Word: eta
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...Spain, always outpointing his boss, Prime Minister José María Aznar, in opinion polls. Jaime Mayor Oreja has a deep, calming voice, is rarely ruffled and, during five years as Interior Minister, had a good record as overseer of police actions against the Basque terrorist group ETA. A Basque himself, he seemed to be the perfect pick when Aznar made him the Popular Party's candidate for 'lehendakari', or president, of the autonomous northern region in the May 13 elections. Most commentators agreed, especially after the PP and the Socialists joined in an informal coalition to dislodge...
...Europe's bloodiest regions, and the majority of them decided that while Mayor Oreja may be popular with Spaniards, he is anathema to Basques. Or rather, they flatly rejected the idea of the central powers stepping in to resolve the separatist issue that has been marked by ETA's murder of some 800 people over the past three decades. "The PP deserved to lose," said Basque lawyer Marta Cebreros. "They came in like a colonial conqueror...
...only good news for the central government - and for those Basques who are both nationalist and nonviolent - is that Ibarretxe's gain was at the expense of Euskal Herritarrok, the party seen as the political face of ETA. In past elections its refusal to condemn the terrorists' actions has not stopped EH attracting 200,000-plus votes. This time the party's representation was halved to seven seats...
...began counter attacking ETA in 1983, killing a total of 27 people, most of them across the border in France, where ETA members frequently lie low after perpetrating their atrocities. The GAL toll is a drop in the ocean of blood shed by ETA - some 800 deaths in a reign of terror that has wracked Spain for more than three decades. The GAL operated about one tenth of that time, but what makes them so sinister is that they were not, as at first it appeared, a bunch of far-right fanatics fed up with the law's inability...
...jailing of such big fish - both of whom are free pending applications for pardons, along with the conviction of almost a dozen others, members of the Guardia Civil and former Socialist officials in the autonomous Basque region - has been a propaganda gift for ETA. It has also served to convince a significant number of moderate Basques that the central government still wants to crush their cultural identity, just as Franco did. Woodworth writes that not only did the dirty war fail to destroy ETA, but the investigations - or lack thereof - into its members and backers provided "rich material...