Former President of the Spanish Government, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, explained that the leaders of Tony Blair, Jonathan Powell, Sinn Feine and IRA participated in the Basque peace process, which was of great importance for ETA to be able to carry out movements.

In this regard, they asked Zapatero whether the fact that there is a Good Friday agreement here as in Ireland gave more guarantees to the process, and he replied that “there is an indiscriminate agreement like that of Good Friday, I cannot say more”. The journalist Iosu Alberdi has written the chronicle of the conference in Berria, from which we have received these words.

The PP always offended Zapatero very harshly for the conversations he had promoted with ETA, but Zapatero has pointed out that right-wing leader Mariano Rajoy had a more open attitude in the private sector. The journalist Manuel Sánchez has written the book Zapatero, the progressive legacy, in which he tells how Rajoy was always more open to the Basque peace process than to the Catalan procés, and in the case of ETA he told him to do what he had to do, but to tell him nothing.

In any case, according to Alberdi in his chronicle, the end of ETA accepted by Zapatero at the Madrid conference of Ateneo was a consequence of the process carried out within the Abertzale left: “Let us be clear: the decision to leave the violence is the result of a debate between the Union and the members of ETA”.

And back, he also mentioned the ETA attack in Barajas on the 2006 agenda. He says that the attack was in the medium term, because it was not understood in the “political party” of the Abertzale left. As already known, in his book he points out that from the left Abertzale were key Arnaldo Otegi, Rufi Etxeberria and Josu Urrutikoetxea.

In recent years Zapatero has spoken on more than one occasion about the process that led to the end of ETA, and has proudly claimed that this end occurred in his mandate, because his government conducted direct talks with ETA. In recent times he is also the socialist leader who firmly supports the government of Pedro Sánchez.

The progressive decisions of Zapatero’s mandate (2004-2011), such as the legalization of homosexual marriage, as well as the holding of talks with ETA beyond 2006, were also of great value. However, the period of government was characterized by the global economic crisis that began in 2007, but at the beginning of the crisis in 2008, it firmly confirmed that there was no risk of economic crisis, but that the crisis was and would be overcome “in the United States”. This denial of the crisis continued in the coming months, but it has been described as the largest crisis after World War II. He denied it in the 2011 elections and Mariano Rajoy came to Moncloa.