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.

5. The MADE UP demonstration of Pamplona and the made up half a million of Bilbao.

The first one referred to the city I live, the historic capital city of the Basque Country: Iru¤ea-Pamplona. It is a peculiar case of falsification and of brutal and shameless lie. On a pair page (16) -which shows that the editorial staff did not give much importance to the event- DIARIO DE NOTICIAS, paper from Navarre, published on Sunday 13 a picture with nothing else but a brief picture foot that said «Gesto pot la Paz gather some hundreds of people in front of the monument to the ‘Fueros’». A bit exaggerated maybe, but possible according to the picture. The little importance of the event is corroborated since it wasn’t mentioned in EL PAIS of the same date, where on page 27 there is a review of the gatherings held on Saturday 12 in sixteen towns. They do mention Pamplona but referring to a gathering that took place at noon in Plaza del Castillo where 1,500 took part. The gathering at the monument isn’t mention neither in EL MUNDO (edition for the Basque Country) on Sunday 13, that on page 22 under the title «Thousands of Spaniards got to the streets» about Pamplona just says that «Hundreds of people made a stop in San Fermin festivities and gathered for more than three hours -this is the act EL PAIS accounts- to protest this new terrorist action of ETA. Besides, the bullfight was called off».

And, however, DIARIO DE NAVARRA had on Sunday 13 the nerve to MAKE UP that on Saturday at 21,30 there was in Pamplona a demonstration of 30,000 people at the monument of the ‘Fueros’. «30,000 people yelled ‘It’s enough to ETA’» was the title on page 28, and the text said that «Thousands of people, it might be more than 30,000 according to the police...». Naturally, the deceitful paper was unable to bring forward the simple evidence of a panoramic picture of the made up crowd. A very easy to take picture indeed, from any window of the surrounding buildings. If they had been really close to each other it might be possible to hold 30,000 people at Sarasate Promenade, if it were a big empty square and all the surface were filled at a rate of more than one person per square metre (the Promenade is 260 metres long from the monument to the Court and another 50 metres from the monument to the Palace of Navarre, and 43 metre wide up near the Monument and 63 at the end close to the Court). But, as any visitor to Sanfermines knows, Sarasate Promenade isn’t an empty rectangular square.

Besides the monument itself and the trees and numerous statues and telephone boxes and news-stand, permanently there, during Sanfermines a big area of the promenade is occupied by the grand platforms of CARITAS tombola and by the many stalls of street sellers. That is, there could NOT have been 30,000 people, and there weren’t. Close relatives of mine went by at the gathering time and did see the hundreds pointed out by DIARIO DE NOTICIAS, but did not seen the 30,000 people gathering made up by DIARIO DE NAVARRA. Just because they couldn’t stand the reality: that the quarter of a million inhabitants of the Valley of Pamplona and the thousands of foreigners kept on celebrating Sanfermines by singing, playing music, dancing and drinking after the PP town councillor had been killed, and that Gesto por la Paz only managed to gather some hundreds of sorrowful citizens for some minutes to express their mourn for the death.

Called by PNV, PSOE, PP, EA, IU-EB and UA, through a joint communiqué released on the 17th after the meeting of Ajuria Enea Treaty, the demonstration held in Bilbao on Saturday 12 at noon is another superlative example of reality forgery. EGIN’s TV critic wrote the following day that: «They affirmed it was a spontaneous demonstration, without any logistic and almost without call. I think it has been the most announced demonstration in the history of Humanity: all televisions together, all radios, all written media, from sports to bullfighters, from housewives to postmen, all, through the urge of the commotion have been precisely urged to becoming a part of the general chorus» (10). The demonstration was broadcast live by TV in special news-bulletins beginning at the same time as the demonstration or a quarter of an hour before (TV1, ETB1 and A3 at 11,45, T5 at 12,00). TV1 sent three hundred (300) people to the Basque Autonomous Community to aid the permanent staff and cover the kidnapping and very specially the one and a half kilometres the demonstration would go over from Plaza del Sagrado Corazon to the Town Hall. 1,500 metres that were not totally covered by the demonstration: an image taken from a helicopter showed that, when the head of the demonstration was crossing the Arenal Bridge, there was a big empty space of five blocks in the Gran Via (from Maximo Agirre to the Sagrado Corazon) at the end of the demonstration.

I followed the demonstration by TV switching from one channel to the other. When they made the mistake of, at the end of the demonstration, showing shots from the helicopter where the bridges of the Arenal and of the Town Hall appeared half full, I knew (supported by a long experience) that they didn’t reach one hundred thousand (100,000) people. That amount appeared in the title page of EL PAÍS on Sunday 13: "More than 100,000 people got to the street at midday in Bilbao…". Although on page 24, the second title already said : "Hundreds of thousands of people go to the biggest demonstration of Bilbao", and in the text of an article by Aitor Guenaga appeared again the sentence: "Hundreds of thousands of people".

Diario de Navarra showed moderate when counting people, in the issue of Friday 13. In the summary of the news-agencies EFE and Colpisa published on page 8, said that "police sources reckon more than 200,000 people and some radios talked about up to half a million". EGIN, under the title "A grand demonstration went over Bilbao" explained on page 16 on Sunday that "the local office of the central government maintained the amount of 500,000 participants, amount that, although reproduced by the TV channels that broadcast the mobilisation live at the beginning, as the minutes went by, came down to 200,000 and 100,000."

EL MUNDO supported the fib of the impossible half a million and set as second title on page 14 of its edition for the Basque Country on Sunday 13 that "nearly half a million people demanded ETA in Bilbao to let Miguel Ángel Blanco live" and affirmed in the text that "some official estimates, failing final confirmation, reckoned at nearly half a million the amount of people that flooded the streets of Bilbao".

I hope that those who read me will clearly understand why I have devoted so much space and attention to this issue of the falsification of the amount of demonstrators. It is clear that this falsification is a key piece of the JULIAZO, of the operation planned and carried out by the Spanish Government. I summarise now: it is false that there have been SIX MILLION demonstrators in the JULIAZO. They didn’t sum up FIVE million. They didn’t sum up FOUR million. They didn’t sum up THREE million. THEY WERE MORE THAN A MILLION. But it is very doubtful than they got close to two million.

But, once the very important fact of the amount falsification has been established, still stands the fact that a lot of people who got out to the streets in many places throughout Spain, and in many of them several times. And it has to be explained how, why and what for did the Spanish Government take them to the streets. But a previous matter needs to be explained: why have the Government and the mass media lied so much.

6. The Spanish Government and media have lied so much about the magnitude of the demonstrations of the JULIAZO: a) because it is in their nature, b) because their objectives required it and c) because they knew they would manage to make many Spaniards and many foreigners believe them.