There is a real and
vast difference between the country I come from and e.g. United Kingdom or Spain.
And it´s not food or habits of these countries, it´s their large land which is
divided into individual countries, and this logically brings separatism.
You can say “why not?”
– these countries in countries have their own parliament, their own government,
their own language, so why they cannot be countries with all proprieties of a
country, and with their own borders? There are many small countries in the
world, some smaller that any big city, and there is no problem with it. So the
problem is not to create another small country (there´s really no limit of countries
that can be created I think), but there´s a problem for a government to admit
an “instability” of the whole country, because the central government always
wants to keep an eye on its borderline parts. And this especially happens in
Spain and it has been happening for many ages, since Madrid has been a capital
city – it´s strategic
position is obvious and its intention to control those outer parts of Spain is
logical: the central government have to control all the country and if it doesn´t,
the country would become torn into parts. The central government just want to
keep its power and with all the separatism of those outer parts it is not
longer possible.
I am not a specialist in
the history of Spanish separatism, but it was well said by Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset in early 20s of
last century: the central government have abandoned the outskirts of the
country, it hasn´t done anything for those little countries – they had to fight
for survival during the hard years of crisis which affect especially the rural
parts. And this abandonment (actually due to look after central issues, or
rather to centralize any issue) was finally the very cause of radical
separatism that happens in the strongest way in Euskadi.
I don´t agree with the
radicalism in the form of terrorism. There should be a strong public dialogue
between the local government, the central government and the radicals. If there
is such a dialogue, there wouldn´t be so many victims of terrorism. The
terrorists choose this way because of obvious lack of interest in the
separation of the central government. But still there are other possibilities how
to show our need to be independent. Do we have to kill people to reach our
goals? Of course not! But this is something more than killing people – we are
killing the parts of the oppressing regimen.
The worst
assassinations have passed in 80s and 90s and the terrorists have been
sentenced to some 300 years of prison for each of the victims they have killed.
So in total, depending in each individual case, some of them have been
sentenced to thousands of years in prison. Particularly these days famous
released prisoner Inés del Río, was
sentenced to 3828 years of prison. But something has changed in penal code
since then - the “Parot Doctrine” has appeared (named after one ETA terrorist
Henri Parot; maybe you understand it better in this wiki article which is surprisingly more comprehensible than the Spanish wiki article); it treats the possibility to shorten the sentences depending on
individual cases, but the maximum of the years spent in prison would be 40. And
it could be applied also retrospectively. So our Inés, who should have
abandoned the prison in 2008 (thanks to the doctrine), according to this same doctrine
should do so in 2017.
But the problem was
that the doctrine was applied retrospectively. This retrospective application
indeed violate European Convention on Human Rights (particularly articles 5 and
7). So all the prisoners affected should be promptly set on liberty, which at
first occurred with the ETA terrorists.
The families of the ETA
victims are outraged. But on the other hand, the terrorists have paid for their
acts, most of them spent about 30 years in prison. It does change a person,
especially intelligent person who fights for independence of his/her country.
They should abandon the prison. But they shouldn´t live the life they lived
before. The things have changed and maybe now is the right time to open the
non-violent dialogue.
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