Basque History of the World (35 page)

The son even tried selling “white elvers” for half price, which, since the price had soared to more than $100 a pound, was still not a bargain. White elvers were ones that for one reason or another had died before they got to the tanks and had been cooked already dead—the mushy ones that are usually culled from the bunch. No, most Basques would rather eat a gula.

In time, most Basque rumors prove to be at least partly true and eventually companies developed—Basque companies, not Japanese ones—surimi elvers with two dots for eyes. On close inspection by those with good enough eyesight, there is still no mouth.

I
N
1998, trout and eel from the Bidasoa River were examined by the Navarra government, and although northern Navarra is thought of as one of the more pristine parts of Basqueland, the fish were found to contain high levels of heavy metals, especially copper.

But was that the real problem? All peoples are a product of their history, and Basque history has always been about defending their birthright against outsiders. And so, after centuries of scooping up every baby eel they could find, and after more than a 100 years of dumping industrial refuse in rivers, the Basques discovered the real problem with their prized elvers.

Once again, it was the Japanese. In the winter, articles began appearing in Basque newspapers saying that the Japanese were paying high prices and buying up all the angulas. One paper,
La Semaine du Pays Basque
, a popular weekend tabloid in French Basqueland, trying to be fair, ran the headline, “The eel, which are a delicacy to the Japanese, are disappearing from the estuaries because of pollution.”

B
ERNABE
R
AMA
was born in Bilbao but speaks no Euskera. His father was from Andalusia and, being unemployed, came to Bilbao in 1945 to work as a laborer, on roads, construction— whatever he could find. Bernabe does not consider himself a nationalist or Basqueland a nation. But like many others, he uses the word
inmigrante
, an internal immigrant, to describe outsiders like his family.

Bernabe is the head chef at the Restaurant Bermeo, a leading traditional Bilbao restaurant. Asked for his angulas recipe, he referred to a twenty-year-old book of standard recipes. His only change was that where the old recipe had indicated angulas for four people, he crossed it out and wrote “for six.”

ANGULAS

(for six)

600 grams angulas

4 cloves garlic, sliced

a few slices of guindilla

enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a casserole

Put the casserole on a high flame wth olive oil and sliced garlic. When the garlic starts to change color, work in the angulas and guindilla slices. Keep the casserole constantly moving for 30 seconds. Then remove it. It is essential that the dish be served very hot, but not overcooked.

13: The Great Opportunity

This is the best opportunity Spain has had in a century.

—Felipe González, interview with the author, September 1981

F
RANCO DIED SLOWLY
, torturing himself and Spain for more than a month, while aides and ministers, the fawning court, tried to get everything signed and readied for the fight to perpetuate their rule without their Caudillo. Finally, his daughter insisted on disconnecting the various tubes of an elaborate life-support system. On November 20, 1975, he died, leaving behind a written statement warning: “Do not forget that the enemies of Spain and Christian civilization are on the alert.” While black armbands were seen on the streets of Madrid, Catalans discreetly uncorked champagne at home, and Basque youth less discreetly danced in the streets of Euskadi.

Juan Carlos became king and head-of-state, in accordance with Franco’s wishes. He further fulfilled Franco’s wishes by appointing Arias Navarro head-of-government. The first phase of what is known in Spanish history as “the transition” was largely a struggle among various members of Franco’s regime. Arias Navarro tried to build a stable government but, by July, had given up and resigned. Juan Carlos next appointed another figure from the Franco years, a former civil governor, suave and sphinxlike forty-three-year-old Adolfo Suárez.

The new thirty-seven-year-old king, tall, handsome, and silent, known more for skiing than politics, was a mystery. The extreme right wing had never trusted him. Franco had been warned that this prince who never talked was waiting for his sponsor’s death to dismantle the regime. But Franco’s opponents believed, as did Franco, that he was a harmless puppet. The Spanish public believed he had few thoughts of his own and could be manipulated by anyone close to him. Juan Carlos jokes, in which the king was portrayed as an idiot, were in fashion.

One of the new king’s first acts was sending a representative to French Basqueland with the task of contacting ETA, assuring them things were going to be very different, and inviting them to negotiate peace. But nothing about Juan Carlos’s demeanor, public image, or initial public acts had given ETA cause to trust him, and they dismissed the offer as insincere.

The last Franco year had broken all records since the 1950s for repression of Basques. The first post-Franco year, which began with Arias Navarro, was barely an improvement. His minister of the interior, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, another figure from Franco’s dictatorship, but one with an image as a reformer, was now disappointingly Francoist. The participants in demonstrations were brutally attacked, and though the number of arrests was drastically reduced, the sixteen Basques killed by Guardia Civil and police in 1976 was barely an improvement over the eighteen in 1975.

Spain had an opportunity at last to catch up with European history, to become a democracy and rejoin the West. As head-of-government, Suárez tried to please the forces pushing for democracy while keeping his old Francoist colleagues and the military content enough to restrain from forcibly overthrowing the government. The rightists wanted a tough policy toward the Basques, and throwing them to the Guardia Civil seemed a small price to pay for persuading the unhappy right wing not to derail the entire process. Even displaying the ikurriña remained illegal.

ETA was not waiting to see how the transition turned out According to Spanish authorities, ETA killed eighteen people in 1976, starting with a Guardia Civil who tried to remove a booby-trapped ikurriña. At this point, ETA had divided into two groups. The killing was done primarily by a group called
ETA militar
. In an underground publication they identified three types of people they intended to kill: Franco-supported mayors, police collaborators and informants, and law enforcement officials who attempted to remove ikurriñas.

