The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [96]
According to ETA, “Euskera is the quintessence of Euskadi. So long as Euskera is alive, Euskadi will live.”
Franco always had contempt for the impact of culture and so frequently neglected to repress writing and art intended as a protest against him. In 1957, José Luis was able to get his first novel published in Euskera under the pseudonym Txillardegi. The name came from the San Sebastián neighborhood where he grew up. Txillardegi writes in a seductively lyrical style that seems to burst uncontrollably into free verse from time to time.
The novel Leturiaren egunkari ezkutua (The Secret Diary of Leturia), was a milestone in Basque literature, presenting the first Basque antihero. Until then, literature in Euskera had been about Basque history and Basque tradition, about the great deeds of Basques. But Txillardegi’s novel was about the human condition—about love, grief, and suicide—a novel in Basque rather than a “Basque novel.”
BY THE END of 1959, ETA had between 200 and 250 members, and they were studying armed liberation movements. Of particular interest was the Tunisian liberation movement of Habib Bourguiba. They were also interested in a favorite of the Basque Nationalist Party, Menachem Begin’s Irgun, which had used violence to drive the British out of Palestine during the fight to create a Jewish state.
But regardless of their models, violent activism was primarily directed against walls and statues. Their signature became Gora Euskadi.
Though the structure of separate cells helped to protect them, it also made it difficult to control the organization. The members had agreed to meet once every year, but some years the annual meeting never got organized.
In addition to the appearance of Gora Euskadi on more and more walls, ETA bombed an elevator at the Guardia Civil headquarters in Vitoria. Spanish flags were burned. On July 18, 1961, a train carrying celebrators to a ceremony in San Sebastián for the anniversary of the 1936 coup d’état was derailed by ETA. Though the operation was carried out with great care to avoid casualties, the message was clear: The Spanish enemy celebrated in Euskadi at their own peril.
Madrid’s response was equally clear—a massive sweep, arresting, torturing, and imprisoning more than 100 Basques. Among those arrested were Txillardegi and the other five leaders of ETA. But they were released after short sentences. The Spanish were not infiltrating and destroying ETA. They were simply avenging the derailment. ETA would avenge the retaliation. An eye for an eye came to define the relationship between ETA and the Spanish.
Once released from prison, the leaders crossed the border and established operations in France, from where ETA, it is believed, has been directed ever since.
ENEMIES OFTEN become mirror images of each other. Franco was obsessed by his hatred of communism. Each family with its small property being a basic element of the Basque sense of order, communism is anathema to most Basques as well. While the Basque Nationalist Party, from Arana to Aguirre, had been resolutely anti-Communist—the Guernica Battalion had been created to separate from Communist fighters—the new generation was increasingly drawn to Marxist ideology. Franco’s venom had made communism appealing to those who hated him. What could be more anti-Franco? And Aguirre and the nationalists, it seemed to young Basques, were not sufficiently anti-Franco.
Much of this process happened through the Church. Franco was pro-Church, so young anti-Franco Basques, following the negative logic, should have been anti-Church. But the Basque clergy provided an important source of language study, having always been the guardians of the language. For centuries, clerics had been the only writers of Euskera, and during the 1950s, while the Basque language was becoming increasingly rare, more than 80