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Victims of ETA, the main opposition parties and unions of the security forces take to the streets this Saturday to demonstrate against a "traitor government". This is how the Victims of Terrorism Association (AVT) defines it, which called the protest this Saturday from the last 12.00:XNUMX in Plaza de Colón.
A mobilization that comes after almost four in which Pedro Sánchez and his Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, have forced prison policy in favor of ETA prisoners. So much so that many victims and groups that support them have decided to raise their voices with a “enough is enough”, as they will cry out today in the heart of the capital.
The “betrayals” of the PSOE, as the AVT qualifies them, were achieved even before Sánchez took over La Moncloa in mid-2018, when he assured with all solemnity that he would never agree with the political arm of the pro-ETA members: “With Bildu we are not going to agree, if you want I will repeat it twenty times”, he stated in an interview as early as 2015.
And so it continued until 2019, already as president, when he actively and passively denied that his party was going to agree with those of Otegi to take over the Government of Navarra: "With Bildu nothing is agreed," Sánchez insisted days before his partner María Chivite was invested regional president thanks to the abstention of 5 bildutarras deputies.
Just after the last general elections of 2019, Sánchez himself made Bildu one of his preferred partners. And, from there, the Government's decisions have been made with a common denominator: favoring the nearly 200 ETA prisoners who continue to serve their sentences, many of them for blood crimes.
As an informant from the Civil Guard revealed to my past, the environment of the ETA members has enjoyed a direct and privileged line with the Executive through the Government delegation in the Basque Country and Penitentiary Institutions, dependent on the Ministry of the Interior.
Meanwhile, the Sánchez government has liquidated the policy of dispersing the ETA members by means of rapprochements, of which Marlaska has authorized more than 300. Thus, of the 183 prisoners of the gang who continue to serve their sentences in Spain, more than half (101) are already in prisons in the Basque Country and Navarra and none remain more than 400 kilometers away.
In addition to approaches, the Government has also promoted other penitentiary measures, such as progress in grades. There is only one ETA member left in the strictest regime (first degree), while there are already 26 in the third degree, which allows them to access parole and, in practice, go out on the streets.
Something that will accelerate in the coming months due to another maneuver by this Government, such as transferring the jurisdiction of the three Basque prisons to the regional Executive at the end of last year. Or, what is the same, leaving half of the ETA prisoners –89 out of 181– and their future prison in the hands of the PNV, the hegemonic party in this community.
More concessions
The Sánchez Executive has explored more ways to help the condensed tarras with longer sentences, which are the ones that most concern and pressure Bildu. Thus, they contemplate including legal reforms so that they can deduct in Spain the years in prison that they serve in France for other crimes or reduce the real prison limit in our country, currently set at 40 years.
According to AVT calculations, only the first of these measures would allow fifty ETA members to save more than 400 years of the sentences imposed by the Spanish courts. Bildu's leader, Arnaldo Otegi, boasted in October to the Abertzales that “those 200 prisoners have to get out of jail. If for that we have to vote on the [General State] Budgets, we vote for them”.
Merci separate mention one of the situations that aroused the most indignation in the victims: the 'ongi etorri' or public tributes to ETA prisoners. Despite the fact that his environment promised to stop doing them, the truth is that they continue to be repeated while the Ministry of the Interior has spent four years without news about the legal reform that worries the AVT to punish with economic sanctions the municipalities that allow these acts . Just two weeks ago, hundreds of people paid tribute to ETA member Ibai Aginaga at the Berango municipal fronton with the complicity of this Biscayan town hall.
Justice does not stop
More news for the victims comes from the National High Court, which has put the Interior to the wall to grant third degrees with crude maps of repentance and requests for forgiveness in which the ETA members do not even mention the victims they murdered or the attacks they committed . It has also reopened several legal cases to try to prosecute members of the ETA leadership who ordered, planned or allowed crimes such as those of Gregorio Ordóñez and Miguel Ángel Blanco.
