Elections in Spain: controversy over the candidacies of seven former ETA members convicted of murder

In Spain it will be municipal and regional elections May 28 and the electoral campaign, which hasn’t been going on even for a week, is already tainted by the ghost of ETA, despite the fact that the Basque terrorist group announced in 2011 that it would stop killing and, six and a half years later, dissolved permanently.

It has to do with the poisoned dart that is thrown at politicians and candidates of the main parties the presence of 44 former members of ETA -seven of whom were convicted and served conviction for manslaughter or manslaughter– on the electoral lists of EH Bildu (Euskal Herria Bildu), the coalition of the Basque patriotic left which has five deputies in the Spanish Parliament.

It was there Collective of victims of terrorism (COVITE) which reported that 44 candidates for positions in the Basque Country and Navarra had been part of or collaborated with ETA.

“You had the immorality to include murderers and those convicted of terrorism on your lists,” said Consuelo Ordóñez, sister of the PP deputy in the Basque parliament Gregorio Ordóñez – assassinated by ETA in 1995 – and president of COVITE.

Controversial candidates include Juan Ramon Rojosentenced in 1991 to 29 years’ imprisonment for assassinate Francisco Gil Mendoza, a resident of Irun. Now Rojo appears in the lists for mayor of that municipality of Guipuzcoa.

OR Begon Uzkudunsentenced to 18 years for the assassination of councilor José Larrañaga Arenasin 1984, in Azoidia, and today number three in the mayor’s office of Régil, a few kilometers from where the councilor he murdered lived.

closed lists

Lists for May 28th They are already closed and cannot be changed.

The seven contested candidates, however, released a statement on Tuesday assuring that if they were elected, they will not take ownership of the charges for which they applied.

“Our nearly 4,500 candidates, all with their civil and political rights in place, sign Euskal Herria Bildu’s pledge to exclusively peaceful and democratic ways”, said Arnaldo Otegi, the Basque independence activist who tried to rebuild the outlawed Batasuna following the directives of ETA and today leads EH Bildu. He did so in a statement after which he asked no questions.

This Wednesday, in the first parliamentary session to scrutinize the PSOE-Podemos coalition government in the electoral campaign, the spokesman of the Popular Party (PP) in Congress, Cuca Gamarra, urged President Pedro Sánchez: “Are you going to break up with Bildu?”churches.

“To be so cruel to the People’s Party and so accommodating to Bildu it is what will mark its history forever Gamarra told the prime minister. The Spanish company does not forget that it recycles and legitimizes them”.

The opposition claims to Sánchez that Bildu integrate the so-called “investment block” which allowed the PSOE leader to add -together with Podemos and the Catalan separatists of Esquerra Republicana- the necessary votes for arrive at La Moncloa in 2020 and become the president of the first coalition government of Spanish democracy.

“ETA no longer exists”

“You have no other argument than ETA but ETA no longer exists”, Sánchez replied to the PP spokeswoman.

“It was defeated twelve years ago by Spanish democracy and it was a socialist government in the Basque Country and Spain that defeated ETA. It’s something you don’t accept, do not hire”, he stressed.

“The convicts who have served their sentences have been part of the lists since 2015, when you governed and did not shout to the sky as you do today. This is the truth,” added Sánchez.

The day before, the president had clashed in the Senate with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, chairman of the PP and leader of the opposition.

“Either break up with Bildu or break up with decency,” Núñez Feijóo cornered him.

“The People’s Party has negotiated with ETA. When ETA is nothing for Spain, ETA is everything for you -Sánchez replied-. In their desperation ETA, even if it doesn’t exist, is the only thing they have”.

Despite the rejection it generates among relatives of ETA victims, the appointments are legal. The inmates who are now running were disabled while serving their sentences.

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