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.

1. Of all stories in History, the saddest one is the Spanish. Because it doesn’t have a happy end.

An excellent poet said, partly as a moan, partly as a synthetic historical diagnosis, that of all stories in History the saddest one is the Spanish. Because it doesn’t have a happy end. Throughout this XX century, the Peoples that have endured the severity of the People’s prison that the Spanish State is (the Basque People, the Catalonian People, the Galician People, the People from the Canary Islands, the Asturian People, the Andalusian People, the Saharan People, the Guinean People, and the Castilian miserable people itself) have terribly suffered under the harsh rule and jackboot of the Spanish ruling bloc of classes. Some classes (the Castilian and Andalusian land-owner and financial aristocracy, the Basque pro-Spain and Catalonian pro-Spain industrial bourgeoisie and the classes and fractions of classes to their support and service) which are among the most ignorant, most incompetent, most servile successively to the British and American Empires, the greediest, the most brutal and cruel classes in the planet.

In 1936, in reply to the military uprising against the legitimate Government of the II Republic (organised and financed by that ruling bloc of classes that had lost the political power in 1931 and now feared to lose their economical and social power), those Peoples led the most important REVOLUTION of the XX century in Europe after the Russian, the only one that has so far ever in the planet for many months successfully tried out libertarian communism (in Aragon thanks to the action of the Catalonian and Aragonese anarco-syndicalists). For three years, Madrid was the trench where the bodies and lives of the brilliant and generous youth of tens of countries became the breakwater against fascism.

The mass intervention of Mussolini’s Italian fascism and Hitler’s German nazism, the support of the Catholic Church led by the Vatican, the accomplice pseudo non-intervention policy of England and France, the calculatedly intermittent Stalinist intervention and the theoretical and practical mistakes as well as the internal conflicts in the revolutionary direction made the fascist victory possible. And the long night of stone of Franco´s dictatorship dropped for forty years on the Peoples of Spanish State, building with the mortar of hundreds of thousands executed the machine of terror, overexploitation and pulling out of the added value that made the Spanish ruling bloc of classes rich. I will only mention one fact: a farmer’s average real salary income (measured according to the wheat kilos he could buy with a day’s wage) tumbled to the become in 1951 the half of 1936, and this level wasn’t recovered until 1963. (1) Those twenty-five (1939-1963) years of farming overexploitation were the first loot of the Spanish ruling bloc of classes.

Gauleiter and protégé firstly of Franco and later of the United States, Franco died in bed. And a metamorphosis, erroneously called "democratic transition" and copied from the Prussian of 1848, with Adolfo Suárez playing the part of Camphausen, transformed the Spanish nazi-fascist State of Franco into the "young Spanish democracy" of Juan Carlos I, the King Franco nominated. Metamorphosis that naturally left the riches stolen by the ruling bloc of classes intact, intact Franco´s army, intact Franco´s different torturer and assassin police corps, intact Franco´s jails, intact the pro-Franco judges that jailed or made execute or garrotte the anti-Franco fighters, intact bureaucracy and corrupt, incompetent and servile civil servants of Franco´s regime. Remember that lucid sentence by Gramsci: "fascists have been able to develop their activity, only because tens of civil servants -above all among national security corps (public prosecutors, household troops, carabineers) and among magistracy- have been their moral and material accomplices ". (2) There was no «Nuremberg Process» for Spanish fascism, for Spanish war and dictatorship criminals, and the sinister State machine continued its life without interruption.

The Basque people, which during the last fifteen years of Franco´s regime had been the only effective anti-Franco resistance (along with the heroic and later betrayed by their own leadership rank-and-file communists), that wasn’t to be deceived by the "democratic" lamb skin worn now by the Spanish nazi-Fascist wolfs, refused the Spanish Constitution of 1978 (LINK TO GRAPHIC AT THE SECTION A REVOLUTION BREWING …), voted NO to the NATO (link to the same graphic) and kept on demanding self-determination right for the Basque Country. A considerable fraction of Basque population (some hundreds of thousands of Basques) concentrated around ETA, continued and continues demanding FREEDOM FOR THE BASQUE COUNTRY.

That’s why now, in July 1997, the "JULIAZO" has taken place. That’s why in July 1997 THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT ORGANISED AGAINST THE BASQUE LEFT NATIONALIST MOVEMENT THE BIGGEST FASCIST MASS MOBILISATION KNOWN IN EUROPE SINCE THE EXTINCTION OF NAZI GERMANY (including "night of broken glasses" and "witch-hunts").

It is common that chroniclers of Spanish reality use a peculiar form to name briefly and synthetically in Spanish the common and frequent attempts of revolts or uprisings, coups or self-coups, repeated TENS OF TIMES during the last two centuries in Spanish History. That form consists of adding the suffixes "-azo" or "-ada" to the name of the place or the leader of the coup. So, we talk about "la carlistada" (1833), "la vicalvarada" (1854), "la sanjurjada" (1932) or "el tejerazo" (1981). That’s why I talk about the JULIAZO here.

2. The event that triggered the JULIAZO off: ETA (Basque Revolutionary and Socialist Organisation for National Liberation EUSKADI TA ASKATASUNA) kidnapped and killed the town councillor of the PP Miguel Ángel Blanco Garrido.