Batasuna - Recent Times

Recent Times

Amid the first talk of the Spanish government investigating the ties of Herri Batasuna with ETA, in 1998 Herri Batasuna was the driving force of the newly formed Euskal Herritarrok (We Basque Citizens) coalition, an acronym which got the best results to date for Basque left separatism in the Basque community, with 224,000 votes out of a total of 1,250,000 in the Basque election held that year.

The most recent public party spokesmen were Arnaldo Otegi. Otegi, like a number of other top-ranks in Herri Batasuna, had been a member of ETA and served several years in prison for bank assault.

Another important member of Batasuna is José Antonio Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea, alias Josu Ternera, the main leader of ETA between 1987 and 1989 and accused of a number of assassinations like the 1987 Hipercor bombing which killed 21 people at Hipercor - a shopping center in Barcelona. He was imprisoned in France after 1989, released after finishing his sentence and was transferred to Spanish prisons, where he stayed for 2 more years until his release by the Constitutional Court, which stipulated that he had served his prison term in France. He was included in the Batasuna electoral ticket and elected to the Basque parliament between 1999 and 2001, where he was appointed as his party's representative in the Human Rights commission at the Basque Parliament, which, given his criminal background caused a stir in the rest of parties. He disappeared when the Spanish courts reopened cold charges and presented new ones about his current membership in ETA. Presently he lives in hiding and is considered one of the leaders of ETA that are pushing for negotiations.

Amid a period of separatist kale borroka street attacks on the offices of the Basque Nationalist Party and other establishment targets, Batasuna together with the union Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak convoked a day of protest and general strike on March 9, 2006. On the morning of the strike, ETA detonated several bombs near highways, with no injuries. Employers reported scant overall participation in the strike, approximately 0.5% of private sector workers, 1% of government workers and 3-4% of workers in education. A few thousands of Batasuna militants joined mass protests, while others blocked rail lines and roads and occupied municipal halls Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi was ordered to appear in court to answer for the bomb attacks and disruption, but delayed his appearance repeatedly on the grounds of illness.

In September 2008, in what has been the closest to a disengagement of ETA so far, members of the party, while not condemning ETA's tactics whatsoever, did say the "political-military strategy" of the latter is an "obstacle" to aspirations for Basque independence. They called for a "unifying project for the pro-independence left" which would be aimed at creating an electoral list for regional elections to be held in Spring 2009.