Felix Likinian anarchist: Author of ETA's anagram

The historic member of ETA Emilio López Adam Beltza (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1946) believes that in the history of Basque anarchism there are people as important as unknown. Thus, for example, the Biscayan physician Isaac Puente (Abanto-Zierbena, 1896) of the time of the Spanish war, who lived in Vitoria. Hygienist, radical anarchist, supporter of contraception. Accused of participating in the 1934 revolution, shot by the Francoists in the 36th. Horacio Martínez Pietro (Bilbao, 1902) of the National Confederation of Labour (CNT), exiled. Direct contact with the Basque Government, a possible trend. [Doctor Baionesa Fernand Elosu (1875-1941), very unknown]. Brought as a communist of the PCF, but anarchist. Pacifist, hygienist and defender of women's rights. After them, we have anarchists who united past and present: Felix Likiniano (Eskoriatza, 1909) and Casilda Hernaiz (Zizurkil, 2014). Resistant to the Civil War and, indeed, combatants against the PNV: “There have been many types of anarchism, and these were linked to the CNT, very loyal fighters, class anarchists. Then comes Marc Legasse, but this is not a class anarchist. However, both Likinian and Legass were related to ETA [The anagram of Aizkora and Sugea was made by Likinian]. They both had great respect, but they were very different, they did not have the same doctrine.” The author of the book Brief History of Basque Anarchism, Juantxo Estebaranz, of the Likinia Society, and the author of the book AnarkHerria, Jakue Pascual, are successors to a new generation, according to Beltza.

Between these two anarchist generations is Mikel Orrantia (Tar) – of the same time as Beltza –, the creator of the Askatasuna movement during the transition. Orrantia wanted to unite the union anarchism of the CNT with the classical anarchist tradition of the Basque Country. The confederal group Askatasuna was born with the objective of publicizing the Basque national identity. At that time, the first expressions of “self-employed” emerged. From ETA came LAIA (Revolutionary Abertzal Workers' Party) and within them LAIA Ez. As a result of them, the KAA emerged. For the self-employed, the identity of Euskal Herria is fundamental, but they do not consider the Basque State a priority. As assemblies, they have prioritized the self-organization of the workers’ movement. Regarding ETA and the Abertzale left, he referred to the "autonomy" that exists in the line of self-management. There have been many expressions, such as the workers' committees, the neighborhood assemblies, the antinuclear and ecological movements, the injunctions, the okupas and the promoters of the gaztetxes.

The moment ETA is about to disappear, this is the opinion of Black: "On the Abertzale left there is a great crisis. The main problem with its militancy has been to be ‘autonomous and disciplined’, and that is oxymoron. They must be disciplined against the head and autonomous against the state. The Abertzale left has in some way taken advantage of the anti-nuclear, environmental or sustainable development movement, as is the case with the TAV. During the armed struggle, the dynamics of these groups have served ETA, but not now, since it has been the sortu itself that has disqualified the armed struggle. Many people who have participated in these movements do not know what to do today. The internal crisis is terrible.” Beltza sees the left Abertzale drifting against the hegemony of the PNV, which has as its first objective to remove the hegemony from the Jeltzales: "However, the PNV is terribly terrible. Because it wants to build a national construction on the foundation, on the pretext of infrastructure. Since the Basque Government got it, it is comfortable in the autonomous region, it has as its first objective money and business management.”

Mikel Orrantia: CNT and freedom

Mikel Orrantia Tar (Balmaseda, 1947) was exiled for the first time in 1969, in northern Spain. Secondly, to Brussels in 1975: “I wanted ETA to be a mass movement. Then he did not question the armed struggle, which was not the axis of the organization, but a resource”. Orrantia was a communist in 1969, in exile he became critical of Leninism and nationalism. “The Basque Country of 1969 and the whole of Spain were slothful lands. There were no books, only hierarchy and authorship.” He had the opportunity to learn in exile: “What happened to my Catholicism has happened to my nationalism, which as it gets educated has melted like fat sugar in coffee. I'm a pro-independence, but not a nationalist. Because in ETA, as in the sphere of the Spanish State, it was paying for friendship and rejecting intelligence, so I was awakened by the possibility of anarchism.” After the 1977 amnesty he returned to Euskal Herria.

