The spirit of Ermua, which was born viscerally after the kidnapping and murder of Popular Party councilor Miguel Ángel Blanco in 1997 and which managed to mobilize Spanish society, including many Basques who stopped looking the other way and concentrated against the barbarism of ETA, has revived in a few moments in the institutional tribute organized on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of one of the bloodiest demonstrations of sadism of which the band was capable.
The iconic figure of the Basque councilor and the memory of all the victims of terrorism managed to recover for a few moments that seamless unity that was experienced in Spain the hours before the outcome. However, the act failed to convey the emotion that the moment deserved. Barely two hundred people gathered around the sports center to witness in the first row the offering of red roses that was made after the speeches. Neighbors and also militants of the Popular Party who had participated the previous day in the parallel act organized by the victim’s party took the opportunity to shout long live the King, the Civil Guard and the Ertzaintza.
From the first moment, a feeling of discomfort among the political and institutional representatives flew over Ermua. Only the King knew how to convey that he was where he wanted and where he should, in the same place as 25 years ago, with the same 29 years lived as Michelangelo, traveled to Ermua to accompany the family and share those three days of timed horror during the that the Spaniards clung to the thread of hope trusting that the terrorists would not be capable.
All those moments were remembered by Felipe VI in a few words in which he warned about the danger that the spirit of Ermua will be forgotten. “We cannot allow ourselves that there are generations that ignore what happened in those painful days of our history; that they do not know how and why it united our collective consciousness; that they are unaware of something that also contributed to establishing our coexistence”, he affirmed.
Felipe VI, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, the Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, and the sister of the murdered politician, Marimar Blanco, wanted to convey a unanimous message in favor of peace, justice and reparation for the victims of ETA. The King stressed that the spirit of Ermua is “the victory of the collective conscience, the victory of dignity and morality over fear and terror, an example of our strength”.
Sánchez addressed Marimar Blanco to recognize that all the tributes that are held “will be insufficient to compensate for the absence of his brother” and promised to “continue to be committed to memory and remembrance, to affection for the victims because part of our dignity, we owe it to them”.
The formality on stage managed to hide the fracture caused by the pacts in Congress between the socialists and EH Bildu, absent yesterday at the tribute. Before the President of the Government, Marimar Blanco lowered the tone of the last few days and asked that “the truth of what has happened be respected without perversions or intoxications, making it clear that some killed miserably and cowardly and others died. May memory recognize terrorism as a fight between good guys and bad guys, with victims and executioners”.
Lehendakari Urkullu’s brief intervention did not even have a page and a half in which he demanded “courageous reflection and sincere self-criticism” from those who “exercised and protected terrorist violence”, which was “an ethical, political and democratic injustice”.
