The 180,000 absentees (plus their children) who will not vote today in the Basque Country

UNDER REGISTRATION

• JULIO VALDEÓN

  @JulioValdeon

Updated Sunday,28May2023-02:03

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• Unpublished ETA's last letter... (He speaks of his "beautiful values", "love" and "joie de vivre")
• Terrorism The 'forgiveness' that Otegi did ask for was to join ETA

Cristina Cuesta is director of the Miguel Ángel Blanco Foundation, a historical of movements such as ¡Basta ya!, of which she was spokesperson. She votes in Madrid, where she has lived since 2000. "I endured what I could," he recalls, "until in 2003 it was obligatory for me to register, for my son's nursery." In October 2000, the National Police had recommended that he, along with Consuelo Ordóñez and Fernando Savater, take an escort.

Carlos Fernández de Casadevante, Professor of Law at the Uni

After King Juan Carlos, and until 1998 a professor at the University of the Basque Country, he also does not live in the land where he was born, where his wife and children remain. That letter bomb, with the wires cut, was the icing on the cake of a progression of threats that pushed him out. Casadevante has continued to be registered in Irún. "I vote there," he explains, "so that at least don't think the whole mountain is oregano." "They say terrorism wasn't helpful." he adds, "But of course it has worked. So that the Basque Country is no longer as it should have been. And it never will be, because this is irreversible. But those who can no longer vote should be able to, if only as moral reparation."

Casadevante's father

, accountant of the Official Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Navigation of Guipúzcoa, had to leave the Basque Country in 1980, as a result of threats. "In that same letter they warned that they had also threatened his brother, who was a military doctor, and they did not kill him because he died of a heart attack, because of the pressure, but my uncle did not say anything to his family, as a result of my father's letter we learned that he had been threatened with death. " In the case of Cristina Cuesta, her father was murdered by ETA along with his bodyguard, in 1982.

Theirs are two names among the 180,000 who left the Basque Country

. Most, like Cristina, no longer vote there. They left pushed by ETA. Their situation has resurfaced following the publication of a study,

, prepared by the San Pablo CEU University. Among its conclusions, it stands out that the loss of that 9% of the population, the approximate equivalent of the city of San Sebastian, altered the electoral map. The study joins other previous ones, such as 'Evolution of the Spanish population in the twentieth century', by Julio Alcaide, in 2007, and one by Mikel Buesa, 'ETA S.A.', of 2010, which figure between 100,000 and 200,000 exiles.

Hence, Fernando Savater, along with other intellectuals, has long argued that in order to restore the cleanliness of the democratic game,

. People like

, militant of the PSE, son and grandson of Basque socialists, veteran of ¡Basta Ya!, today based in Guadalajara. He left the Basque Country at the suggestion of the Civil Guard, after suffering an attack by the Kale Borroka. His name had come up in two possible scenarios, that a gunman named Óscar Pérez, alias 'Txibo', or a liberated man from Vizcaya attacked him. One was a bomb on his doorstep. The other, a shot in the back of the head. In the PSOE his people told him that he was from the PP, and in the PP that he was from the PSOE. "And I," he recalls, "used to tell them that a funeral doesn't separate a political party." He accuses the PNV that "it was never with the bad guys, but it benefited from the bad guys killing their opponents."

Savater is also convinced that

for your interests. "Here, to hear the truth you have to listen to Otegi. That is the paradox. The one who tells the truth is Otegi. Obviously, he tries to sweeten his speech as much as possible, but his position is obvious." And the people who left? "Well, we hear things like come back whenever you want, as if you, ditch, can change jobs so easily, as if the children had not grown up somewhere else."

"They have not been able to campaign normally"

, reads the CEU report, referring to parties such as the PSV or the PP, or before to the UCD, "neither have indigenous candidates nor have auditors and proxies". Or as another respondent says in its pages,

Son of a

, assassinated by ETA in 1996, "is a deformed electoral landscape that corresponds to the nationalist hegemony they achieved through violence for decades."

Teo Santos, ertzaintza, is another of those who had to leave

. He joined the Ertzaintza in 1983. Ten years later the body became a target of ETA. Those who had been signified, in his case as an unofficial spokesman, and how they placed him in the spotlight. It so happens that Rubén Rivero, one of the ETA members of the area, from Balmaseda, where Santos lived, is now presented on the lists of Bildu to the municipal elections. For Santos, with the so-called socialization of suffering, the harassment began. "We left Biscay in '98. There were people who left and others who did not. The situations were very varied, with children, etc. We went to the Mena Valley, in Burgos, 15 kilometers away, but the distance was a world." The key is that ETA members found it much harder to move outside the Basque Country. «

neighbors of the staircase itself, collaborator of the ErNE union, acquaintances, even relatives". "What if I miss him," exclaims Jagoba Gutiérrez?

Carlos Fernández de Casadevan and Cristina Cuesta

"On the contrary, I miss it. After leaving, and spending some time in Castro Urdiales, I went to Galicia.

. And that a secretary from your office finds out there that you are a victim of terrorism and gives you a hug and cries with you, and tells you 'how afraid I am for you'. To get out of a place where you're treated like a rat, where you have to hide or shut up, and get to a place where people are proud to be with you."

Recalling the reasons for his own departure, Savater recalls that "

. They left her relatively quiet when I wasn't there, but when I arrived she was trapped in the world of threats. It seemed safer for me to work in Madrid and to go to see her from time to time, free from my daily presence in the faculty, which attracted the wrath of all those good people..."

Many of those persecuted do not even have the official status of victims. "To be recognized," explains Professor Casadevante, "you have to have filed a complaint, and there had to be a police procedure and a final sentence. But then the police advised you to leave immediately, without reporting or anything.

until UPyD promoted the reform of the law. Now yes, but they only recognize them if there is a sentence, with which we accept that ETA victimized less than they really were."

Back to the proposal to recover those hundreds of thousands of votes lost by constitutionalism, Savater recalls that years ago he and others campaigned to achieve it. "We collected signatures, but then it all came to nothing. And now worse, before it cost a lot, because in Madrid they needed the votes of the PNV, but now, on top, the support of Bildu is essential, so...

».