He worked on the restructuring of the CNT “inside and in exile”. According to Orrantia, until 1975 the CNT was a force to hold: “The CNT had two problems, which was rival to the Basque independence and as Spaniard as the PSOE-UGT of two. The weight of tradition in CNT was enormous among us, but we did not have the weight of their sacramental acts upon us. We were young people who wanted to rethink anarchism.”

About a hundred people gathered around the Askatasuna movement, mostly militants who promoted Askatasuna magazine. It was founded in 1971 in Brussels and ended in Bilbao in 1980, when the fascists had their headquarters exploded: “We lived between two worlds, traditional nationalism and industrial nationalism. The second was an advocate of the interests of the capitalists and the bourgeois. However, capitalism wanted its heritage to be useful for its descendants. Instead, today we are in the era of technological capitalism, I call it ‘scorpion capitalism’. The state and capitalism have lost the north.” This new capitalism – Orrantia continues – does not care about the misfortune or the succession of power, it has lost the future of the world: “The former capitalism already had a project, it wanted a concrete world: religion and the state at the service of it, controlling education, justice and the military field. The new capitalism wants immediate benefit, even if it has to put an end to everything that lies ahead. It doesn't care about ecology, but it will bring the end of the planet. In today’s capitalist world, uncertainty is total.” In his opinion, “we have not yet built the necessary means to understand the current system, so if we do not have the capacity to fight capitalism, let alone to defeat it. This technological capitalist scorpion doesn't have the I. The international was struggling to have something to do with that capitalist world. The thinking of the present communists is not used to fight capitalism. In any case, the ideas of Bakunin and Marx were useful to change the world, it is a cultural treasure that must be known. Therefore, today they can also be useful to offer alternatives to the world, provided that strict sensus is not used”.

Are there alternatives today?

Since the mobilisations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle in 1999, in Seattle, the new radical waves of young people, at a time of economic recession, have risen against the current neoliberal system. The peinator sees it like this. “The new movements have shown that it is possible to cope with globalisation. However, in many of them, following the Nicaraguan revolution, the revolutionary Marxists thought especially that a new Cuba was to take place. Unfortunately, these movements awaken within themselves the germ they want to destroy: authoritarianism and the will to power. Its nationalist character defends the State's objective to transform society, which makes it difficult to regulate the system of life and free thought. When these revolutions have triumphed, they have gradually abandoned freedom of thought.”

From Euskal Herria says Orrantia: "ETA has accused ETA of creating a political alternative that could go beyond the national problem. The Abertzale left, in addition to promoting authoritarianism, has abused power in the Gipuzkoan capital. It has created heroes of sacrifice, the nationalist germ has done harm to this people. What is more, ETA has attacked the Abertzale left against whom we supported many of its objectives. As the structures of the Spanish State are being beaten, fear has broken out in the people. The state has been well served by ETA. In this respect, it is also true that ETA has been a great deal. For me, I would distinguish between 1987 – with the Hipercor attack – and after ETA. It had been launched on the path of terrorism. ETA has since conditioned the lives of the Basques and, furthermore, prevented other opportunities from being given. The vocation for or against ETA was entrenched. Ours is burnt land. It is also true, however, that we have now become orphans without ETA. Unfortunately, the follow-up to the ETA conclusions will be long. The Abertzale left will not represent more than 20% of society in the long term, as long as there are prisoners, it will be in a balance of doubt. Prisoners will no longer be militants to dissolve ETA at all. And it's hard to build an Abertzale left without ETA. It's a contradiction, but it's been the engine of movement, heart, soul, flag and ideology. But now that's not there. That is why I advocate amnesty for ETA members, as did my generation’s amnesty. And without regret. Free. No other individual. Because their demands are political and they have abandoned military activity. Without ETA’s actions influencing our thinking, with serenity, without military pressure, this people can find their way in the next two decades.”

