Word: eta
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...growing number of Basque businessmen are taking the courageous step of refusing to pay ETA-imposed revolutionary "taxes"-extortion payments that have long been a source of millions of dollars in terrorist revenue. Typically, an industrialist would be "invited" by ETA to visit the adjoining Basque regions of France, where levies would be collected. In the past, businessmen who did not co operate were "kidnaped" or "kneecapped" (shot in the legs). Others fled the region. Recently, however, one industrialist refused to pay up and merely sent the extortion note to the moderate Basque Nationalist Party, which controls the regional parliament...
...middle class has moved away from the ETA, and Basques in general have wearied of the struggle, the terrorists have come to draw most of their support-and recruits-from the dismal industrial suburbs that dot the narrow Basque mountain valleys some 20 to 25 miles inland. One such is Renteria (pop. 18,000), which adjoins the old Spanish summer royal residence of San Sebastian. A river running through town has the sickly sweet stench of dumped industrial wastes. A pall of chemical smoke from paper, plastics and cement factories hangs over the area on all but the windiest days...
Residents of Renteria speak often of a raid in 1976 when scores of police, searching for terrorists, smashed shop windows, urinated in elevators and looted stores. Says the mayor of Renteria, Xabin Olaizola: "ETA will not disappear until there are profound guarantees of rights for the Basque people. It is better to take the gamble of having ETA. It is the guarantee that we can keep fighting for our rights...
Madrid's refusal to reform the police in the Basque country can only deepen the sense of alienation. Indeed, some conspiratorially minded Basques already believe that the ETA terrorists and the Spanish police have developed an almost symbiotic relationship, each helping the other to hold back the further progress of democracy in Spain. Says Arzallus: "I am convinced that some sectors in Madrid find ETA's existence convenient...
From time to time, frustrated Spaniards have wondered about a possible Soviet hand behind ETA. In May, Prime Minister Calvo-Sotelo spoke vaguely of the "international" dimensions of the terrorist problem. But he has not repeated that statement. The question asked more frequently by moderate politicians in Madrid is why ETA keeps trying to provoke a right-wing coup that would take back everything the Basques have gained since Franco's death. Answers a Basque nationalist in exile in France: "It would only demonstrate what they already believe, that Spain is basically fascist, that they were right all along...