Although he likes to present himself with transcendent verbiage in which capital letters predominate (Freedom, Homeland, Justice, God,...) and dress up in the clothes of the most noble causes, terrorism is nothing more than an extreme violence tactic used by non-state agents in order to generate a psychological climate of fear that compensates for their lack of political legitimacy and recognizes them as interlocutors with the capacity to impose their program on a society as a whole.
For the terrorist - who technically can be called a criminal by conviction and philosophically a moral idiot - the murder of innocents constitutes a bargaining chip and momentary compensation for a real or imaginary injury that is the cause of his rage and hysteria. As for their victims, the only thing they have in common -regardless of their political stance, their social class or their religious faith- is the desire to lead a life free of violence without some radical and resentful loser aspiring to destroy them. to move towards a world that virtually no one wants to exist.
With some minor peculiarities, the Basque terrorism represented by ETA fully responded to this pattern. It started from the claim of an ideal Basque Country inspired by the racist delusions of the founder of the PNV, Sabino Arana, to which should be added a strong influence of dogmatic and counter-reform (Jesuit) Catholicism from northern Spain conveniently seasoned with a few drops of Trotskyism and the impetuous rhetoric of Che Guevara.
After years of fighting against Francoism without having succeeded in causing the slightest fissure in the regime despite the assassination of Carrero Blanco, ETA declared war on the young Spanish democracy and intensified its campaign of terror, claiming an average of forty deaths a year over the years. throughout the eighties, basically during the governments of Felipe González (1982-1996). A significant part of that terror was exercised in Catalonia.
From those times dates the vast knowledge that Ferran Cardenal accumulates about ETA's action in Catalan territory, which is reported in his recent book; a lucid and penetrating exercise in historical memory presented in didactic and effective prose that, in addition to being a satisfactory read, offers interesting insights into the ethical dilemmas that those responsible for security in Catalonia had to face in those years of lead.
Cardenal, who was Civil Governor of Barcelona between 1982 and 1993 and General Director of the Civil Guard between 1993 and 1996, reviews the 74 attacks committed by ETA in Catalonia with the balance of 54 dead and 224 injured (207 of them civilians). paying special attention to those at Hipercor in June 1987 (21 dead and 45 wounded) and at the Civil Guard barracks in Vic in 1991 (9 dead, 5 of them children and 45 wounded). To do this, he describes with the precision of a judicial summary both the movements and purposes of the terrorists as well as the police action and the response of the Catalan civil authorities and of society as a whole.
It is a restrained story, free of artificial drama, which allows the reader to get a full idea of what the export of terror to Catalonia meant, the extent of the pain it caused the victims and the moral character of its perpetrators. In it we can see the perpetrators of the Hipercor attack following the death toll on television and uncorking a bottle of champagne; or one of the murderers at the Vic barracks declaring that if children died there, it was their parents' fault for using them as human shields.
That is why Ferran Cardenal has written this book, so that our society does not debase itself into oblivion.
Ferran Cardinal Germany ETA against Catalonia. Chronicle and memoir Universe of Letters. 389 pages. 26 euros
