democratic values.

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I think this is where we enter the discussion

13:03.495 --> 13:04.675
on a scope conditions.

13:05.135 --> 13:08.235
So the material conditions under which a theory explains

13:08.275 --> 13:09.315
a particular phenomenon.

13:09.895 --> 13:11.915
So the social conditions for the outcomes

13:11.915 --> 13:15.035
that I found in my study were a young parliamentary

13:15.035 --> 13:17.675
democracy with freedom of association,

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independent journalism, also a capable state,

13:21.535 --> 13:22.875
and a vibrant civil society.

13:23.335 --> 13:25.395
So I think the next step would be just

13:25.415 --> 13:28.355
to check if these fundings can travel, right?

13:28.375 --> 13:30.635
If they can hold under different contests

13:30.655 --> 13:33.635
and conditions, for instance, where the state is weaker,

13:33.635 --> 13:36.875
either politically or economically in hybrid regimes,

13:37.085 --> 13:38.955
maybe political systems in transition,

13:39.005 --> 13:40.755
where the limitations exist

13:40.855 --> 13:42.995
to political freedoms, political rights.

13:43.575 --> 13:46.835
So I, here, I think we're, this is where I.

00:00 - This paper, aimed to study the impact of the so-called civic movement on the violent conflict in the, Spanish Northern region of past country. So this is a movement that emerged in the late 1990s, and it was active for our era, and it was a very important part

00:19 - of the civil resistance against the armed separatist organization, bus, homeland and freedom. If you look at the literature on, civil resistance, well, it's been growing quite a lot in the last few years, mostly because of this increase in nonviolent mass movements across the world. But you see that most of the literature is just focused on those contexts where a non-democratic regime is the oppressor and the oppressed are civilians who struggle

00:48 - nonviolently against government forces. However, more of, more, more recently, we, we will witness emergence of a body of literature that has started examining other expressions of resistance in response to, this time non-state violence. So they look at, at insurgencies, civil wars, communal violence, organized crime, even land owners struggles. So what I wanted to do with this paper is to contribute

01:15 - to this growing, growing body of work, right? So I wanted to look at civil resistance against a terrorist organization, so a known state armed group that targets civilians, but unlike insurgencies or the sites in a civil war doesn't hold territory. So I wanted to see what we can learn from these types of settings for our broader understanding of civil resistance to non-state violence. The methodology that I used for my study, it was, well apart from, media reports, scholar literature

01:48 - where I used to carry out more than 40 interviews, in, in bus country with activists and leaders of the civic groups, peace organizations, victims associations, and other relevant civil society organizations that could tell me something relevant or interesting about the civic movement. I also went through, a lot of material that these groups have produced, like leaflets, newsletters, internal communications.

02:15 - so I have to go through, quite a lot of archive material, some of it from official archives, some of that from the internal, the actual personal records of some of my interviewees. And I also look at survey data just to see, the evolution on the views on the leg legitimacy of political violence, and also on, the vary trends on public processions about Etta the s of the BA movement. There are in two major developments from the 1980s.

02:48 - So one is emergence of the peace movement. in the mid 1980s, more or less it grows. That's a movement. It grows very quickly. By the end of the decade, it Starts to attract a very large audience. And this is very important because for the first time, we start to see constant and persistent contestation of it violence in the streets of bus country, which is something that we didn't see before.

03:14 - It was more intermittent. most times it was fairly muted. And that's, that's, that's one key development. The other one is a broad political agreement that we, that it was signed in 1988 by all bas democratic parties. So in indeed, they agreed for the first time to form a united political front to challenge Etta violence. And the reason why these two developments are important is because they work in parallel, right? they, there's a synergy between these two.

03:47 - They, they, and what we see is that, we, can, that there is, so, there is, the marginalization of the political movement, or ETA's political movement with Carle. And we also see the social deli de legitimization of ETA's terrorism. So we see that ETA's violence is being legitimized both at the social and the political level. So these two developments that set the conditions for the arrival of the civic movement at the end

04:21 - of the 1990s. But there was one more thing. There was one trigger event that was necessary for this as well. So this came on the 10th of July, 1997, with, etes kidnapping of Lan Blanco. Now, Blanco was a fairly unremarkable, young man. He was a local counselor from a small industrial town called Irma. And he had recently joined the Spanish Conservative Party,

04:47 - party of popular who was also in government in Madrid. So Etta used this abduction as a bargaining chip. So they set a 48 hour ultimatum for the government to carry out a full transfer of older prisoners to, ba. And what is interesting to us is that what this cause is a huge wave of mobilization across the region and the rest of Spain. So we see multiple rallies and protests throughout the bus geography, and we also see the largest ever,

05:20 - demonstration in bus country. It brought together about half a million people, which is a huge figure if we consider that the population of bus countries about 2 million. So, once the menttium expired to this, Lanco was killed by his adductors, and that was a catalyst of another huge wave of protests. And the reason this is relevant for us is that it very much represents a before and after in the mobilization against eta.

