31.7.1997. Analysis of July 1997 in Euskal Herria.

THE "JULIAZO". IN JULY 1997 THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT ORGANISED AGAINST THE BASQUE LEFT NATIONALIST MOVEMENT THE BIGGEST FASCIST MOBILISATION KNOWN IN EUROPE SINCE THE EXTINCTION OF NAZI GERMANY.

13. Phoenix with no previous ashes, Herri Batasuna made on 27 July more than 40.000 people march along la Concha Promenade in San Sebastian. Of course, no Spanish paper published the easy picture taken from Igeldo or Ulia or a helicopter. And they lied to «prove» that HB has lost influence.

I had on Sunday 27 at about 14,30 hours the clearest example I’ve seen in the last few years of what dauntless wretchedness, the shamelessness of degeneration and the misery of slavery is. I saw it all on the face of a «journalist» of Canal Plus when, over the evident images of tens of thousands of people at the demonstration called by HB marching along la Concha Promenade in San Sebastian, she said in a perfectly ordinary tone that «Hundreds of people» had come up to HB’s demonstration. I was impressed, rather than angry, by the dauntlessness she had to deny the evidence.

I did see her face when lying at least. But I didn’t see Pedro J. Ramirez’s or any media directors’ face, who lied through their teeth about the amount of people that had come up to the demonstration, in order to make their lies fit the by them gratuitously claimed fall in the popular influence of HB. Because HB, the phoenix bird of Basque politics, HADN’T BEEN REDUCED TO THE ASHES as foreseen and claimed as logical effect of the EL JULIAZO by its organisers and leaders.

And if in February 1996 it was the ONLY Basque political force to call an electoral meeting at a soccer stadium, filling to overflowing with 40,000 people the capacity for 35,000 people of Anoeta Stadium in San Sebastian, this time they gathered 40,000 people again (rivalling with beaches and vacations, with bans and obstacles, threats and criminalisation and witch-hunt) marching along la Concha Promenade. Where dozens of European journalists had the opportunity to see them. And to verify how Spanish mass-media lie.

The news those European journalists brought to their newspaper offices, the news the Spaniards didn’t hear or watch, is very simple: the JULIAZO has not stopped the Left Nationalist Movement from continuing marching, from keeping on demanding that Spain obeys its own laws. From keeping on demanding the same ETA did when they captured the PP councillor and that Spanish Government hid from the Spaniards: that Spain obeys the Law, that Spain respects the rights of Basque political prisoners, that obeys the will of the absolute majority of the Basque Parliament, the will of the absolute majority of Basque union representatives, the recommendation of the European Parliament and what Basque society through countless groups and sectors has been demanding. That is: Basque prisoners to the Basque Country.

July 97 began with that claim and finished with it. The JULIAZO has been a strike. But a failed strike.

Justo de la Cueva

JUBILANT POSTSCRIPT