Written by Alan R. King

Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 10:09am

2003.

It was my first year living in El Salvador when I saw the news, on the internet at work, about a Spanish judge sending in the hated Guardia Civil to forcibly shut down Euskaldunon Egunkaria, the only Basque-language national daily newspaper, confiscate the installations, arrest the employees and management who faced criminal charges and long jail sentences, on trumped-up politically-motivated charges.

I was stunned as I read the news and wept silently for my long-adopted country, once again being bullied by Spain, which hates the Basques because it refuses to accept that they are a real people who have never been Spanish, and never will be. And insist on making that a crime.

I wept even though I knew the Basques would be fighting back, as they always do, in so many ways, on so many levels, in so many places, then, now and at so many other times in their history, and prehistory, and future.

I wept, secretly, inside my heart, from frustration because it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that so many people work so hard, so perseveringly, with such dedication and spirit and faith in themselves and their people, their country, their self-built nation, to do the near impossible against near-impossible odds, only to have their work undone by an envious bully, the Spanish state, swinging around its bigger arms and legs to topple someone else’s carefully constructed sand-castle.

Some people had laughed, a few years earlier, at the idea of creating a proper, independent, professional, high-quality, daily national (i.e. pan-Basque) newspaper in the Basque language, a long-persecuted minority language with fewer than a million speakers. Said it wouldn’t happen, couldn’t work, wasn’t practical, a utopian dream. Then the dream came true, was put into practice, worked, happened… and some people had to stop laughing.

So instead, they swung their arms and legs around and knocked down the sand-castle. Using whatever force they had at their disposal. Inventing false charges that the paper supported and was supported by “terrorists”. When the real reason was simply fear, hatred and suspicion of anything and everything in the Basque language. In other words, intolerance for the idea that Basque people can do big things in their own language. Anger because some Basques simply don’t want to forget their roots, adopt Spanish, and BECOME SPANISH.

I wept for anger at the world community. So-called free world. Quote-unquote democracies. With all their bullshit and swaggering self-righteousness. The lack of democracy in “democratic Spain” is as flagrant and obvious as ever, but the so-called world community refuses to see it. When Spain was under a murderous right-wing military dictatorship for forty long years, with an ally of Hitler at the helm, the west, after World War II, turned a blind eye and the US shook hands with Franco and sent over packages of powdered milk in exchange for military bases. And forgot that Spain was a fascist regime, out of self-interest, thereby selling the entire population of the Spanish state down the river. Franco died of old age in 1975, still having his enemies shot (especially his Basque enemies by the way) with his last breath. Act Two: what next? Next, the Spanish establishment declares itself democratic, elects a king, modernizes its style but continues to persecute the Basques relentlessly from that day until this. And the world community congratulate the Spanish and welcomes them into the free world. And decrees that the Basques are terrorists.

Conniving with Spanish thugs, isolating the Basque mass-movement that fought to retain their historical identity and build their own country, in their own language, with their own institutions, ideas and resources.

So, they closed down our newspaper. At one stroke the Basques lost their very own, hard-earned, major organ of the press, telling their own story as a nation day by day in their own language. The ambitious project of so many people, supported by countless individuals and groups in Basque society, built with so much hard work, was suddenly stamped out, wantonly destroyed by foreigners who didn’t even understand what they were destroying (or did understand what it signified and wouldn’t have it). People lost their jobs and their livelihood, or their professional careers were stunted or interrupted. People with perfectly respectable opinions and aspirations were accused of forming part of a terrorist network, of supporting violence and of being what they were not allowed to be. People were arrested, imprisoned, physically and psychologically mistreated, threatened, intimidated, condemned, and made to face criminal charges.

And tortured. Methodically, systematically, brutally tortured. Because this happens in Spain. We know it happens. The hypocritical world community does nothing about it because it is in their interest to pretend that Spain is a democratic country. The state denies it, and silences anyone who claims they have been tortured. Because the official position is that there is no torture and if you claim there is you are attacking the state, trying to give it a bad reputation, and will be punished. Yes, prisoners who denounce torture get sentenced, imprisoned and tortured for claiming to have been tortured. In democratic Spain. Yes that IS what I just said… It takes somebody very brave indeed to still come out and state publicly that this has been done to them. Nobody would think of doing so lightly. Believe me. Well, people from Egunkaria appeared in public after the crackdown and did just that.

