Once again it's about words: about confessions, excuses, appeals. Names have been part of the debates surrounding the work of the Basque terrorist organization ETA since it was founded sixty years ago, and even now, on the tenth anniversary of its officially announced end on October 20, 2011, words are weighed like gold. Because Arnaldo Otegi, head of the Basque nationalist formation EH Bildu, which supported the political agenda of terrorism for a long time, has put forward something like an apology to the victims of terrorism. "Nothing we say can undo the damage done," said Otegi on Monday in San Sebastián. But it is possible to mitigate it "through respect and remembrance". The suffering of the "victims of violence from ETA" is felt to be "very strong",and everyone understands this adverb in the Spanish original: "enormousemente".

It was the first time the Basque Country nationalist left specifically addressed the ETA victims, almost asking for forgiveness - almost, but not entirely. “We want to tell them that we sympathize with their pain, and express that it should never have happened.” That still doesn't mean the word “pardon”, and neither does the environment of nationalism have the more than 850 ETA murders "sentenced". At most, empathy has grown. Accordingly, some see progress, others see what is still missing. The MEP Maite Pagazaurtundúa, sister of an ETA murder victim, complained to the newspaper El País that the nationalists still do not take full responsibility for the "totalitarian persecution" because the ETA crimes "were not private, but public" . Maixabel Lasa on the other hand,the widow of the politician Juan María Jáuregui, who was murdered in 2000, compares the path to a marathon and sees Otegi's words as an “important step”.

The battle for naming

In the history of Basque terrorism, language has always been a scene of controversy, from the crude revolutionary rhetoric of the "armed struggle" for the rights of the "Basque people" to the euphemism of the so-called "Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups" (GAL), with which politicians of the González- Government in the 1980s disguised the liquidation of terror suspects.

Later, the Basque Country longed for “peace” as if there were warring parties in the small region.

And at some point everyone spoke of the cure of “dialogue” as if it had ever been because too little was spoken.

Terms made politics, served as anchors, evasions or political slogans.

German television, in order not to have to talk about terrorists and their murderous acts, liked to speak of “separatists”.

The struggle for names leads to precisely that intermediate realm in which writers, the painters of the shadowy zones, feel at home. And in fact, it was the Basque Fernando Aramburu, born 1959, living in Hanover, who created his ninth novel, a work that has been a reference point for conversations about the legacy of ETA terrorism since its publication in 2016: "Patria" was alone on Spanish sold more than 1.3 million times. According to Aramburu in an interview with the FAZ, he felt the earliest creative impulse when a murdered local politician was buried in 1984. About thirty years later, Aramburu set out to create the striking metaphor for the conflict itself through the story of two divided Basque families: politics and private life; Talking or being silent; Suggest or omit.

“Just like in German post-war history,” says the author, the moment will come when Basque young people will ask their parents: Who was the one who was killed on this street?

And which side were you on? ”This moment is approaching.

In a certain sense, the whole of Spanish society is stalking him, if only through the time lag, through films, books and the historicization of what happened, such as the new “Memorial Center for the Victims of Terrorism” in Vitoria.

Fernando Aramburu already knew then that there had to be a valid interpretation of the terror years, the answer to the question: "Who is writing the story and is right?"