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In Europe

Titel: In Europe Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Geert Mak
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constructed an official Basque language, he composed a national anthem and even created his own ‘typically Basque’ typography. His final play,
Libe
, was about a woman who chose death rather than marry a Spaniard. Arana himself married a farm girl, simply for the ‘purity’ of her blood. After he died, she wasted no time finding a new husband: a Spanish policeman.
    Arana called his new nation Euskal Herría, meaning ‘the country where Basque is spoken’. The region was to include the three Basque provinces, plus Navarra and the French Basque Country. Many Basque nationalists regard him these days as having been a bit soft in the head, but his Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) is still the biggest party in the Basque Country, his bust still figures prominently in the headquarters of the PNV, the most important nationalist prize bears his name, and his racist speeches have never quite been forgotten either.
    During the Spanish Civil War, Basque nationalism turned into a militant resistance movement. At first the Spanish nationalists saw the staunch Catholic Basques as their natural allies, but that changed quickly enough. Franco and his supporters wanted a strong, central government, and that was what the Basque nationalists so vehemently opposed. In exchange for their loyalty, the republican leaders gave the Basques the republic they had been dreaming of. That independent Euskadi was short-lived. After only a few months, the new republic was trampled underfoot by Franco's troops in May 1937. The nationalist leaders went into exile or were imprisoned, an end was put to all forms of autonomy, the Basque language was banned and Basque teachers were sacked. Thousands of Basques were murdered: some estimates put it at more than 25,000. In theprison at San Sebastian the executions took place every day until 1947.
    The PNV survived and developed into the moderate conservative Christian party that has been in power in the Basque Country for years. For a small group of Marxist students in Bilbao, however, that was far too tame. In 1959 they took a more radical tack: they set up Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Country and Freedom), otherwise known as ETA. One of their first attacks, in 1961, was on a train full of Franco veterans on their way to San Sebastian. Franco reacted vehemently and in kind: at least a hundred people were arrested, many of them were tortured, some were executed, others received decade-long prison sentences. The most famous ETA attack came on 20 December, 1973, when Franco's crown prince, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, was blown up. The explosion was so powerful that the admiral, with car and all, flew fifteen metres into the air and landed in the courtyard of a neighbouring Jesuit monastery. The badly damaged Dodge, licence number PM 16416, is now on display at the Army Museum in Madrid. Blanco was Franco's last prospect of a natural successor.
    According to some Basques, there never was a ‘good’ ETA that later went bad. ‘ETA has always been bad,’ writer and ETA pioneer Mikel Azurmendi said later, and that had to do with the total imbalance between ends and means. After Franco's death, and countless schisms within the movement itself, ETA gradually degenerated into a powerful terrorist organisation which financed itself by means of extorted ‘taxes’, which did not shrink from blowing up a Barcelona supermarket full of women and children, which would threaten anyone with death merely for voicing different views, and which, despite all this, still maintained considerable support, particularly among young Basques.
    When I travelled through the Basque Country in May 1999, it was intermission time. ETA had declared a ceasefire, and people were willing to talk. I had been put in contact with Monica Angulo, a Basque sociologist who spends six months a year in America. Along with a friend, she showed me everything there was left to see in Guernica: the stump of Rousseau's legendary oak – now protected by a Grecian dome; the old hall where the free Basques once met and still meet; the museum with its paintings of priests, banners and the taking of solemn pledges; and the new oak tree that has already been in place for 140 years. ‘Basquenationalism is mostly anti-Madrid,’ Monica said. ‘It has a very personal background. Almost everyone here has a friend, a brother or a cousin who has been in prison at some point or who has had other major runins with Madrid. That automatically makes people

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