"Today, the Socialists, the Communists and the Libertarians have to look back to take a step forward. I. We have to get to the thesis that the creators of the international found. All lines of socialism must converge on an alternative river. This requires an internal democratic law, but not a vertical democracy, but a horizontal one. That is the contribution of the libertarians, the Marxists must realise that more than 20% of the electorate will never be achieved. It is not possible to overcome this measure. There is a precedent: people have lived much better in Western capitalism than in communist countries. That must be accepted. And the libertarians also have to overcome our contradictions, because if not, we will find ourselves again in Catalonia in 1936: power in factories yes, but not in society”, says the Balmasedan.

As for sovereignty: “The Basques do not need the Kings of Navarre to reclaim our sovereignty. For me, the will of contemporary Basques is worth, at least, more than the weight of history. My choice is libertarian, independence and confederal socialism, to create new coordination with the peoples of France, Spain and other states. The Basques have not managed to consolidate the idea of a nation, we are still in a process. We have to talk about it, but without using previous concepts, because those of us who claim the Basque nation have different visions of these concepts.”

Anarchism feeds on the experience in his words: “I made a big mistake, considering the possibility of reconstructing the CNT. I got entangled in CNT, because I wanted a great mass organization, and I got it wrong. Another error: That Euskadiko Ezkerra [was a U.S. militant] is in favor of entering the PSOE and reaching out to myself. I should not. It was losing time, rather than taking advantage of that effort, better if we've worked on some other project. CNT, however, has a mythic for all anarchists, also for me. The PSOE, for its part, did not get anything clean. I want to distinguish the two phenomena. I would repeat one of my ‘mistakes’, the militancy at ETA. For it was what had to be done in the Basque Country in the 1960s.”

Jakue Pascual and Anark-herria

Jakue Pascual (Donostia, 1961) usually says: “Ours has always been an anti-authoritarian people, because it is oppressed by two states.” Cooperation is needed: “Respect for personal autonomy made it possible to improve relations between groups.” However, in his view, relations between revolutionaries have not been good. A libertarian militant of the transition that began in 1975, he has worked in neighborhood associations, committees against the Lemoiz nuclear power plant and then on free radios and gaztetxe that spread. “We didn’t understand the way ‘avant-garde’ acted. When the libertarian line began to form, in parallel, the horizontal movements gave us a better opportunity to develop the struggle. Libertarians do not start from prejudice, but the way things are done allows us to achieve the objectives. Those ways of getting things that we're interested in led us to the line of anarchism, not the other way around."

Pascual says that the Marxist and Maoist groups in the popular movements of the transition era were the majority and the main ones: “We have never understood the process like them, that is, ‘I have this idea and I start it up’. As we have been meeting goals, ideas have served libertarians, if not, no.” An example of what happened around the Lemoiz nuclear power plant: "ETA's armed action did not paralyse the power plant. The power plant was paralysed by the unitary struggle of this people. ETA's actions tended to correlate social forces. Some groups did not reject ETA's action, OK, but others did not see it clear, however, cohesion remained. It was maintained through the direct communication of the autonomous groups of the neighborhood and the towns. Because counterinformation was very well organized. The local assemblies and the dynamics of society managed to paralyze the central one. The struggles of the Abertzale left and the avant-garde of the far left were the main ones, but the most important was the horizontality in society. Most people didn’t fight anyone’s orders.”

“At that time,” says Pascual, the assembly groups had to live “together” with the armed groups at the time against the repressive state, with all the contradictions and tensions. We had to get out of the dynamic set by the avant-garde. From the attempted coup d’état of Tejerazo to the Ajuria Enea Pact, the precarious and bitter political situation we are experiencing today was resolved. The so-called Basque problem became an even bigger problem. ETA wanted to adapt to the new times, but it did not succeed. In 1987 he made a bad calculation, and all the steps that have been taken so far have been a mistake.

A very small percentage of the population already admitted armed struggle, lost prestige and cost a great deal. The failure of the negotiations in Algeria was such that the losses after the Lizarra–Garazi Agreement were even greater. Because they wanted to move forward with the PNV, and that path is impossible to materialize.”

