People in Spain's Basque Country are getting used to living free from terror, writes GUY HEDGECOEin Zarautz
AT THIS time of year, the town of Zarautz is one of the Basque coast’s quieter places. A small, pleasant resort near the city of San Sebastián, it offers a spectacular view of the Cantabrian sea, which washes right up to the beachside bars and restaurants.
But as Zarautz’s inhabitants cast their votes this Sunday in regional elections, they know that over the last 12 months this town and the entire Basque Country have undergone a momentous change.
A year ago today, terrorist group Eta announced the “definitive end of all armed activities”, bringing the curtain down on four decades of separatist violence that killed over 800 Spaniards. Zarautz and the surrounding area witnessed some of the bloodiest episodes of that period.
“We no longer have to check under our cars, or look both ways when leaving our homes,” says Gorka Landaburu, a journalist who was escorted everywhere he went by two bodyguards for 11 years, because of the threat from Eta.
“The looks on people’s faces have changed. We’re finally getting used to living in freedom.”
Earlier this year, Landaburu was told his bodyguards were no longer necessary and he is alone now as he talks to me about his new-found liberty on the terrace of a cafe looking over the sea.
The scene could not be more idyllic. But his face darkens as he peers along the coastline and points out a bar on the other side of town. In 1981, he recalls, some Eta hitmen burst into it and gunned down four civil guards and a civilian.
“I was the first on to the scene,” Landaburu says. “One of the civil guards was still alive and I was holding his head when he died.”
Everywhere around us there seem to be reminders of those violent times. Not least of all when Landaburu picks up his coffee cup to reveal one of two mutilated hands, the result of an Eta letter bomb in 2001 that nearly killed him and which also left him blind in one eye.
Behind us is a restaurant belonging to Karlos Arguiñano, a famous television chef, who has admitted that Eta unsuccessfully pressured him to pay its “revolutionary tax”, a euphemism for the extortion that once financed the group.
Businessmen, footballers, artists and other public figures were among those who received letters demanding they contribute to Eta’s cause of Basque independence, or face the consequences.
“Some refused to pay and it often cost them their life,” says Jon Etxabe, of local business association Adegi.
One such case was that of Adegi president José María Korta, who was killed in 2000 after ignoring the extortion demands.
Mr Etxabe recalls how, when Eta was active, members of the business community were “cannon fodder”.
The Basque business community, which has done so much over the decades to make the region an industrial hub, is understandably relieved at the new climate of peace.
“It’s as if a massive weight has been taken off,” says Mr Etxabe, although he insists that neither the bad old days nor the end of the violence are big topics of conversation among impresarios in this part of the Basque Country. That’s due to what he calls “the Gipuzkoan character”, which tends not to dwell on or verbalise such thoughts.
But ironically, while “peace is the best investment this region could have,” as Mr Etxabe puts it, there are those whose pockets have suffered as a result of the absence of violence.
José Mari López was for many years a bodyguard for a socialist politician who was threatened by Eta. A combination of spending cuts caused by the economic crisis and the new peaceful atmosphere in the Basque Country has left him and many other security personnel out of work.
On the one hand, he can now walk through the centre of San Sebastián, previously one of the focal points of the Basque Country’s violence, without a worry.
“But on the other hand, I can’t find a job and the months are flying by,” he says.
The stress of protecting a politician on Eta’s hit list has been replaced by the more mundane strain of providing for his eight-year-old daughter from whose mother he is divorced.
For many others, like Gorka Landaburu, the first anniversary of peace in the Basque Country is also bittersweet, albeit for a different reason.
“I’m happy that it’s now over, but I can’t help but remember all the people who aren’t here because of the bombs and the guns,” he says.