The GAL terrorism for which former Interior Minister José Barrionuevo and his former Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Vera, were convicted, remains largely a taboo subject in Spanish politics. But that great stain on the legacy of Felipe González’s mandate has emerged precisely in full commemoration of the 40th anniversary of his historic victory in 1982. Everything has been as a result of the interview in the newspaper El País, made public on Sunday, in which Barrionuevo justifies the dirty war against ETA. The statements have stirred up the victims and have forced the PSOE and the Government to make a move.
“The GAL should never have happened and only contributed to causing pain and feeding the Law of Talion”, affirmed this Wednesday the delegate of the Government in Euskadi, the socialist Denis Itxaso. In the act of commemorating Memory Day in Euskadi, Itxaso added that “the defense of human rights is not credible if it is not comprehensive and coherent. From the legitimacy that having defended freedom, democracy and the State of Right in the face of the terrorist threat, we once again condemn the existence of the GAL, since it was a great horror that caused a pain that is ours and subtracted credit and legitimacy from the State.”
The words of the senior government official in Euskadi represent a qualitative leap in the story maintained to date from the PSOE itself and also from the Executive, going one step further: “We must have the courage to face the task of delegitimizing of all hate speech without taboos or partial views. It is time for clarity and to claim the coherence of the Rule of Law and the democratic guarantees on which coexistence is based. Because democracy is weakened when it responds with the same coin to the violent and it cannot be accepted that there are victims who belong to one or the other, or of different consideration; but only victims of fanaticism and violence whose memory and respect must lay the foundation for any firm ground of justice and coexistence.”
From Ferraz it is preferred, at least for the moment and in public, to avoid the issue and refer to what was said by the PSE, the Government delegate and the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, in recent days. Neither the party’s spokeswoman at Monday’s press conference, Pilar Alegría, nor Pedro Sánchez himself in any of his speeches have mentioned the matter. Something different from the explicit positioning of the party in Euskadi. Its general secretary, Eneko Andueza, described Barrionuevo’s words as “unacceptable statements that seek to justify very serious, repugnant acts that go against democracy and against the rule of law.”
Andueza added that “the terrorist activities of the GAL will always count on the condemnation and forceful rejection of the Socialist Party of Euskadi”. In his opinion, those words “are reprehensible because they hurt the victims and are unfair to them because they do not take them into account, they despise them.” And he also stressed that “they go against a society that has suffered the unspeakable and that has already manifested itself repeatedly against all expressions of terrorism.”
Also from the Government there has been an explicit rejection of the words of the former Minister of the Interior of Felipe González. The current minister of that department, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, defined those perpetrated by the GAL as “terrorist acts of the utmost seriousness”, and wanted to underline that “the only means that made possible the defeat of ETA were the rule of law and the application of the law”.
Barrionuevo was sentenced to ten years in prison for his participation in the terrorist activities of the GAL, although he served a minimum part of the sentence. Now, in the aforementioned interview in the Prisa newspaper, the former minister has justified his responsibility in the dirty war against ETA. “The ETA members said it was a war. I could not act against those who are firing from my trench, even if they fired a wrong shot,” he says in that interview in which he acknowledges that he ordered the capture of the ETA leader in the south of France. José Mari Larretxea Goñi and also gave the order for Segundo Marey to be released when he was mistakenly kidnapped by the GAL.
For those words EH Bildu has already requested his appearance in a constitutional commission in the Congress of Deputies. The Basque pro-independence formation also urges that the Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños, appear to make known what the Government’s position is regarding Barrionuevo’s words despite the position already marked by Marlaska .
From United We Can, its parliamentary spokesman, Pablo Echenique, wonders why El País interviews “a convicted State terrorist, who boasts of his terrorist activities and who carried out State terrorism –he collaborated in the clandestine murder of people– being Felipe González’s Minister of the Interior? What do they want to tell us?”, he published on his Twitter account. Other members of the Executive, such as ERC, openly criticized Barrionuevo’s statements. “The State has duties in democratic matters,” said the ERC spokeswoman, Marta Vilalta.
In the acts of the Day of Memory in the Basque Country, which has been celebrated since 2010 on the date of November 10 as it is a date free of murders, for the first time there has been the presence of a victim of the GAL among those honored ( the Memorial that depends on the Interior has always included these victims). This is Veronique Caplanne, whose father was murdered in 1985 at the age of 36 because gunmen in the pay of the state mistook him for a member of ETA. “Thank you. We finally have the impression of being listened to, understood and considered”, Caplanne pointed out at the end of his intervention.