This sociologist distinguishes between the sociological Abertzale left and the politics articulated in the institutions: “The Abertzale left is the absurd accumulation of a structure. The bosses are static. The State distinguishes the defense of the ‘commune’ and the administration of the ‘commune’. These libertarians don't. During the 1936 Civil War, confederal anarchists defended and defended community administration, but did not separate them. That's the difference. Libertarians reject the state because the state articulates reality from a premise, not from reality itself. Our nature is favorable to the confederations of peoples, starting with the very confederation of the Basque Country, that is, we must start from its fundamental reality”.

The author of the book AnarkHerria has always been critical of the avant-garde: “The avant-garde have created a tremendous scourge on people. Influence has been reproduced from generation to generation, because they fear the nature of the autonomy of movement. They need control. Since they are Leninists, they articulate their procedures in stages”.

Pascual states that in the vast space of the left Abertzale the libertarian groups have also acted with the impetus of the national problem, opening the way to realize the right of self-determination. In social movements and through small groups. First it was a neighborhood movement, then a broad environmental movement. In the 1980s, there were a large number of alternative and anti-authoritarian, horizontal groups that developed a huge network. Consider that free radios then are an anti-information agency: “It was a turning point in the basic structure. They created 50 free radios and so many other gaztetxes. The avant-garde have always wanted to throw them into the water, even if it were a gentle man. The era under the motto March and Struggle was the hatching, a generation spoke through music and free radio, within a learning process. These free radios got a solid and interesting programming with few media. They did alternative journalism, both technically and ideologically. It was time to sow the industrial crisis, as half of the young people were unemployed. In 25% of the population there were no institutional expectations or alternatives. For example, then, there were no current institutional spaces sports or cultural. The alternative movements made the culture of this people.”

As an example, Gaztetxe Kukutza, in the Bilbaíno district of Rekalde, has set an example. It highlights its liberal transversal component, self-governing and assembly fund, and above all its way of operating: “Kukutza was a real participation of the socio-cultural equipment of the neighborhood, a cooperative idea. It was the result of a movement that started working since the 1980s and lasted fifteen years. But the PNV did not allow this model to be expressed. Kukutza was not a mere struggle for a building, a symbolic element. The bilbaíno movement was formed along with the alternative, very diversified. The last battle was fought with the movement of the Abertzale left, but Bildu’s first paintings began to move into the current situation – which is now EH Bildu – and to stay in the rear. The PNV did not want any opposition, let alone an alternative, to its plans for the remodeling of the city. But more than the PNV, the problem is the Abertzale left, which has not broken it with his father.”

Everything that happened in the metropolitan Bilbao is believed to be happening in the Errekaleor district of Vitoria-Gasteiz.El PNV poses a battle to the alternative movement, in relation to the sociological base of the Abertzale left: “But how is EH Bildu going to act?” Pascual is pessimistic, he didn't trust. Remember the APR case: “Another example, when Bildu took over the management of the Gipuzkoa Deputy, he said ‘this is not a problem of our competence’. Alternative forces for sustainable development were being organized in an orderly fashion, but Bildu threw them into the mouths of Madrid’s dogs.”

In Pascual's opinion, on the left Abertzale beyond the institutional space are the popular movements, there is pressure from the bottom up, but those intentions get rid of at the top: “At the time when Bildu began to build extensively, he was unable to manoeuvre. When the PNV was outside the CAV government – when the Abertzale left was illegalized – the Jeltzales were against the strings, but the Abertzale left helped to return to centrality. In 2012, the political failure of the Abertzale left began to gestate again. They've had to spend six years to figure out. We are paying for that political error, proof of this is the ‘pact’ policy with the PNV, in Vitoria and in Pamplona. EH Bildu has fallen into the PNV pacts game without counterposition.”

“Before organizing Bildu, we were all in a situation of emergency – Pascual continues – we tried once again to organise people of different lines horizontally. The new independence movement emerged at the Aberri Eguna. Our approach was that the independence committees began to work naturally in each village and in each neighborhood, according to the real correlations of forces. But the usual co-sellers reappeared, the liberated ones, set up the political office of always to control everything. These do not allow for the formation of basic counterparts. Where do you want us to go? Next, the Abertzale left has organized the initiative Céesku dago (GED), a wider office, with the PNV within it. Are we dumb or what?”

