Democracy and dirty wars in Spain

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 950-972

  Encarnación, Omar G ^a  

^a BARD COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMPARATIVE STUDY; DEMOCRACY; DEMOCRATIZATION; GOVERNMENT; MILITARY INTERVENTION; POLITICAL POWER; TERRORISM; WAR;

EURASIA; EUROPE; SOUTHERN EUROPE; SPAIN;

EID: 36349002292     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2007.0038     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. According to the Spanish Ministry of Justice, as of 2004, ETA is responsible for 3,391 terrorist acts, resulting in the killing of 836 people and injuring 2,367, of whom 1,294 were rendered physically incapacitated. Since 2004, ETA's most significant act of terrorism is the 30 December 2006 bombing of a parking lot at Madrid's Barajas airport that killed two Ecuadorian immigrants.
2. The only extensive analysis of the origins of the GAL is by the journalist PADDY WOODWORTH, DIRTY WAR, CLEAN HANDS: ETA, THE GAL AND SPANISH DEMOCRACY (2003).
3. For a summary of the book see his essay Paddy Woodworth, Using Terror against Terrorists: The Spanish Experience, in THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY SPAIN 61 (Sebastian Balfour ed., 2005).
4. Among the studies that point to the 1982 elections as the defining moment in the consolidation of Spanish democracy are JUAN J. LINZ & ALFRED L. STEPAN, PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION (1996);
5. RICHARD GUNTHER, JOSÉ RAMÓN MONTERO & JOAN BOTELLA, DEMOCRACY IN MODERN SPAIN (2004).
6. See Kathleen Thelen & Sven Steinmo, Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics, in STRUCTURING POLITICS: HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONALISM IN COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS (Kathleen Thelen, Sven Steinmo, & Frank Longstrech eds., 1992).
7. José M. Maravall & Julián Santamaría, Crisis del franquismo: transición política y consolidación de la democracia en España, 68-69 SISTEMA 79, 105 (1985).
8. ROBERT P. CLARK, NEGOTIATING WITH ETA: OBSTACLES TO PEACE IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY, 1975-1988, at 46-65 (1990).
9. Paddy Woodworth, Using Terror against Terrorists, in THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY SPAIN, supra note 2, at 63.
10. Id. at 70-71.
11. Id. at 72.
12. Richard Gunther, The Spanish Socialist Party: From Clandestine Opposition to Party of Government, in THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRATIC SPAIN 8, 42 (Stanley G. Payne ed., 1986).
13. CLARK, supra note 6, at 39-47.
14. John F. Coverdale, Regional Nationalism and the Elections in the Basque Country, in SPAIN AT THE POLLS 226, 245 (Howard R. Penniman & Eusebio M. Mujal-León eds., 1985).
15. CYNTHIA IRVIN, MILITANT NATIONALISM: BETWEEN MOVEMENT AND PARTY IN IRELAND AND THE BASQUE COUNTRY 120 (1999).
16. Coverdale, supra note 12.
17. Gunther, supra note 10, at 39.
18. Only in Catalonia was regional autonomy fully realized. The Basque statute of autonomy was passed at the height of the Spanish Civil War in 1937 when the region was half occupied by Franco's nationalist army. The Galicians had voted on their autonomy referendum before the Basques in 1936, but they were less successful in advancing their autonomy project since the region was under Francoist control from the onset of the war.
19. As would be expected, the repression of Basque culture under Franco is a central explanation behind the persistence of the conflict in the Basque Country. It has given rise to ETA's claim that the presence of the Spanish state in the Basque Country amounts to cultural genocide. Under this calculus, the democratic nature of the state in Spain is irrelevant, as is the strong recognition of minority cultures guaranteed by the 1978 democratic constitution, because only complete independence can guarantee the survival of Basque culture. These claims are obviously exaggerated as the central government no longer imposes a national policy of cultural homogeneity. Since the transition to democracy, Basque culture is recognized as unique within the Iberian context and Euskera is taught in schools and widely used in the affairs of the Basque regional government.
20. Another sector of Basque society radicalized by Franco's repression was the Basque Catholic Church. The large-scale violations of human rights by the Franco regime in the Basque Country prompted many Basque priests to openly disobey the government. Many began to conduct mass in the local language, directly violating the Franco regime's official linguistic policy of "one nation, one language." In 1960, 350 priests in the Basque country wrote a letter to their local Bishop protesting the Franco regime's policies in the region. It led to the trial of several Basque priests in Madrid on charges of insubordination to state policy.
21. At the heart of ETA's struggle is the creation of an independent, socialist state incorporating the Spanish provinces of Vizcaya, Ávala, Guipúzcoa and Navarra. The most extreme Basque nationalists also seek to incorporate the French provinces of Labourd, Basse-Navarre and Soule in their plan for the creation of an all-Basque nation. For more on ETA's origins see JOSÉ MARÍA GARMENDIA, HISTORIA DE ETA (1979).
22. On the evolution of ETA's separatist struggle see ROBERT P. CLARK, THE BASQUES: THE FRANCO YEARS AND BEYOND (1979);
23. ROBERT P. CLARK, THE BASQUE INSURGENTS (1984).
