The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [95]
Soon no one was allowed to speak it. He remembers the prison by the beach where Franco’s troops shot people every day. A teacher he knew from the neighborhood was taken there. By 1946, he considered himself a Basque nationalist, but a nationalist without a movement and no idea of what to do.
“I didn’t know anyone who was a nationalist. Or who said he was a nationalist. I had an uncle who was executed in Madrid in 1942. I don’t think even he was a nationalist.”
He found a Basque grammar book in the Guipúzcoan dialect and started studying. Eventually, he was able to get secret language lessons from a teacher who said he was from the Basque Nationalist Party.
In 1949, he went to Bilbao to study industrial engineering. His studies gave him the contacts to arrange intense language instruction and soon he was writing in Euskera for an underground publication. But he still had not had any contact with the Basque Nationalist Party.
In 1950, he was arrested in San Sebastián for belonging to an underground student movement. He spent one month in prison. “We couldn’t do anything political but we felt we had to do something,” he said. He and his small group reasoned that they needed to make contact with members of the Basque Nationalist Party. But where were they? In hiding, it was always said. José Luis thought a friend of his brother’s might be one of them. Carefully José Luis and his group asked questions and in time were able to meet with actual representatives of the fabled Basque Nationalist Party.
The young Basques were utterly disappointed.
“We had the impression that they were waiting for Franco to die, or waiting for the Americans to invade. Characteristic of youth we did not take easily to the idea of waiting.”
In 1952, five of them decided to start their own underground movement, organized into small cells. At first there was one cell in San Sebastián and a second in Bilbao. A cell was often no more than three people, making it difficult for the Guardia Civil to penetrate the organization. A cell might be exposed but not the organization.
They named their group ATA, an acronym for Aberri Ta Askatasuna, Homeland and Liberty. But they were Guipúzcoans. In Vizcayan dialect, they later discovered, ata means “duck.” So after six years of being a clandestine duck to Vizcayans, in 1959 they changed their name to ETA, the acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Euskadi and Liberty. As with Arana’s Basque Nationalist Party, July 31, Ignatius Loyola’s Saint’s Day, was chosen as ETA’s official founding date.
ETA, the second choice, was a brilliant label. To someone who does not read Euskera, any text in Basque appears to be peppered with the initials because eta is also the conjunction that means “and.” The sculptor and inveterate punster, Jorge de Oteiza, at ninety his pale eyes still sparkling with mischief, sometimes referred to ETA as Y—the Spanish language word for “and.” ETA appears to mean many other things. Once ETA began its anti-Franco activities, the Guardia Civil desperately tried to decipher the three letters. One infamous Guardia Civil beat prisoners for hours trying to get them to confirm that it stood for a Greek letter and to explain what that meant.
THE ORIGINAL ETA members considered themselves intellectuals and published an underground journal called Ekin, meaning “to persist” or “to act.” Their stated goal was an independent Basque nation recognized as an equal in the community of nations. But their primary activity was promoting the forbidden Basque language. That, at least, was to be the first step. José Luis explained, “Well, we were the children of petit bourgeoisie.”
There was important work to be done by intellectuals. They recognized that to have a just nation, the teachings of Sabino Arana had to be revised. The racial definition of a Basque was not acceptable. Racism was to be purged from Basque nationalism, as was the Aranist commitment to the Catholic Church. ETA reverted to the