The Basques were enraged and poured into the streets to demonstrate pacifically in unheard of numbers, which means a lot of Basques, a people who have not been reluctant to demonstrate in large numbers before. But these numbers were larger.

A new Basque-language newspaper sprang up, almost overnight, despite the risks, despite the hardship, despite the cost, funded and run by Basque people and organisations who simply would not have this. The call went out for subscriptions to the new venture and the response from Basque society was immediate, overwhelming, unambiguous: people put their money where their mouths already were to say: We Will Not Have This.

As I trusted and hoped they would, because that is the Basques. That is the Basque Country.

No wonder Spain hates them.

N But here I was in El Salvador. I could only read about the massive demonstrations on the net. I could only support them with my heart from so far away. And I was not only far but also alone. There were no Basques, nobody who knew about all this, by my side, nobody to talk to about it. So I went into my English class that day (I was teaching English at a local university) and talked to my Salvadorean students about what was happening in a faraway country on another continent, and told them how I felt about it, and let off a bit of steam, got a bit of it off my chest, voiced my pain and anger and frustration for a few minutes.

And I DID do something about it, actually. Right there, right then. I made myself a promise and immediately started keeping it.

Because I wasn’t really in El Salvador to teach English. My personal mission there was to contribute my knowledge, my experience, my ideas, my skills and my effort to help an indigenous people of the Salvadorean state to recover their endangered ancestral language. I was already doing everything I could, working as hard as I thought I was able, devoting all my waking hours to finding ways to further that adopted cause. Which in the larger view of things is the same cause as the Basque cause. So I did what I consider was the most militant thing I could do at that moment to take action against the onslaught on Basque, which was to vow to double my efforts to save Nawat. I simply promised myself to try even harder, to push myself further, to fight the fight relentlessly.

There is always a way to fight back.

Seven years have gone by. It is 2010. Until this week, the Egunkaria case was still going on. A final decision had not yet been reached in the Spanish courts. The accused were still on trial. Facing a further possible twelve-year prison sentence if found guilty as charged, on top of all the misery they, and others, have already been subjected to. Accused of supporting the armed pro-independence organisation ETA which is classified as a terrorist organisation, and of being financed by ETA, and of taking orders from ETA – all of which the defendants, who are serious, dedicated professional journalists, have always flatly denied.

The Basque world awaited the court ruling with baited breath. Nobody knew for sure what the Spanish judge would say in the end. Any outcome seemed a possibility.

At last, the day before yesterday, the judge’s ruling was handed down: NOT GUILTY. The defendants have all been cleared of all the charges, and it has been acknowledged that there were no grounds for such charges and that the newspaper should never have been shut down in the first place. It is recognised that the unwarranted action against the paper was a result of Spanish prejudice against the Basque language and distrust of any kind of activities conducted in Basque, and that this is completely wrong and unconstitutional.

The prosecution has the right to appeal the decision.

Not a word has been said about any kind of compensation for all the damage caused.

And there was no mention of any legal measures to stop the same sad story from happening all over again, maybe tomorrow, or next year, or this afternoon.

So, it has been a time for celebration. But many questions remain unanswered, many fundamental issues unresolved, many points unclear, many wrongs unrighted. So very many wrongs, that it is not easy to sum them up in a few words. So I will quote a very good Basque writer called Anjel Lertxundi, writing yesterday in a column in the new Basque-language daily newspaper Berria (its name means “news” but it also means “new”)

“The harm that has been done to the defendants and their families, to the journalists working on the project, to the newspaper itself, to the readers, to the Basque language. Losses in terms of honour, in economic terms, social terms, political terms. Damage that has been inflicted on people’s physical and mental health. Individual damage. Collective damage.” (Berria, p. 5, 13 April 2010)

I just wanted to provide this explanation for friends who may not all be clear about what some other friends and I are talking about these days, and also give this personal testimony of an important day in the lives of many, many people in the Basque Country – and one in El Salvador. Because just as people ask each other, and are able to answer, “What were you doing when President Kennedy was shot?” or “Where were you on 9/11?”, we are able to ask and answer the question, “Where were you and what did you do when Egunkaria was closed down?” It is that sort of a day. And it is good, and right, and necessary, that we keep remembering it and talking about it.