05:49 - And for a start, it inspire a small group of college professors from the Basque, public university to create a political platform, that they call the Erma because of the name of the town, Blanco was from. So they wanted to boost civil resistance, right? So for these intellectuals clamoring for peace, it wasn't really enough because they saw terrorism fundamentally as a political problem. So it require a strong political discourse

06:20 - as part of the response. So this political platform is structured as started to attract quite a lot of media attention. there were a lot of support from a number of intellectuals, artists, public figures, and it very much become the embryo of the civic movement, right? So between 1998 and 2001, we see that the four Erma, began to be joined by other organizations that were newly created, right?

06:46 - So we see intellectual platforms, activist groups, victims organizations that emerged, in support of the claims, pol and the political discourse that was coming out from the four of Amar. So these network of small civil society groups is what came to be known as the civic movement. The main findings from from the paper are basically three, right? So the first one is that the,

07:15 - what these civic movement achieve is to strengthen the delegitimization of eta, and they did it through the defusion of democratic norms and anti-political narratives. So over the year, intellectual from the movement, they helped to shape a discourse against ETA that explicitly defended the legitimacy of the existing democratic system, and also the high level of self-government that basks enjoy it.

07:42 - So they also promoted liberal values such as freedom of expression, pluralism, and the rule of law. And these discourse were very useful because they strengthened the capacity by political opponents of the, of ETA's political movement to challenge more effectively, not only their methods, not only the violence, but also their worldview and political, project. so that's one mechanism through which they made an impact.

08:09 - Another one is, their capacity to sustain civil resistance against terrorism at a critical moment in time. Because activists, they have to keep alive. The social opposition duetta at a time when it was faltering, and he was waking in because the nationalist parties in government at that point in time, they were allied with ETA's political wing. So this meant, this meant

08:35 - that they temporarily stopped supporting social mobilization against organization. So activists, they sustained the momentum when political delegitimization of the, of ETA waiver due to this, to the end of cross-party consensus on the question of violence, a consensus that only was regained, very much at the mid, two thousands. So there was this period where their activity was really very important

09:03 - to sustain this, this, level, this social rebellion against Etta. And finally, the last mechanism through which they made a difference is that they helped to protect the social fabric of society. So they did so by channeling these grievances from the non nationalist side of society, into collective action that was pro-democratic and non-violent, right? So, so this was a period that,

09:32 - as I just described, when the regional authorities, they close their eyes to the fact that ETA's opponents were suffering suffocating persecution from ETA and its political movement because na vast nationalists were in control of the regional government, and they were in an in alliance with radical nationalists that supported Etta. They kind of, yeah, ignored this, this frustration

10:03 - and this grievances from non nationalist politicians. And there was a real danger here that these grievances about this coercion by Etta and the sympathizers, they would've resorted in a, in a violent backlash. And this is not hypothetical. We saw a bit of that in the media aftermath of the killing of Miche Blanco. So, this could have potentially fed into greater polarization and spirals of violence, and, and it didn't.

10:31 - And partially they didn't because the civil movement, they helped to aver this possibility, right? And they did so by channeling these grievances through democratic, and nonviolent means they formulated a constructive, empowering way to, channel this feelings of frustration and betrayal that existed within the non nationalist community.

10:56 - So these negative emotions that were kind of sublimated into the promotion and support of liberal values and democratic norms, these conclusions, they are, in my view, very relevant for the literature on civil society peace building. this is not something that I cover in my paper, but I do in the broader research project. This paper is part of, right, in this, monograph I'm, I'm working on.

11:18 - And the argument I make there is that if you look at the civil society peace psb in literature, when they look at the function, the socialization function that civil society organizations can play, they tend to underestimate it, or at least they do in relation to other functions like mediation or certain service delivery. And they do that because empirical evidence, it shows

11:43 - that this kind of peace socialization initiative, this kind of culture of peace initiatives, they seemed seemingly they had little effect on the Violence, right? But the problem is that the projects that were evaluated were generally small. they were short-term schemes. So it's not surprising to me that no substantial effect was found. But what the best case shows is

12:07 - that when this socialization work is developed over a long time, it can have a profound impact, right? But we need to understand that this is a slow process, that it may take years in the best case, it took decades, and that it's not linear, right? And that it requires involvement not only of civil society groups, but also a variety of other social actors like media or political figures, or political parties as well. So I think perhaps the most important practical implication

12:41 - from this work is to highlight the, social, the, the very impactful work that civil society organizations can play in socializing a community, a society, into non-violence and democratic values. I think this is where we enter the discussion on a scope conditions. So the material conditions under which a theory explains a particular phenomenon. So the social conditions for the outcomes

13:11 - that I found in my study were a young parliamentary democracy with freedom of association, independent journalism, also a capable state, and a vibrant civil society. So I think the next step would be just to check if these fundings can travel, right? If they can hold under different contests and conditions, for instance, where the state is weaker, either politically or economically in hybrid regimes, maybe political systems in transition,

13:39 - where the limitations exist to political freedoms, political rights. So I, here, I think we're, this is where I.

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