On the razor's edge

When, in the early 1980s, ETA was killing people at the rate one per week, one of its "historic" leaders, Peixoto, explained in an interview the real meaning of their watchword "amnesty." It means that "the Spanish government must recognize that our struggle [...] has been correct, and that the repression it has exercised against us has been unjust." Things have changed a great deal since 1982, but the ETA prisoners have again invoked the term "amnesty" when endorsing the Declaration of Gernika, and the possibility of an upcoming announcement of the withdrawal of ETA has sparked debate on the present meaning of this word.

This seems to be a point of discrepancy between the principal political parties interested in an end to ETA without any political concessions made in exchange: the Socialist Party (PSOE), the Popular Party (PP) and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).

The Constitution mentions the royal faculty of exercising the right of pardon "in consonance with the law," noting that this cannot "authorize general pardons." The difference between amnesty and pardon is that the first implies annulling not only the penalty but also the crime. Thus it is generally admitted that if there cannot be general pardons, much less can there be general amnesties.

Even were an amnesty theoretically possible, it would be inadmissible to apply it to ETA prisoners. Expunging a crime may make sense after a dictatorship. To do so now would be to accept Peixoto's justification of terrorism as a "correct" political option.

The question, then, is whether non-general measures of grace are possible, and in what conditions. In the case of the self-dissolution of the breakaway ETA Politico-Militar organization in 1982, the law was bent considerably — but those were individual pardons, not a general one. And for many years, successive governments tried to convince ETA leaders to accept an agreement in terms of peace for the release of prisoners, and not, as they demanded, peace in return for Navarre and self-determination.

This attitude expired with the T-4 bomb attack in 2007; and the ETA victims' associations, with strong public support in this, have become a barrier against any return to that formula. However, there is truth in the former Basque premier Ardanza's recent remark: "Once ETA has disappeared [...] while there are ETA prisoners in jail the problem will not have been solved." That is, the end of ETA would not be irreversible. Yet experience also shows that if they are offered measures of grace they consider it a right, and go on to demand political negotiation.

We are on the razor's edge. Measures of grace will only be possible, in the face of understandable public reluctance, when there is evidence that the end of ETA is irreversible. But ETA refuses to take this step without previous measures of grace. The key will be when the political wing convinces the terrorists that the best thing they can do for the prisoners is dissolution, so that moves can be made to bring the Spanish public closer to accepting the idea of the release of prisoners.