~ ~ ~

Choose the correct answer:

a) The Guardia Civil closed down a newspaper.

b) People were arrested and tortured.

c) They were charged with supporting terrorism.

d) They went to prison.

e) The trial lasted 7 years.

f) Spanish justice works.

http://www.berria.info/argazkiak_jarraia/egunekoak/2010-04-13/zaldieroa.jpg

~ ~ ~

NEXT DAY: The Basque papers are still full of declarations and comments, different voices representing various sectors of Basque society, largely coinciding in their reactions and interpretations.

(Except for the pro-Spanish side and the usual bunch of Spanish-arse-kissers, who are content to act out straight-facedly the role of the idiot-face in the above comic strip and mouth sickeningly the line that the court ruling, wait for it, “proves that the Spanish justice system works”. Of course I don’t mean those voices…)

Here is a sample of what Basques are saying today, excerpted from the opinion column of the journalist Lorea Agirre writing on page 5 of today’s Berria (14 April 2010, “Zer dago gezurraren atzean?”). As with yesterday’s shorter quote, I have translated it myself:

It’s all a lie, that’s the truth. Now they have admitted it, after this seven-year ordeal. Nothing produces greater pleasure in life, they say, than being right. We were right, and we are certainly immensely happy for our five colleagues who might have had to go to prison. But if we were right, if it was all a lie, a dirty trick, and illegal, why did they do it?…

We are happy about this but we want to be angry. and this ruling in our favour has also infuriated us. They shut down and dissolved Egunkaria, carried out two raids and arrested 19 people, tortured seven of them, imprisoned six, demanded 700,000 euros in bail, left 180 people jobless, denied their daily newspaper to fifteen thousand buyers and fifty thousand readers, wiped out the shares of thousands of shareholders, made it necessary to spend 500,000 euros in court costs and to find 4.6 million euros to finance the creation of a new paper. That’s just a few of the figures giving a hint of all the havoc they caused. And then there is the human cost, the humiliation, being forced to turn aside from one’s vocation of making culture and devote all one’s energy to building up a defence against false accusations, and seeing everything you have worked for over many years of your life trashed… How could a single judge come to have the power to do something so awful? What are we supposed to say now when a court ruling is passed down declaring that everything that was done was illegal? Should we say thank you to the Supreme Court?

And what was Egunkaria, other than a way of helping Basque speakers to live a more normal life, just like everybody else? Egunkaria symbolised normalisation of the Basque language. And what is language normalisation but social normalisation, my right to speak my language in my country? What is language normalisation but cultural normalisation, my right to create and enjoy my own culture? What is language normalisation but personal normalisation, my right to live in my own language without that making me the target of suspicions and threats? What is language normalisation but the first step towards peaceful coexistence, recognition of the right to speak my language without getting insulted or abused for it? Just like everyone else. No more. No less. Egunkaria was Basque language normalisation. Which means that it was the normalisation of the Basque Country, of the country of the Basque language…

Saying that we were right does not heal the wound, does not dampen our rage, does not repair a smashed project. After beating a dog will it do to give it a friendly pat and expect it to express gratitude? Satisfaction, annoyance, anger. All of those together. And a fourth sentiment too: pride. Because we, the Basque language community, created Egunkaria. Afterwards we created Egunero. And then we created Berria, and it is we who have achieved the triumph of truth over lies in the Supreme Court. We have good reason to feel proud.

~ ~ ~

ANOTHER TAKE: This is an excerpt from today’s main page of the Ezker Abertzalea [Nationalist Basque Left] website (http://www.ezkerabertzalea.info/irakurri.php?id=3831), again my own translation:

We must recall that when this case opened a large part of society, including most people involved in the judicial system and the majority of the press and media, were not conscious of the strong offensive against us which they have since come to perceive. To them, the Egunkaria case was at first merely yet another step in the “fight against terrorism”; they accepted the state’s repressive activities unquestioningly.

It took a lot of work to get those sectors of society to see that this case is really an attack on us. The work of forging a broad front of solidarity by denouncing and criticising injustices has finally borne fruit:
- It has been demonstrated, once again, that the whole way in which the [Spanish] legal system works is unfair and irrational;
- It has been proven again that Basques are tortured by the Spanish state;
- It has again been shown that the state’s objective is the assimilation of the Basque Country.

But if there is one thing of particular note that has come out of all this, it has been the construction of a broad, heterogeneous popular front against repression. And that is what has finally led to a court ruling which exposes the injustice of this case for what it is and absolves the five defendants of all guilt. Thus the most important lesson to be learnt from this case is that it demonstrates how public pressure can force the state to pay a political price for its own aggression.