Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

BASQUE FATHERLAND AND LIBERTY • 65(Nafarroa), as well as the French Basque provinces of Le LaBourg(Lapurdi), La Basse Navarre (Baxenabarra), and La Soule (Zuberoa).Due to the general antipathy of France and other European states towardthe former regime of Francisco Franco, the French governmenttolerated the presence of ETA terrorists, who used France as a base andsanctuary. Since the return of democracy to Spain in the mid-1970sand the appearance of signs of ETA radicalization of French Basques,France no longer tolerates ETA activities within its territory and cooperateswith Spanish authorities to combat Basque terrorism.The ETA organization enjoyed moral and material support fromthe Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in training campsin Lebanon, South Yemen, and Algeria. The Cuban and SandinistaNicaraguan governments gave safe haven and training to ETAmembers. The ETA and Irish Republican Army (IRA) also werereported to cooperate with each other. The Colombian M-19 groupand other Latin American guerrilla groups declared their support forthe ETA while immigrant communities of Basques in Venezuela andelsewhere also materially contributed to the ETA.The ETA was an offshoot of the Basque Nationalist Party, knownin Spanish as the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) and in Basque asthe Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea (EAJ). In 1957 the youth movement of thePNV met in Paris with the exiled PNV leadership to persuade them toundertake armed struggle against the Franco regime. Failing in this,many of the PNV youth created the ETA on 31 July 1959. Becausemost of the other non-Basque anti-Franco groups were Marxist, manyETA members also adopted a Marxist-Leninist ideology, whereasthe PNV had been, and remains, solidly Catholic and nationalistic.Disagreement over the correct ideological interpretation of the Basquestruggle has split the ETA into several factions. The two major factionsare the ETA-Militar (ETA-M), which advocates unending armedstruggle until full independence is won, and the ETA-Politico-Militar(ETA-PM), which laid down arms temporarily after formal autonomywas granted to a designated Basque region in January 1980.ETA activities began in 1961 with the derailment of a train carryingSpanish civil war veterans en route to a celebration in SanSebastian. During the 1960s the ETA struck symbolic targets by defacingcivil war monuments and symbols of Spanish domination. Themurder of a Basque in 1968 by the Spanish Guardia Civil led to thefirst assassination by the ETA, of the security chief of Guipuzcoa,