From his point of view, EH Bildu’s strategy has cut the ground to the PNV for the umpteenth time. To start with the independentists and end up drawing polls on Anoeta: “They set up an office again: tables, chairs, posters, flags... and they say the movement is underway. They don't understand what the popular movement is. Being ‘independentist’ or ‘revolutionary’ is nothing more than an option, but it is made day by day and not from top to bottom. The Assemblea Nacional Catalana (ANC) or Òmnium Cultural de Cataluña do not emerge on their own, but, unfortunately, the Basque Left has made it difficult to create these figures here.”

Juantxo Estebaranz: In the line of autonomy

Juantxo Estebaranz (Bilbao, 1966) was a member of the Likinian Association: “In the 1950s, two conflicting movements emerged: that of workers and that of nationalists. The workers were thrown at the Basque nationalists. At the same time, however, the movement under the slogan Patria y Libertad, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, which renewed libertarian thinking, rose in the world. We are educated within that, with that difference from former libertarians. The vision of nationalism is secessionist, but for those of our generation nationalism is a priori anti-imperialist”.

The post-war libertarians of 1936 were alive in popular movements. In the 1980s, according to Estebarn, the Orthodoxies of the Basque movement were repelled. Anarchism began to work in line with the new idea of “autonomy”. When they entered the “official” libertarian movement, at the same time, there was a strange atmosphere in the antinuclear movements: “The CNT was broken into two tendencies, existentialist and what today is CGT. The atmosphere was puzzling. The rivalry between the anarchist lines surprised us, some autonomous groups crumbled and the environment was difficult. We started at the Libertarian Youth who coordinated these autonomous groups operating on the peninsula. We were an unusual anarchist group, acting outside trade unionism. We weren't CNT or CGT. We prioritize ‘autonomy’.”

Creation of the Likinian Association

Estebarn recalls the political situation at the end of 1980: “It was the time before the negotiations in Algeria between ETA and the Spanish Government. As soon as this happened, the tension had crept into popular movements. For example, in 1987, two people lost their lives in an attack on the PSOE headquarters in Portugalete, Bizkaia. The National Bureau of HB attributed the authorship to the libertarian group Pentecost. Since then, relations between the groups on the Abertzale left have been greatly affected.” He has also reminded us of two historical facts of the same time: “It was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the victory of the Sandinistas. The anti-imperialist axis fell in the world, but the fruits of the negotiations expected by the miles did not reach Algeria.” The groups working on “autonomy” intended to create a new space – outside the so-called
anarchy – within the new alternative movements. With the aim of uniting intergenerational physical spaces, the relations between different liberal and autonomous groups were worked. Between 1990 and 1992, they established the basis of the Likinian Association, creating spaces for debate: “We started by making self-criticism of our militantism and our small sectarianism. We started with the dissemination of books and records.” According to the founder of the Likinian Society, between 1992 and 2007 they were fifteen glorious years of capitalism. Globalization gave its “best”: “At that time, the capacity of cultural movements developed enormously. The Likinian Society also ‘took advantage’ of that economic bubble. The ability to edit and buy records and books was high. But as the bubble burst, we got self-depressed, that’s what we also made self-criticism.” At that time, the negotiations of Lizarra-Garazi and Loiola also took place in the period 1997-2007.

The 1990s was the height of the anti-nuclear movement, a development of multiple environmental expressions.

against the capitalist. That high day is in: “Capitalist development has ended in Western Europe. It still has some projects, but we are in another phase. The explosion of the bubble has occurred since 2007, when a repositioning has taken place. Where are we ideologically? Well, in a European capitalism, which is diminishing its strength, we have reached the summit of the oil era. Parallel to the peak, capitalism has reached its peak. I call it ‘mesetal capitalism’, which can only descend.”

