Bearing witness to decades of strife

Basque and Spanish officials are set to meet today to discuss ways to halt ethnic violence.

Separatist violence is flaring again in Spain, and for journalist Carmen Gurruchaga, it triggers an unpleasant and very personal sense of déjà vu.

Ms. Gurruchaga has survived two attacks by the Basque armed separatist group, ETA, including a bomb placed outside her home in San Sebastian in December 1997.

Now she lives in Madrid, where, constantly accompanied by two body guards, she continues to cover the troubled Basque region for Spain's second largest daily newspaper, El Mundo. "A lot of media are covering the Basque Country from here in Madrid," she says. "I don't think that's normal, but at the same time, the journalists living there don't dare say what they think for fear of being attacked."

Spanish and Basque officials are set to meet today on the issue of ETA violence, a topic which has taken on a new urgency recently as the ETA has intensified its activity.

Last month, the group was reportedly responsible for the deaths of a policeman and a local politician, as well as bombings in Madrid and Barcelona, and an attempted bombing of the airport in Málaga.

On Tuesday, a suspected ETA member blew herself up and injured others while handling explosives in the Mediterranean coastal town of Torrevieja.

Since a 14-month cease-fire was called off in January 2000, 35 people have died in terrorist attacks, and the ETA has warned foreign tourists of "undesirable consequences" if they visit Spain this year.

Since 1968, terrorist attacks have claimed more than 800 victims.

"For ETA, the past 25 years of democracy simply doesn't exist," says Gurruchaga.

In recent years, the terrorist group has stepped up the pressure on the media, whom they continue to view as being under Madrid 's orders. In spring of 2000, El Mundo columnist Jose Luis Lopez De Lacalle was assassinated.

There is evidence that ETA has not forgotten about Gurruchaga. Last fall, a bomb was mailed to a prominent lawyer in San Sebastian. The device, which failed to go off, was concealed in a copy of a book co-authored by Gurruchaga that exposed suspected links between the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and shadowy organizations linked to ETA.

Gurruchaga's bravery in the face of ETA has not gone unnoticed. In the fall of 2000, she received the press freedom award from the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, the first European journalist to receive the award. More recently, she was honored by Human Rights Watch and the International Women's Media Foundation.

Despite this recognition, Gurruchaga says that the foreign press should do more to make the world aware of what is going on in Spain.

"I think more people need to realize that, in a 'first world' country, there are people who are killing journalists," she says.

Herself a Basque, Gurruchaga is symbolic of Spain's struggle to reconcile conflicting interests. She supports ideas widely held among Basques such as autonomy, control over the regional education system and the preservation of cultural identity. But she rejects the push toward an independent state and the concept of a Basque race.

"I think the idea of an independent Basque state is a little absurd," she says. "There aren't even 50 percent of the people in the Basque Country who want that. The weakest point of the radical nationalists is that they think they are better than the rest."

Like Gurruchaga, Spain continues to wrestle with how to maintain regional cultural identities while preserving its democracy. How the conflict is resolved could have consequences elsewhere in Spain. Although self-determination movements in Catalonia and Galicia lack the violent streak characteristic of the Basque separatists, they will certainly take cues from how the Basque issue is settled.

Gurruchaga says the recent spate of ETA violence is a sign that the group is weaker politically after May Basque regional elections that saw its political wing, Euskal Herritarrok, suffer a loss of 50 percent of its votes. "ETA's violence annuls the political debate," she says. "It doesn't make sense for them to enter into a debate now, because they will lose. I think they think more violence will lead to more pressure on the government to move toward negotiation."

Still, there is hope. In the election, the moderate Nationalist Party, the PNV, claimed its strongest electoral showing in its history, despite a formidable challenge mounted by former Spanish Interior Minister and member of Spain's ruling Popular party, Jamie Mayor Oreja, himself a Basque.

Gurruchaga says the PNV victory has a double edge. "They got votes from the whole spectrum of Basque nationalists," she says. "Therefore, they can't cut ties with the radical element nor can they become too radical." On the other hand, she thinks the PNV's victory gives it some room to raise issues considered taboo previously. "Before the elections, the situation was so polemic that they couldn't even talk about the weather," she says. "I think the elections made it so they can put the issue of stopping the violence on the table."

A meeting earlier this week between Spanish Prime Minister Jose María Aznar and Basque regional Premier Juan José Ibarretxe ended in a deadlock. Mr. Aznar stressed his opposition to Mr. Ibarretxe's desire to begin the process of holding a referendum on self-determination, and Ibarretxe said such a process would go ahead as promised in his election manifesto.

The Spanish government has maintained that the violence must be stopped before other issues can be debated. Gurruchaga agrees."You can't talk freely when you have a pistol to your head," she says.