Contested Visions: Memory, Space and Identity in the Basque Country

Abstract

Euskal Herria, the Basque Country, is located across the western end of the Pyrenees in north-eastern Spain and south-western France. Although ‘a stateless nation’ (Irvin and Rae 2001: 77), the Basques proclaim a shared culture, identity and language — Euskera — within a recognised historical territory. The Basques comprises four Spanish provinces: Araba, Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and Nafarroa (although the latter is not recognised by the Spanish government), and three French provinces: Nafarroa Beherea, Lapurdi and Zuberoa. Greater autonomy from Spain has been at the heart of Basque nationalism since its 19th-century origins, but the goal of independence gained increasing currency with the formation of ETA in 1959; since then, the organisation has killed more than 800 people. Despite various ceasefires and both ‘clean’ political and, during the 1980s, ‘dirty’ covert initiatives by successive Spanish governments (Woodworth 2002), attempts to initiate peaceful negotiations were largely unsuccessful until 1998 when, inspired by the Northern Ireland peace process, the then Basque President Antonio Ardanza Garro brokered talks that secured a unilateral ceasefire from ETA in September of that year. Subsequent negotiations failed and the seemingly intractable conflict resumed in December 1999 when ETA renounced its ceasefire. In March 2006, following the success of enhanced anti-terrorist measures by the Spanish and French States and the 2004 Madrid train bombings for which the organisation was initially wrongly blamed, ETA declared a ‘permanent’ ceasefire and entered covert negotiations with the present Spanish Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.