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.

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.

On Friday 11 July 1997, Deia (Biscayan diary related to the PNV party that since the regional elections of 1980 holds the majority minority in the Basque Autonomous Community and occupies the Presidency, alone or in coalition) published the following titles on the front page: "ETA kidnaps and threatens to kill within 48 hours a town councillor of the PP from Ermua. The armed organisation demands in order to avoid it, that Basque prisoners are immediately taken to Basque prisons".

The first paragraphs of the cover information said that: "An anonymous informant that said to speak in the name of ETA, informed yesterday afternoon in a call made to Egin Irratia-Egin Radio about the kidnapping of the town councillor of the PP Miguel Ángel Blanco Garrido and threatened to kill him if, within 48 hours, all prisoners of the terrorist organisation weren’t taken to Basque jails. The phone call, made at 17 hours yesterday afternoon, was immediately made known to the PP and the Ertzaintza, who communicated to the National Court, along with the National Police, the opening of an investigation, in order to find out and confirm the kidnapping of the councillor…"

Later, I will comment on the strategic and essential fact that what ETA demanded to let the councillor free DIDN’T INVOLVE ANY INFRINGEMENT OF SPANISH LAW (as would have happened if, following the Peruvian MRTA at the kidnapping of the Japanese Embassy in Lima, ETA had demanded to free its imprisoned militants). It is strategic to understand the whole process: that WHAT ETA DEMANDED FROM THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT WAS THAT THEY OBEYED SPANISH LAW, what had already been asked by the votes of the absolute majority of the Basque Parliament and by the absolute majority of the Basque trade union representatives and claimed for months by a real clamour of practically all sections of Basque society.

The Spanish Government held in its ground to keep violating the law. And the councillor was found shot by ETA on Saturday 12.

These are the facts that triggered the JULIAZO off. Let us analyse now the JULIAZO itself.

3. Six million demonstrators? Franco´s "Plaza de Oriente" again. Again the Spanish and fascist grotesque falsification of reality.