In 1959 a small group of young men in the Basque city of Bilbao founded the organisation Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA – Basque Homeland and Freedom), which was to have an enormous impact on Basque and Spanish politics and society from the late 1960s to the present day. A fascination with ETA’s commitment to armed struggle as the principal strategy for attaining independence for the Basque country,¹ as well as the organisation’s seemingly endless ability to regenerate itself in the face of ongoing police repression and diminishing popular support, have made ETA the focus of ongoing popular and academic interest....

The history of Basque nationalism over the past hundred years, as recorded in nationalist literature and recounted in personal narratives and historical texts, is heavily infused with the notions of family and generation. ‘Family’ and ‘nation’ are often portrayed as overlapping or even interchangeable, making it appear that nationalist sentiment and ideology are natural or innate, as suggested by the quotes above. Yet this narrative of tradition and continuity tends to obscure a history shaped equally by transformation and even rupture. With its roots in the social upheavals generated by rapid industrialisation in the late nineteenth century, Basque nationalism developed...

In the scholarly literature on radical nationalism three institutions are habitually cited as central to the preservation of Basque nationalist culture under Franco and as major political influences on early ETA: the family, the Church and thecuadrillaor friendship group.¹ The previous chapter looked at some of the roles of nationalist families in the reproduction of Basque nationalism in the post-war period. This chapter will analyse the place of the Church andcuadrillain the development of ETA in the 1950s and 1960s. It will also examine patterns of paid labour in the 1960s, and how differences between women...

If the last chapter was concerned with the development of a new clandestine Basque nationalist resistance in the 1960s, the current one examines the ways in which this movement emerged into open conflict with the Spanish state at the end of that decade. Following other studies of gender and nationalism, I argue that nationalist movements are constructed in part through public performance and spectacle, and that these are themselves gendered acts. ETA’s early forays into public consisted primarily of small-scale clandestine activities such as painting graffiti and flying the illegal Basque flag. Such actions aimed to mark the borders of...

Defended by its supporters as a nationalist organisation seeking independence for the Basque country, for the vast majority of outside observers ETA’s defining feature is its use of violence. Although in theory committed to military resistance to Francoism from its inception, it was not until the mid-1960s that ETA put in place concrete plans for the implementation of armed struggle.² The principal impetus for this development was the publication in 1963 of the bookVasconiaby Federico Krutwig, a Basque of German descent.³Vasconiawas a polemical cry against the colonisation of the Basque country, a call to arms that...

Early ETA documents make little mention of women, in contrast to women’s prominent symbolic position as mothers and housewives and markers of national and cultural difference. The first written record of women involved directly in the organisation is dated 1963, when two are listed as participants in ETA’s Second Assembly.¹ Between the mid-1960s and 1970 small numbers of women joined the organisation, the majority active in cultural activities or support roles. By the late 1960s there was a small number of female armed activists, as well as three women members of ETA’s executive.² In addition, three women were among the...

Prison inhabits a special, separate space in the iconography of radical nationalism. To fall prisoner is, after falling dead at the hands of the police, the most prestigious act of an ETA activist. Through being arrested, spending several days in the police station, possibly undergoing torture as well as interrogation, appearing in court, and forfeiting their personal freedom in the name of freedom for the Basque people, ETA prisoners represent in the eyes of many in their community the strongest and worthiest of the living members of the movement. In the words of anthropologist Miren Alcedo, ‘Prison constitutes theetarra...

One of the central concerns for scholars of gender and nationalism is the relationship between nationalism and feminism. Many have highlighted the fraught nature of that relationship, particularly in the Western context.¹ Gisela Kaplan has noted that in Europe ‘(f)eminism and nationalism are almost always incompatible ideological positions’.² Similarly, Mary Condren has written of the Irish case in the twentieth century, ‘(b)oth nationalist and feminist movements are engaged in the politics of identity, but the interests of the latter are usually submerged to those of the former’.³ In fact, nationalism and feminism have taken radically different approaches to the politics...

In January 1986, almost eighteen years after the death of Txabi Etxebarrieta at the hands of the Civil Guard, the first female activist in the history of ETA – Bakartxu Arzelus – was killed by police during the course of an armed action. Although in radical nationalist circles there was a certain celebration of this first female ‘martyr’, the aftermath of Arzelus’s death underlined the extent to which the female activist remained an anomaly. During her funeral there were clashes between Arzelus’s father, Iñaki, a lifelong supporter of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), and radical nationalist activists who tried to...

With this book I have contributed to the ‘gendering’ of the history of ETA and radical Basque nationalism through a study of the roles of women in the movement since the 1960s. The book has shown how women’s recruitment into and participation in ETA differed from those of men in the organisation’s first few decades, how these differences were shaped by the historical conditions of late Franco and transitional Spain, and how the gender politics of radical nationalism have shifted since the 1960s. The changing political, economic and social conditions of Spain and the Basque country, and the development of...