The black reality of torture has its number in the Basque Country: 5.657. It already has a number, although we will never know the true dimension of this terrible and systemic practice, it is too late for that. It is too late because years and years have passed with total impunity. Years and years in which many people who have lived so hard have been totally unprotected and without any kind of assiduous. Where the greatest obstacle and enemy to the prosecution has been found in the courts and in public institutions that are considered guarantors of justice. Thousands of victims have had no choice but to manage the traumatic situation individually and confidentially, without the official support of society.

This puts us in the responsibility of Basque society. Sandra Barrenetxea explained this in an interview with the newspaper Berria. Barrenetxea was arrested by the Civil Guard in September 2010, charged with belonging to the youth organization Ekin. He denounced the violent torture suffered during the incommunicado detention and in these days four civilian guards have been tried for these allegations, despite the fact that much cannot be expected of the judicial route. Her account has many and varied passages, including the separate torture suffered by women, closely linked to gender construction and threatened at all times by rape. However, what has moved me the most from what I have told in the interview is what it says about the attitude of society: That is, it has made him “increase the pain”. He explains that the lack of recognition generates “frustration and a great sense of guilt”, which leads the victim to a situation of weakness, and stresses that the fact that a neglect of the victim’s life is detected in society has serious consequences.

So much damage is caused by statements that are unaware of torture. And we were hurt by the spokesman for the Basque Government, Josu Erkoreka, and the Security Council, Estefanía Beltrán de Heredia, in arguing the lack of a judicial sentence to deny the torture of the Ertzaintza. Because impunity was to give the allegations of torture good and to take away credibility. The Sortu party held performative concentrations to denounce the torture, with its finger expressing the police stations of the Ertzaintza, in order to express its responsibility. The Ertzaintza response included statements by the two public representatives who refused to have been tortured by the Ertzaintza. The investigation conducted by the forensic doctor Paco Etxeberria on behalf of the Basque Government has identified 4,009 cases of torture, following the United Nations protocol in Istanbul. Of these, 310 correspond to the Ertzaintza. Meanwhile, the Euskal Memoria organization has recorded 5,657 cases of torture, 407 of them in the hands of the Ertzaintza.

Now that we hear so many times terms like the “critical review of what happened”, it seems that everything goes well when all fingers point in one direction, that is, when all eyes are placed on the left abertzale. However, something else happens when the dark narratives of the police stations start to get agitated and in this painful conflict the responsibility of each other is claimed. Human rights then remain a common role, when the narrative and the photograph of the retrospective conflict are at stake.

Bringing torture to light from the darkness of impunity is something we have to do as a society. For this reason, the aforementioned investigations are very necessary, which collect and demonstrate testimonies, as well as all initiatives and dynamics of denunciation and awareness. As claimed by the demonstration on the streets of Bilbao: we must acknowledge, repair and guarantee of non-repetition to all the tortured. And we owe the same to ourselves, to our society.