If that is the reality, where has the so-called “autonomy stems from the struggle, not from the ideology” of Estebarz? Where is its essence? In his view, if we are to recover the tendencies of the past, in order to activate the survival capacities, a new reflection must be made. The capitalist system has enabled the welfare state and we must reflect on it. This is the data that has given us to start reflecting: “The Spanish state has increased its purchasing power five times in 50 years.”

However, the welfare state is a very expensive bureaucratic structure – it continues. It can only be sustained in a state of rapid development, and that's over. “Individuals have lost their ability to survive. We don't know how to create and die, we don't know how to plant or sow, we don't know... That is, the present is very different from the crisis of capitalism of 1929. The people who faced this crisis were not afraid, because they knew how to carry out the tasks mentioned. Now, after almost a century, we are devoid of those capabilities. We have lost ownership of food, shelter or clothing, due to the state of well-being. However, this capitalist decline is an opportunity to rethink. The crisis is always an opportunity. In this social concern, we must once again begin a new stage of socialisation, against the impoverishment of human values. Because in this crisis the easiest thing has been to do the opposite, some sectors of the transformative revolutionary left continue to claim the welfare state, thus delaying the end of the current system.”

He tells us about the APR paradigm to describe the current situation: “It is curious that in 1995, in the bubble of globalisation, the fast anti-train movement adapted better than it is today. When the bubble burst, in addition to the fact that the APR project was inexplicable to the authors, when it was unworkable, the opposite movement lost strength and capacity to mobilize people. Why? In order to understand the loss of force, we have to go back, in the path of the transformation of the Abertzale left it has been the popular movements that have suffered it. The movement against the VAT had its own characteristics. After mass demonstrations, activists moved to the site or engaged in the occupation of land. They also worked on civil disobedience. Today, the political elites seeking transformation within the left Abertzale today have not assimilated it well, so they are not comfortable. Thus, the movement has been deactivated.”

The anti-capitalist movement, including that of libertarian orientation, has suffered, according to Estebarz, a parallel crisis: "It has not been able to establish a kind of hegemony in times of crisis. The one that was maintained between 1994 and 2012 is in the process of self-dissolution. The assembly was dissolved against the TAV. The most demanding anticapitalist expression, assembly, but was not able to maintain the cohesion of the groups that were at that time of transformation”.

Asel Luzarraga: Anarchism on the Punk Road

Asel Luzarraga (1971; Bilbao, Bermeo) is a writer and member of the Punkamine music group. “At 14 years old I saw myself as an anarchist, meeting La Polla and other punkis groups. Punk influenced, not knowing it was from the anarch.” In the mid-1980s, in Bilbao, Luzarraga felt only in a youthful environment: “The Basque conflict was boiling. Everyone, except me, was from the Abertzale left, supporters of ETA. ‘I, neither of HB nor of the PNV, am an anarchist,’ he said. He tells us he was isolated: “I started in the gaztetxe, it was the Iraun group, his colleagues claimed direct action. The wall was completely rounded. I didn't know how to get to them, I didn't have contact. I’ve been completely self-taught, I created my first anarchism from my own reflection, under the influence of music.”

He is a son of a nationalist family from the time of the Civil War. Growing up, he said, “I’m going to be lehendakari and proclaim independence.” Her grandparents were Euskaldunes, but her parents lost the Basque. Sabino Arana was present in her house and in her imagination, but for a moment, in adolescence, she had a kind of clip. “The neighbors were Basque, but they lived in Spanish. I started writing at the age of nine, suddenly seeing the contradiction, I couldn't go on in Spanish. At the age of fifteen, I began to study and I was completely Euskaldunice in college.”

Today, he says that he would vote in favour if it were a referendum on independence, but that the next day he would begin to fight against the Basque State: "I would resist the Basque State, I do not want a state. I don't feel comfortable in any political party, I was really upset to choose if I was young from HB or the PNV. I don’t want rulers, governments, borders, policemen, armies...” He took all of these ideas into a punk environment and carried them out between intractable, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist groups: “I consider myself anarchist, and if I think like one next to me, it’s a sign that something is wrong. It's impossible for two people to think the same thing, anarchists are not the same thing. The most comfortable thing is to think as the environment thinks, is to build one's own thought. Thus we enrich the world, if we are not calcos, the world goes wrong.”

