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by the republic and famously endured the
bombing of their ancient political center at
Guernica as punishment. Worse punish-
ment came during the dictatorship of F
RAN
-
CISCO
F
RANCO
, when the Basque were
denied most of their cultural manifesta-
tions, including the use of their language.
In the later years of the Franco regime,
as attempts were being made to develop a
compromise between moderate leaders in
the region and a progressive cadre in the
M
ADRID
government, a militant movement
emerged among the younger Basque gen-
eration. They rejected compromise, pro-
claimed their commitment to independence,
and launched an armed struggle in 1968-
69. By 1973 when these militants staged a
spectacular assassination, they were clearly
in the vanguard of what observers were
calling a worldwide rising tide of terrorism.
Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco's dep-
uty and his presumptive political successor,
was slain as he drove through the streets of
the capital by a bomb so powerful that it
hurled his limousine onto the balcony of an
adjacent building. International analysts as
well as Spanish security forces sought to
learn more about this rising force. It was
called Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque
Homeland and Liberty), or ETA. It had loose
association with various Basque political
groups and would change those associa-
tions from time to time, although most fre-
quently perceived as tied to a party called
Batasuna (Unity). A relatively small organi-
zation, ETA may have had fewer than 100
active members, relying on supporters and
sympathizers to facilitate its operations. Its
goal, however, was large, for it claimed all
of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, Álava, and N
AVARRE
(the latter of which is only part Basque in
population). In addition to the 2 million
inhabitants of these four provinces, ETA
also envisioned reclaiming three former
provinces now mostly contained within the
French department of Basses-Pyrénées
(renamed Pyrénées-Atlantiques in 1969),
where another half-million Basques lived.
After the death of Franco in 1975 and
the establishment of a democracy as well as
a popularly endorsed constitution, the
“new” Spain sought to win over Basque
sympathizers. Without abandoning its fun-
damental commitment to Spain's unity, the
Socialist ministry of F
ELIPE
G
ONZÁLEZ
agreed
to more than a dozen autonomous regions,
one of which was to include the Spanish
B
ASQUE
PROVINCES
. While welcomed by
moderate Basques who formed legal nation-
alist parties and elected a regional parlia-
ment, this plan was totally repudiated by
ETA. The war of liberation that they pur-
sued against the post-Franco state involved
bombings, shootings, and other attacks
upon civil society. Although most of their
targets were members of the security forces
and public officials, many of those who per-
ished were innocent bystanders. As the
armed struggle continued and the death toll
rose past 800, authorities denounced the
ETA militants as “terrorist murderers” and
documented their ties to the practitioners
and sponsors of terrorism around the world
from the Irish Republican Army in Ireland
to the Qaddafi regime in Libya. Several par-
ticularly outrageous killings brought hun-
dreds of thousands of Spaniards into the
streets of Madrid and other major cities to
denounce ETA and demand an end to the
killings. On a less open level of response
Prime Minister González authorized coun-
terterrorist units that evolved into death
squads that carried out their own extralegal
murders of captured ETA operatives. The
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