In these times when the word ETA has been so exposed, so handled in political debates by one and the other, it becomes convenient to stop to distinguish the voices from the echoes.
Precisely, the word of Ferran Cardenal is one that must be stopped and listened to because he was a high official in the fight in Catalonia against the Basque terrorist band. He was in charge of the Civil Government of Barcelona from 1982 to 1993. He went to many funerals.
Cardenal has written a book, ETA against Catalonia. Chronicle and memory, among other reasons because he wants to prevent oblivion. “We wanted to keep the pain caused by ETA in a corner of memory.” His statement is emphatic, while keeping his distance from any current political controversy.
He suggests that recovering in a work, written halfway between the “chronicle and the memory”, what those years of public life were like in a position like his was like one more duty of that now non-existent position that the new generations They may not even know it existed.
“Those of us who have directly experienced some of those events are under the obligation to explain what happened and write it down so that it is not forgotten, so that the page cannot be turned, so that the memory of what happened and solidarity with the victims”, affirms Cardenal in conversation with La Vanguardia.
ETA activity in Catalonia is the one he is most familiar with, although not only because, not in vain, he was General Director of the Civil Guard just after leaving his post in Barcelona. He was in charge of the armed institute between 1993 and 1996.
In his book he offers a lot of data and among them are these figures of ETA’s activity in Catalonia. The terrorist gang killed 54 people in this community (34 ordinary citizens and 20 members of the State or military security forces and bodies). The total number of injured rose to 224. Such murders and personal injuries were committed in the 74 attacks registered in Catalan lands from May 1975 to August 2001, when the last action of the criminal gang in Catalonia took place, in a hotel in Salou. The ETA attacks on Catalan tourist interests were a constant throughout the time that he maintained his criminal activity.
The first fatality on Catalan soil was that of the national policeman Ovidio Díaz López, who was killed when confronting members of a commando who were robbing a bank branch. It happened in Barcelona in June 1975. The last fatality of the ETA members was a mosso d’esquadra, Santos Santamaría Avendaño, who died as a result of a bomb explosion in the Girona town of Roses.
Beyond the people directly affected, those who have experienced tragedies, been widowed, orphaned, amputated limbs or other atrocities, there are other more “diffuse” victims who are never talked about, understanding the former civil governor of Barcelona. It refers to people who had to change their usual way of life, public servants who were forced to live a good part of their existence under escort, children of members and security forces of the State or the military who went through states of anxiety and fear for fear to lose their father or mother due to the constant threat of ETA gunmen.
Cardenal is no stranger to the fact that from certain instances there has been a deliberate change of discourse regarding the terrorist group and “the tremendous damage it caused” in an attempt to modify memory. “This is especially clear and manifest in the Basque Country. I think that in the rest of Spain this situation does not occur. According to his analysis, outside the Basque Country these modifications of the past do not occur, but the search for oblivion does, which is precisely what Cardenal fights against and what he has decided to write the book for.
This high official in matters of the Interior in Catalonia in the 80s and 90s of the last century focuses especially on the two bloodiest attacks by ETA in this community: that of Hipercor (1987) and that of the Vic barracks (1991).
And within this exercise of keeping memory alive, he clarifies, in case anyone has forgotten, that there were numerous citizens of Catalonia who helped, collaborated and even formed part of the terrorist band of the ax and the snake. “We don’t like to think that ETA wasn’t just a problem for the Basques,” he says.