In 2003 he started working in the Punkamine music group. Among the members of the group, some were from the left Abertzale and others did not: "This has been the dilemma of the young Basque nationalists of the past decades, that is, regardless of whether they belong to ETA or the Basque left. I've been out of them, or... sometimes on the shore, because it accompanies me a lot of what was being done in that field. I agreed with them on a number of things, but their sectarianism was often imposed. I am against all violence. I don't accept killing anyone for my ideas. The use of force is an insurmountable barrier to me. But I've had several people in jail and I've put myself next to them, of course."

Because – according to his own reflection – the youth movement created around ETA for young Basques has served as a binding force, but it has sometimes been an obstacle for all movements to do more together, to fight confidently: "The sectarian attitude of the Abertzale left has generated great self-censorship. An invisible posture, but very internalized. They have also been and are young Anarchists of the Left and Euskaltzales, but the Orthodox have sought to purge their libertarian philosophy. When libertarians have gone beyond the interests of ETA and the Abertzale left, they have been torn apart. In fact, the only ones who have broken the vanguard discipline have, unfortunately, been the anarchists or the self-employed, who have not followed the indications of ETA, the heterogeneous collectives”.

Asel Luzarraga “was drowned” in the Basque Country and went to Argentina. His friends had spent a lot of time on anarchism. At first, the anarchist world became special: “The truth is, I knew who Proudhon and Bakunin were, but I hadn’t read them, I didn’t want to read anyone. He said they didn't need me, "Do I know what and who am I?" A friend told me, ‘Don’t get so proud of your self-teaching, read a little.’ I read malatesta in Bakuni, Proudhon, Kropoktin... Italian Enrico Malatesta had a great influence in Argentina, his friends were close, working class and scholars.”

In
2009 he moved to Chile, which allowed him, among other things, to know firsthand the situation of the Mapuche people. He was arrested on 31 December of the same year as the alleged perpetrator of an attempted attack in the South American country. These facts gave him “fame.” By then he was already known for his facet of writer. In a way, it returned free from South America. He had the Basque Country well inside. It has brought up the past and the present: “The movement of gaztetxes was, and is, indispensable for reflection and for the survival of the struggle. Occupation is a vital initiative in confronting authority. The philosophy of self-management is necessary to act outside the institutions and in defence of human rights. Most Gaztetxes have been militants of the Abertzale left, but libertarian positions have been deeply rooted in them.” In his words, the Gaztetxe Kukutza in the past or the current Izarbeltz Ateneo have also been the result of the anarchist philosophy, the need to work the self-managed culture in this country.

Luzarraga also gives us a vision of social networks: “I’m on social media. I use Facebook, but I see it as tools of the system. I think what I write is OK around me, but I don't know if you read it. I mean, we like to believe that we're someone to say a lot of things, that we do, but I'm not sure. We live by looking at our navel, I'm the first. We're creating microghettos, we're constantly feeding ourselves. But it’s paradoxical, at the same time we need them, because outside that we don’t exist.”

The Fifth Real Philosophy Trail

Sales Santos Vera (Badajoz, 1956) and Itziar Madina Elgezabal (Cullera, País Catalanes, 1974) are the authors of the book Communities sin Estado en la Montaña Vasca. Madina has also written the novel Beste eguzki (Txalaparta, 2007). Both books are libertarian indicators. They live in Urepel, on the border of the Fifth Royal or Country of the Fifth, in a hamlet: “Fifth is a witness to our lost past, a trail of the Basque community, a sign of the solidarity of our ancestors,” afirman.Esta
a libertarian couple takes in the spirit the communism of the recent past. Le Cercle des montagnes, The Circle of Mountains. It is an anthropological study carried out by Sandra Ott in the North American region of Santa Grazi. In his words, this is a magnificent indicator of the communitarianism of the Basques. According to the philosophy of both, “words have no basis”, or “it is the present that must be reached by regressing”.

