The Memorial Center for the Victims of Terrorism has edited this video about the history of the terrorist group ETA.
Founded at the end of 1958 in the midst of Franco's dictatorship, ETA made itself known in a public manifesto in July 1959. The group stated its aim as to bring about an independent, socialist and Basque-speaking Basque Country, which would annex Navarre and the French Basque Country. In its 4th assembly, it adopted an action-reaction strategy; that is, attacks were to be used to provoke indiscriminate police repression of the Basque population so that a "revolutionary war" would break out. This strategy was applied in 1968, when the organization committed its first two murders, that of the civil guard, José Antonio Pardines and inspector Melitón Manzanas. Franco’s dictatorship gave a clumsy response in the form of mass arrests. And so a spiral of violence began; but the announced "revolutionary war" never came, just terrorism. Between 1970 and 1975 ETA carried out 145 attacks, including the assassination of the President of the Government, Luis Carrero Blanco, in 1973; and the bomb that killed 13 people and wounded another 70 in the Rolando cafeteria in Madrid in 1974.
After the first democratic elections in 1977, and despite the Amnesty Law that freed all ETA prisoners from jail, the different groups into which ETA had split decided to continue killing. During the Transition, ETA terrorists killed more than 300 people and represented the principle obstacle to the democratization process. This mayhem of terrorism was made possible by: the social and political rise of the "nationalist left", the existence of a “sanctuary” in France to where commandos escaped after carrying out their attacks, the inefficiency of the judicial and police systems, the lack of unity amongst democratic parties and the absence of a response by the public to ETA's crimes. The violence was financed by robberies, extortion and kidnappings.
