The Basques: Business

Even before their spectacular assassination of President Luis Carrero Blanco, members of the E.T. A. (for Euzkadi Ta Azkatasuna--meaning Basque Land and Liberty) were electrifying Spain with their terrorist raids. In addition to many fire and bombing attacks, the small band of fanatical Basque separatists has since 1969 committed six assassinations, three kidnapings and 40 bank raids, collecting $14 million. Earlier this year, after police fatally shot a Basque leader, Eustaquio Mendizabal, the E.T. A. was comparatively quiet. But the Basques have recently renewed their terrorism with a vengeance. Their ultimate, if fanciful aim: to unite all the Basques in both France and Spain into an independent state.

The separatist movement is only the latest incarnation of a tradition of resistance that goes back thousands of years. Settled in the Western Pyrenees since Paleolithic times, the round-faced, stocky Basques are probably Europe's first known people. In earlier periods they resisted the Romans, the Visigoths, the Moors and the Franks under Charlemagne. Similarly, the E.T.A. is now struggling to regain for the Basques their ancient, almost tribal traditions of self-government.

Today the roughly 2,000,000 Basques are an industrious, aggressive people, with a passion for gambling, especially during Sunday matches of jai alai. They speak a highly inflected language, which has some 175 verb suffixes and is unrelated to any Indo-European tongue. Those who live on the French side of the border are poor agricultural people, and many of them have been moving to Paris, Bordeaux and other cities. But the four Basque provinces of Spain (Vizcaya, Alava, Guipuzcoa and Navarra) are among the country's richest. Through the centuries many Basques have gone out into the world and achieved greatness. Among them: St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius of Loyola, Philosopher Miguel Unamuno and South American Revolutionary Hero Simon Bolivar.

Only a minority of the Spanish Basques still live in the remote mountain fastnesses or on the Bay of Biscay and follow their ancient occupations of shepherding, fishing and smuggling. About 80% now live in such pulsating industrial centers as Bilbao and the area around San Sebastian, where they have risen to many middle-management jobs and acquired a reputation as shrewd bankers and businessmen.

Though often well entrenched in the Spanish economy, the Basques continue to regard the Franco regime as an illegitimate usurper of their ancient liberties. They fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War of 1936--when for a few months an autonomous Basque Republic existed--and ever since they have been regarded by the Madrid government as a potential source of unrest. Though several have achieved high national positions, none of the civil or military governors of the four provinces are Basque. The Guardia Civil, a branch of the national security police, is concentrated more heavily in those provinces than in any other part of Spain.

Basque dislike of outside control is also reflected in the Roman Catholic Church. Nationalistic Basque priests, who rarely rise much in the hierarchy, are often at odds with the Franco-approved bishops and oppose the close identification of the church leadership with the regime.

The E.T.A. was founded in the late 1950s, and until a few years ago its several hundred members did little more than paint slogans on walls. But in the mid-1960s a group of young Basque patriots rejected the moderation of their elders and secretly formed the terrorist "Fifth Wing" of the E.T.A. Consisting of a few dozen men at most, it is a tautly disciplined, highly trained guerrilla band, well supplied with arms either captured from the police or bought in Sweden and Czechoslovakia. Most Basques have scant interest in the E.T.A.'s brand of terrorism. But though unlikely to achieve its ultimate goal of Basque independence, the E.T.A. is today the group with the greatest ability to create serious trouble for Franco's regime. It has proved that it can strike when and whom it pleases, and it clearly intends to make more trouble for the Madrid government.

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