Batasuna (the pro-independence political party in the Basque Country) is about the join the ever growing list of illegal organisations in the Basque Country. Since the extreme right party the PP gained an overall majority two years ago the Government has been determined to ban or imprison everything that whiffs of Basque. To remind all the PP is the political party that all Franco’s men joined after the Dictator died in 1975 (it was then called National Alliance). Franco’s minister of the Interior Manuel Fraga (responsible for the death of 11 workers in a demonstration in Vitoria, Basque Country), founded the party and is now honorary president of the PP and president of the PP in Galicia. The party President Aznar is himself and ex member of the Falanage and to this day will not the condemn the Francoist coup of 1936. Apart from that just last year he decorated an ex head of the Francoist police in San Sebastian, who was quite famous and feared due to his torture techniques (and is now dead) with a badge of honour.
Democracy in Spain is quite a recent thing in comparison to many other European Countries. Franco died in 1975 and then began a very shaky “transition” to democracy. The army and the civil guard have always played a huge role in the political affairs of the Spanish State and from the end of teh civil war have been greatly feared and despised. In 1981, soon after the communist party was made legal, there was a military coup. The coup was a failure on the one hand but one must then be sure about what teh aims were. Anyway what it did was to remind the State that army was there and was strong and could not be ignored in the politics of the country.

The PP’s aim is to get rid of the nationalisms that were recognised by the Constitution in 1978. the Basque movement for independence is the largest and most dynamic within the Spanish State and for this reason it has become the prime target. The excuse used is the war against ETA.

So far a daily newspaper and a national radio station have been closed. A investigative political magazine (Ardi Beltza) has been closed and its Editor imprisoned for supposedly collaborating with ETA. Believe it or not but Garzon ( famous for trying to bring Pinochet to justice) claimed that members of ETA were using the magazine to find out about rich politicians and businessmen so they could add them to their list of targets. Garzon closed the newspaper for much the same reason saying that there were coded messages being sent in the paper by ETA militants to other members about the wheres and whens of an attack. In 1998 22 members of the national executive of Batasuna were imprisoned for collaborating with an armed organisation. This time Garzon argued that because Herri Batasuna showed two members of ETA speaking about their proposal for peace in a promo video in the run-up to the election then the whole executive were guilty of collaboration. Garzon then decided that the schools that teach adults the Basque language were all part of ETA plans- and so he started to develop the legally dubious campaign against sharing the aims of ETA. For the last 5 years of so the adult literacy group AEK has been brought before the Spanish Special Criminal Court on repeated occasions, and have many times proved their innocence of all charges. However for Garzon part of the damage is done with all the bad press that such groups receive.
A group that didn’t mind the bad press and was centre of Garzons attention was the pro-indpendence youth movement Jarrai. Jarrai has been involved in the youth politics for 20 years and is an autonomous youth political organisation that gathered more than 50,000 youths to their yearly concerts. They were heavily involved in campaigns against the army, temporary work agencies, NATO , the EU etc and were thus made illegal. They changed their name and then that organisation was made illegal too. At present the youth movement is legal in the French Basque Country but illegal on the Spanish side. This is the same for the movement in favour of Amnesty for the Basque prisoners. Garzon made the organisation illegal because he believed that it was illegal to give aid to terrorists and because the Amnesty movement provided money and books and magazines etc. to Basque prisoners then they in fact we (guess) collaborating with terrorists. So off went another 15 to prison. So on the Spanish side of hte Basque border these people were undermining democracy, by appealing for the repatriation of prisoners to the Basque Country (there are over 600 of a pop. of 3 million) who are being held in prisons all over the French and Spanish State, many being held more than a 1000 kms from their homes, but on the French side they are regarded as a human rights organisation.

And so that brings me up to the proposed reform of the law of political parties. Its a very dangerous document, which is totally ambivalent and is wide open to interpretation. However in the short term there is no reason for Spanish people ot worry because it is firmly intended for Batasuna, but in the future you may see United Left being banned. Unless you fully accept the Constitution, as it is without change, your party can be made illegal. Any party hoping for federalism (never mind anarchism, communism etc) could be made illegal.

There will be a huge demo against this law in Bilbao on July 15th. Look out for it.