24. GUNTHER, MONTERO & BOTELLA, supra note 3, at 76.
25. Arcadi Espada, Aquel año de un muerto cada 60 horas, EL PAÍS DIGITAL, 27 August 2000. Available at www.udel.edu/leipzig/270500/elb270800.htm.
26. Woodworth, Using Terror against Terrorists, supra note 2, at 67.
27. On Franco's repression of the huidos and the maquis see Paul Preston, The Urban and Rural Guerrilla of the 1940s, in SPANISH CULTURAL STUDIES 229(Helen Graham & Jo Labanyi eds., 1995).
28. Woodworth, Using Terror against Terrorists, supra note 2, at 67.
29. Espada, supra note 21.
30. This figure of Franco's victims comes from GABRIEL JACKSON, THE SPANISH REPUBLIC AND THE CIVIL WAR, 1931-1939, at 539 (1965).
31. See, e.g., Madeleine Davis, Is Spain Recovering its Memory? Breaking the Pacto del Silencio, 27 HUM. RTS. Q. 858 (2005).
32. Jorge Zaverucha, The Degree of Military Political Autonomy during the Spanish, Argentine and Brazilian Transitions, 25 J. LATIN AM. STUD. 283 at 286 (1993). We can conclude that Suárez paid dearly for his affronts to the military. His sudden resignation in 1981 is rumored to have been engineered by the military over his political decisions, including the legalization of the Communist party in 1977 and the granting of limited self-governance to the Basques and the Catalans in 1981.
33. Stanley G. Payne, Modernization of the Armed Forces, in THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRATIC SPAIN, supra note 10, at 181, 184.
34. Id. at 185.
35. Zaverucha, supra note 28, at 286.
36. Paddy Woodworth, The War against Terrorism: the Spanish Experience from ETA to al-Qaeda, 17 INT'L J. IBERIAN STUD. 172 (2004).
37. Woodworth, Using Terror against Terrorists, supra note 2, at 70.
38. Spain's state-sponsored death squads, EL MUNDO, 29 July 1998, available at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/141720.stm.
39. Los papeles del CESID, EL MUNDO, available at www.elmundo.es/nacional/gal/investigacion/6.html.
40. Zaverucha, supra note 28, at 287.
41. Id.
42. Felipe Agüero, Democratic Consolidation and the Military in Southern Europe and South America, in THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION: SOUTHERN EUROPE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE 124, 128 (Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros & Hans-Jurgen Puhle eds., 1995).
43. Id. at 140.
44. Id. at 125.
45. Zaverucha, supra note 28, at 283-84.
46. Oddly enough, while scholars have been slow to question the notion of civilian control of the military in post-Franco Spain, Spanish politicians have not. Narcís Serra, the Spanish minister of defense between the years of 1982-1995, has argued that civil-military relations during the transition to democracy in Spain need to be reconsidered in light of the experience of the GAL. See Narcís Serra, Threats to Democracy from the Armed Forces, Police and Intelligence Services: Suggestions based on the Spanish case, available at www.clubmadrid.org/cmadrid/fileadmin/2-Serra.pdf.
47. Felipe Agüero, supra note 38.
48. Payne, Modernizing the Army, supra note 29, at 181.
49. See Jorge Zaverucha's analysis of military politics in Spain, Brazil, and Argentina. Zaverucha, supra note 28.
50. See Omar G. Encarnación, Do Political Pacts Freeze Democracy? Spanish and South American Lessons, 28 W. EUR. POL. 182 (Jan. 2005).
51. This point is stressed in histories of Spain's intelligence services. For instance, see ANTONIO M. DÍAZ FERNANDEZ, LOS SERVICIOS DE INTELIGENCIA ESPAÑOLES: DESDE AL GUERRA CIVIL HASTA EL 11-M: HISTORIA DE UNA TRANSICIÓN (2005).
52. See CHARLES TILLY & SIDNEY TARROW, CONTENTIOUS POLITICS (2007).
53. José Manuel Mata, The Weakness of Democracy in the Basque Country in THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY SPAIN 101 (Sebastián Balfour ed., 2005).
54. Gesto por la Paz, Violencia de persecusión, available at www.gesto.org/violenciapersecucion1.htm.
55. Mata, supra note 49, at 100.
56. This data is from Euskobarometro surveys, available at www.ehu.es/ cpvweb.
57. Paddy Woodworth, Using Terror against Terrorists, supra note 2, at 67.
58. Coverdale, supra note 12, at 233.
59. See FAREED ZAKARIA, THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM: ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY AT HOME AND ABROAD (2003).
60. The historic regions enjoy the highest degree of autonomy whereas the new regions generally tend to possess the least. These imbalances have been the subject of periodic revisions of the whole system of autonomous communities by the government in an attempt to bring some evenness to the devolution of administrative powers to the regions, such as the 1982 Organic Law for the Harmonization of the Autonomy Process (LOAPA). The special status of the Basque region may soon change with the approval of the revisions to the Catalan autonomy charter approved in June 2006.
61. Mata, supra note 49, at 82.
62. Euskobarometro, supra note 52.
63. Not all parties supported this pact, including, most notably, Izquierda Unida (United Left, to the left of the PSOE), which accused the PP and the PSOE of endorsing legislation that could prove an initial step on a slippery slope toward abridging civil and political rights. International human rights organizations also criticized the Spanish government. See Press Release, Amnesty International, The Lethal Cost of Freedom of Expression in the Basque Country (11 Feb. 2003).
64. Woodworth, Using Terror against Terrorists, supra note 2, at 76.