The second group,
ETA politico-militar
, began the post-Franco era with a new tactic: They would kidnap people for high ransoms. On January 11, 1976, they captured industrialist Francisco Luzariaga, who suffered a heart attack during the kidnapping and was released. Two days later, they took another hostage but released him after a month because it became clear that the victim’s family were Basque nationalists.

All of this might have made ETA unpopular if the Guardia Civil was not at the same time engaged in its tactics of tearing down ikurriñas and disrupting folk festivals. On August 18, the Guardia Civil attacked a Basque song festival in Guernica because of the presence of ikurriñas.

The Basque Nationalist Party was having its own transition. Leizaola took a teaching position and faded into obscurity, while the newly invigorated old party, led by Xabier Arzalluz, an emotional man from an old Carlist family, at last dropped its insistence on loyalty to the Catholic Church. But the old slogan
Jaungoikua eta Lagizarra
, God and the Old Laws, has remained. Letters in the party still end with
un abrazo en JeL
, an embrace in JeL, when written in Spanish, or in Euskera,
JeL beti gogoan dogula
, always remember JeL.

When the Basque Nationalist Party demands the return of the Fueros, it is not asking that the legal code of 1526 be put back into place with its statutes on everything from a woman’s place to the purity of cider. Nor does the party demand complete independence, something the Basques have not had since the Romans. What it wants is the restoration of the ability Basques had under the Fueros to enact their own laws.

But the first order of post-Franco business for the Basques was an amnesty for political prisoners. The amnesty movement, Gestoras Pro-Amnistía, attracted many of the most prominent Basques, including not only stubborn longtime activists like Joseba Elósegi but also soccer stars and artists. The sculptor Eduardo Chillida, whose massive abstract work in stone, wood, or steel had become renowned in the international art world, designed the movement’s logo.

In hindsight, the fact that it took two years to achieve a general amnesty for those imprisoned for resisting Franco—two years of demonstrations, petitions, and negotiations to decriminalize opposition to the dictatorship—was one of the early signs that the new Spanish democracy would not be entirely different from the old regime. Guardia Civil attacked peaceful demonstrations for amnesty and on several occasions shot and killed demonstrators.

Another sign was the fate of Eva Forest, a Catalan mother of three who had run a Madrid organization called Solidarity with Basqueland. She had been jailed and tortured in 1974 for the crime of interviewing the ETA commandos who had killed Carrero Blanco and then publishing the interview in Hendaye under the name Julen Agirre “from somewhere in Southern Euskadi.” Police had discovered a draft of the manuscript in her apartment in a random search. The charge was “necessary collaboration,” meaning presumed guilt by circumstance. After the death of Franco, the Spanish continued to hold, interrogate, and torture her. The story is all the more remarkable because Spain was desperately trying to gain acceptance in Europe as a budding Western democracy and freeing Eva Forest was becoming a European cause célèbre. She was finally released in 1977 without ever having been brought to trial.

Freeing Eva Forest was one of many steps in slowly, one group at a time, obtaining the release of political prisoners. Arzalluz showed a new tough leadership, insisting, in line with Basque public opinion, on a total amnesty that would include all ETA members. The last of the imprisoned Basques were released in December 1977. For a few days, Spanish jails held no Basque political prisoners.

In January, a new round of arrests began.

I
N
1977, the new democracy that was to end Spain’s isolation in Europe was launched with general elections to a two-house parliament, the Cortes. One month before the elections, the ikurriña was at last legalized when the Basque Nationalist Party demanded the right to use it as their party symbol. Adolfo Suárez, the former Franco technocrat, became the first elected prime minister. His party won 34 percent, and Felipe González’s Socialists came in second with 28 percent. But in the Basque provinces, the parties demanding autonomy from Spain, led by the Basque Nationalist Party, won a clear majority, including ten Senate seats. One of the new Basque Nationalist Party senators was the fiery Joseba Elósegi.

The combination of amnesty and elections had brought many Spanish Basques home from exile. Dolores Ibarruri, La Pasionaria, still dressed in black, returning from the Soviet Union, held her first political rally in Bilbao to the tune of “
Eusko gudariak gera
” and, at the age of eighty-two, won back her old seat as a deputy from Asturias to the lower house of the Cortes. Born in 1895, only three years younger than Franco, she had outlasted him. “I said they shall not pass, and they haven’t,” the octogenarian Communist deputy insisted defiantly.

Even Sabino Arana was back, his body returned to its grave in Sukarrieta.

Telesforo de Monzón was also back. In 1971 he and Txillardegi, along with thirty-five supporters, had taken refuge in the cathedral in Bayonne and began a hunger strike. After three days, the sixty-seven-year-old Monzón suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized, but he still refused to take nourishment. In 1977 he was still alive and back on the Spanish side, as militant as ever.

T
HE TIME HAD
arrived for what Madrid thought of as the next step toward democracy and what the Basques thought of as the next battle: the drafting of a new Spanish constitution. The hard history of Spain, the divisions of the nineteenth century, lingered on. When Felipe González said that Spain had the “best opportunity” in a century, he was referring to recapturing the opportunity the Liberals had missed after the Second Carlist War to build a liberal democracy. But to the Basques it was the best opportunity in a century to restore the autonomy that the Carlist Wars had taken away from them.

When work began in Madrid on a new constitution, two things became clear very quickly. A broad consensus existed that for Spain to have a peaceful future, it had to allow regions—especially Basqueland and Catalonia—a measure of autonomy. But it was equally clear that the Basques were not going to be left to choose the nature of that autonomy. There would be no return to the autonomy of the Foral system. The constitutional committee did not include a sampling of the parties in the Cortes, but rather a group of seven parliamentarians, including one Catalan and no Basques.