an outstanding debt

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Honoring the memory of Miguel Ángel Blanco today is taking on an unfinished task: to delegitimize ETA’s posthumous alibis and address the historic impunity claimed by its legatees

Twenty-five years after the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco, his memory remains indelible in my memory. In another place I mentioned how, when we got to the government, we knew that ETA had targeted the People’s Party. We didn’t guess then – we soon found out – how far his criminal target would reach. Until the attempt of our physical and political destruction. The murder of Gregorio Ordóñez and the attack that I survived were warnings to stop us and break the new anti-terrorist policy we had pledged.

Some of Kantauri’s handwritten instructions have just been published: “Every PP politician is objective, use all possible force to remove a PP councilor.” On July 12, 1997, after kidnapping him 48 hours earlier, ETA complied with its ultimatum by killing Miguel. He practiced the “socialization of suffering”, theorized by Batasuna. The “Oldartzen” presentation was the dirty prologue to a bloodstream. Since then, non-nationalist politicians have been a priority target of ETA.

I remember the terrifying rate at which PP councilors started falling and also how little it cost to fill their hole with volunteers being shot in the neck or sticky bombs. We now know that, to order these killings, the ETA chiefs used a vindictive expression: “establish councilors”. Carlos Iturgaiz could not then sense how right he was when he said: “they kill us like sparrows.”

The recognition of all victims does not diminish the uniqueness of Michelangelo. His despicable murder caused an unprecedented reaction throughout Spain. ETA tried to avenge the release of Ortega Lara with that death; he felt the blow and reacted with the utmost of his usual ferocity. He did not hesitate to use Michelangelo’s life as a medium of exchange to blackmail the government and society as a whole. The reaction of his family, of the city of Ermua, of all of Spain marked a milestone for the fight against terrorism to break new ground. The government’s firm stance found no answer. I will never forget the exemplary attitude of Miguel Ángel’s family at that time.

Ermua meant many things. Among them that the nationalist pursuit of the monopoly of the treatment of terrorism could be challenged. The social response identified the essential political henchmen for ETA to have social oxygen. It was discovered that it was not unbeatable and that Spanish democracy was not condemned to an “infinite bond” with it. His defeat, that of his aim and strategy, was possible. That implied his historical delegitimization; a resolute refusal to rewrite history, to any attempt to disperse responsibilities to blur the guilt.

Twenty-five years later, 60% of young Spaniards do not know who Miguel Ángel Blanco was. Twenty-five years later, Bildu agrees with the government on the content of a “democratic memorial law”. The coalition whose coordinator walked along Zarauz beach while a crowd in Bilbao called for Michelangelo’s freedom is part of a parliamentary majority willing to reprogram our memory. With this script announced: “We’re going to rein in the story of an exemplary Transition.”

An attempt is being made to cancel the victims killed by ETA as a priority democratic reference. The best reason not to agree: remember that his memory has political significance. It has it because their killers’ intent was to eliminate them as obstacles to their political claim. ETA sought social distaste to impose or facilitate a political program. The political significance of the murdered victims makes it unacceptable that ETA’s historic goals can guide any reform.

I do not speculate; This is included in the Basque Law on the Victims, which was adopted with the greatest consensus in 2008: «The restoration of full citizenship, the restoration of a democratic order to Basque society, implies the negation of the political project which has been carried out more than 800 reasons that delegitimize it ».

For this reason, honoring Miguel ngel’s memory today will mean committing to an unfinished task: to delegitimize ETA’s posthumous alibis; end the historic impunity that his legatees strive for. It is time to make the heralded victory over terrorism effective by deriving the relevant corollaries.

It is an outstanding debt of every Democrat with every victim. And my personal one with Michelangelo. Twenty-five years after his murder, I’m writing these lines to solve it.

Source: La Verdad

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