BACKGROUND

- After the murder of businessman Jose Maria Korta, he decided to no longer ignore the violence and joined the PSE-EE.

- In the municipal elections of 2003, he was elected councillor in Eibar and his life changed when he needed an escort. He was re-elected at the following municipal elections in 2007.

- On July 25, 2008, he received news that ETA had been tracking him for several months in order to kidnap and assassinate him. Having a body-guard thwarted the terrorists’ intentions.

CONSEQUENCES

“I have always had political concerns, even from the age of 16 or 17, but after being a councillor in Bedia, my home town, after the first democratic elections in 1979, I spent many years without getting actively involved in politics, without directly joining any particular party. However, I was continually ignoring the violence although I never supported it, not even when most citizens understood the murder of Carrero Blanco. I never supported the use of violence and murdering opponents for political ends”.

“I spent about 15 years without joining any party. After what happened to ‘Yoyes‘, previously ‘Pertur‘, and the straw that broke the camel’s back regarding my political inactivity was the murder of the businessman Jose Maria Korta in Zumaia. Then I decided I could not remain aloof any longer. I decided to join the Socialist Party, which, since the time of Felipe González, had been the political group with the policies I supported as well as those of the European social democracy in general. ”

“At the following elections, in 2003, I was on the Socialist Party list for Eibar and was elected councillor. That is when my personal and family situation began to change. I had to start using bodyguards and that directly affects your social relations”.

“The group of people I used to meet broke in two. Some said that, as I had bodyguards, they didn’t want to be with me. That was the first blow regarding social issues. In addition to that, the life of someone with bodyguards changes a lot because you have to follow procedures that are very different from what most other people do. You have to follow set routines and, usually, no one likes to follow them. But, you have to for the sake of safety”.

“When you get a bodyguard, you see the people around you change. Although many people may feel close to you, I think that having bodyguards makes them shy away from you and makes them feel afraid of sharing time with you. It’s as if people who need to be protected by bodyguards were uncomfortable witnesses of society. Somehow, we seem to make people see that we are right, but people do not want to accept any guilt for not rejecting the violence of ETA fanatics. In that sense, you feel rejected”.

“The victims are, somehow, uncomfortable witnesses of the shortcomings of part of the society when it comes to rejecting ETA’s terrorism. You feel frustrated with many people who may even be quite close to you. But it’s very different from one area to another. I, for one, felt I had a lot of social support in Eibar. Maybe not in rural areas. That’s much more difficult. I think it’s very different between rural areas, where anyone who does not agree with the single nationalist view is socially excluded. What people fear most is social exclusion, and to avoid it they are willing to accept precepts that are totally anti-democratic, fanatic and even violent”.

“Most people in Eibar are very welcoming. It has always been a very inclusive society, of people who came from other areas. It has always been a very friendly society. Therefore, most people in Eibar are immune to that effect. There are some minorities who try to apply some of the ideas they get from those fanatical groups and some apply them strictly, applying ETA’s strategy 100%. But I haven’t seen this in Eibar, although it can be found in other rural towns like the town where I was born and others. Those are places where you do see attempt to stay within the socially established script to avoid social rejection by violent groups who control the situation”.

“At the following local elections, in 2007, I was also elected councillor for the Socialist group. During my eight years as a councillor in Eibar I mainly worked on social services, combining my job as the director of the Eibar Berritzegune educational support service”.

“During my two terms as councillor in Eibar, there were a number of posters and some graffiti. The radicals considered that a socialist councillor and another one from the Popular Party, during my first term, and a socialist councillor (me in both cases) and one from PNV, during my second term, had deprived them of councillors to which they were entitled. They considered that those elections were not democratic (as Batasuna had been outlawed, it couldn’t take part in the elections) and, therefore, they had counted the invalid votes. From that moment, there was graffiti and posters against us, who, according to them, had deprived them of their councillors in the City Council”.

“Since then, ETA decided that I was a target. But before the day I found out about the plan ETA was preparing against me, I hadn’t noticed anything in particular apart from the issue of the posters. Many people close to the radical left were surprised given my Basque speaking profile and the fact that I always speak Basque when teaching”.

“A little over three years ago (July 26, 2008), we found out that an ETA commando had tried to kidnap me as they had done with Miguel Angel Blanco in order to blackmail the government and for political gain. They had tracked me and, since then, my personal and family situation changed a lot. My immediate family had a hard time and some are still on medication to be able to sleep. It is an issue that had a great impact on me. Since then, I have kept on trying to lead a life that is as normal as possible, from a social and family point of view”.

“At that time I had gone to the Expo in Zaragoza. I was returning from that trip when the Minister of the Interior, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, phoned me. He said that the news of the attempted kidnapping had been leaked. He was very angry. He told me that news would be out very soon so that I would be prepared for it. I told my wife, who was nervous. The news was made public the next day. That day I had scheduled a trip to Austria and Switzerland. I needed to get out of that environment, I couldn’t stay at home. I went to visit my daughter and to get away from attention of the media. ”

“In March, 2011, the media published statements by members of the said ETA commando describing how they had been planning to kidnap me and how they had planned to use some pills and injections to knock me out, place me in an “underground hideout” and blackmail the government. I think that was a crude statement that displayed how insensitive they are and their stubbornness and fanaticism. It was hard to watch that video. With time you start to put things into perspective, but, even so, it’s not something you forget. In addition, it had implications in daily life because it affects decisions you make over the years”.

“I think there was no justice in my case. They were acquitted, they said, for lack of evidence. But I think that the evidence was clear. I made a statement saying I disagreed with the sentence in this case. I didn’t appeal, I obeyed the sentence and that was all”.

“Leaving was never an option that crossed my mind. I tried to live life as normally as possible, without changing my address, without even considering the option of self-banishing myself. I have always decided to stay where I am and this case has not affected me at all in relation to any doubts about moving. I would even say that it boosted my conviction, because I’ve noticed greater support in Eibar and I feel very comfortable there. I don’t think I would change it for any other place right now”.

“We are going through a period now where that group of fanatics are trying to rethink their strategy and it seems that their military strategy, the strategy of terrorism, has not provided the desired results and they are now trying to join the path towards democracy. If they really do; welcome to democracy, but they must acknowledge the damage they have done to so many families and to so many victims of terrorism”.

“Today, life is much quieter for me. The tense situation that used to exist is not so bad. There are still people who, in their daily lives, are still fanatics and, to a certain extent, dangerous. But I feel calmer and more relaxed than a few months ago. I think we can have a future without violence, without coercion, without extortion … That’s what I’m trying to achieve and I think it is something all Democrats will achieve”.