“These are inadmissible and intolerable words”, they are shouting in Moncloa regarding the statements of the EH Bildu candidate for next Sunday’s elections in Euskadi, Pello Otxandiano, in which he did not want to recognize ETA as a terrorist organization. “ETA was an armed group”, was all that Otxandiano admitted.
And the central government, despite the fact that it has in EH Bildu one of its indispensable parliamentary supports to sustain the legislature, condemned yesterday with extreme harshness the position expressed by the candidate of the Abertzale left.
“Unfortunately, in this country, all Spaniards know very well that ETA was a terrorist group,” said the spokeswoman for Pedro Sánchez’s Government, the socialist Pilar Alegría. “And not recognizing it is not only cowardly, but it is an absolute contempt for the victims and Spanish and Basque society”, he assured.
“It also demonstrates a denialism that is absolutely incompatible with our country’s own history, and with democracy, which was the one that defeated ETA terrorism.”
Despite the fact that the Government itself and the leadership of the PSOE have so far highlighted the “good climate” in which, according to their opinion, the Basque electoral campaign was being developed, as opposed to the “noise” that is being generated in other electoral scenarios , that the candidate of the Abertzale left avoided classifying ETA as a terrorist group seems to stir up the so far placid waters of the appointment with the ballot boxes in Euskadi.
In Moncloa they recognize that this political controversy, in the final stretch of the Basque campaign, in which EH Bildu leads the polls, reaffirms the Government and the Socialists, as well as their electoral candidate, Eneko Andueza, in their positions. Among these, in his total refusal to support a lehendakari of EH Bildu or to form a coalition government with this formation.
In this same debate, the Lehendakari intervened last night, Íñigo Urkullu, who pointed out that it is necessary for “EH Bildu to condemn what was ETA”. “ETA was terrorism. There is nothing more to say. You have to consider the victims it caused: 853 fatalities, thousands of people injured, kidnapped, extorted, victims of blackmail… Not only did it hurt the victims, it also hurt Basque society. And it is absolutely necessary that once and for all EH Bildu condemns what was ETA”, he pointed out.
