The Culture of Emergency in Italy and Spain: State Antiterrorism

Abstract

After nearly six decades, on May 2, 2018, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) announced its dissolution. This announcement brought an end to the last ripples of the wave of political violence in Europe that began in the sixties, which coincided with a cycle of protests during the sixties and seventies. In response to serious political conflict and its drift toward armed violence, some liberal-democratic states established an antiterrorism framework involving legislative and practical transformations at every level of the criminal justice system. From a critical criminology perspective, the concept of a ‘culture of emergency’ was developed in the field of il garantismo in order to analyze the phenomenon. The present article explores the construction of this exceptionalism in two cases: that of Italy (‘revolutionary wave’) and of Spain (ETA). While attempting to identify a common pattern of emergency, this study also identifies the specificities of each conflict.