Itziar Madina met during the Liceo (René Cassin de Baiona) the lines of libertarianism: “We had a good professor who explained the historical debate between Sartre and Camus. Most of us are in favor of Camus. There were also right-wing professors who wanted to hide the history of the Paris Commune.” It was the time of the libertarian group of Iparralde Patxa: “We work on the connection and coherence between idea and action.” The need for young people to put their ideas into practice without interity was the model we took as a model. Taking into account the struggle of Euskal Herria, in the Basque, in the egalitarian way. They were open meetings, and we called the strike. Patxi disseminated immediate information through posters and fanzines, slogans and slogans, and we learned in his own way, to pratize the direct activism of the street, without leadership, betting on the successive results.”

The Sales Santos route is different, special. Natural from Badajoz, is an immigrant from Navarra and resides in the town of Pamplona. He has lived in Pamplona and on the mountain. In the capital he worked in the industry since his adolescence, engaged in the struggle of the workers. In his youth he went to Aezkoa, where he has known and worked the auzolan and the assembly of the municipalities of the mountain. He lived in the town of Urtasun for a long time: “If we really stood up for the nature and cultural activity of Euskal Herria, we would not need Marxist or anarchist theorists. The first liberating element is the way of life of the simple people, in an anti-hierarchical, supportive and fraternal manner. Living in Basque is the result of this. Because here, as the Basque people are lost in the valley of Baigorri, the free character of this people is dying.”
Santos participated in the movement against the swamp of Itoiz: “That fight answered three questions. Why, for what and for whom? But when the avant-garde came in, the political groups, those demands lost the nature of the land.

It suddenly became political. Nature of HB and surrounding groups. We defended Irati, they wanted the defense of the natural park and rejected the struggle of the swamp of Itoiz.” In his view, this experience demonstrates the failure suffered in several popular struggles. It previously happened in the Leizaran Motorway and today, around the TAV: “At first we talked about the Solidarity Group. Although I did not participate in the organization of sabotage against the reservoir, I did not agree with calling it sabotage. I was against the publicity of the action and I felt offended. I told him that you did not have to claim the action, that you did not have to do as you had done, and stay. To do as it did was to kill the sabotage. In this sabotage the State was given the opportunity to play the game. In other words, an armed action has to explain its nature by itself, otherwise it is not worth and is detrimental to everyone, even to those who do it. You can fight and lose, but fighting for the land to be burned is not acceptable.”

Santos and Madina consider that the Leizaran motorway, the Itoiz dam and the environmental struggle against the TAV have been losing the defense of the land. It is said that the cause of the antinuclear and ecologist committees is dead, the sense of the earth has been lost: “The avant-garde assume our demands with the aim of deriving political benefits. However, the defence of land is not their objective, but they have used the struggle to negotiate with the State. In addition, they have completely lost it. Here, after all, the earth has deteriorated. We have fought against the State by a group of alternative assembly peoples, and the vanguard has instrumentalized our struggle. ETA has misused the armed struggle, pretended to make it the mediator of this people, but has raged the objectives of the local struggles adrift.”

There is talk of the end of ETA: “They have done it wrong and the others have not allowed them to do it. They have left the land scorched. Why? Because they've had to capitalize on the popular movement to negotiate. EH Bildu has moved from wrestling to enabling thought. The free thought, the critic, the free way of acting that could accumulate on the left abertzale, have been sent to shit. The original anti-State instinct has been lost. People have been assimilated. It's not. For example, in Pamplona the young people want to make the Gaztetxe live. But how can they do it? We cannot act in the institutions and protect the occupational struggle. You can't be mayor of EH Bildu and say he leaves the premises to the okupas. These premises are private property, they are available to these young citizens for a moment, but they are not of the people”.

Finally, they have left us with a reflection like this: "The politics of today's rulers is a dire one. Before they have managed the beaches and the natural parks, then the ancient areas of the villages, but not only that, now it is they who decide how to organize the services of the towns and cities. As the Marxists said, ‘you will think as you work’. And the motto to turn that around was: ‘Live as you think, if you don’t think like you live.’ But we have lost that thought.”