Terrorism and Peacebuilding Narratives in Spain

This chapter focuses on the manifestation of terrorist and counterterrorist violence in contemporary Spain in an effort to evaluate how each side’s focus on annihilating each other gave rise to a peace movement. As part of this evaluation, the chapter examines the nationalist narratives and discourses employed by both sides (the Basque terrorist organization ETA and the central authorities in Madrid), as well as the narratives employed by moderate nationalist parties and anti-violent civil society actors. This includes an examination of the Basque general public’s perceptions since the Transition to democracy of how far (if at all) violence can be justified for the purposes of achieving independence. The immersion of the two main violent actors (ETA and the state) in their efforts of mutual destruction was equal to their failure to grasp the local society’s weariness of violence. In turn, this meant that local society was left as virtually the only actor capable of agentively transforming the narratives surrounding the conflict and mobilizing the general public against terrorism. The chapter concludes by evaluating the power of anti- or counterterrorist narratives and their continued use, even when terrorism has ceased to exist: Despite ETA’s disarmament and demobilization a decade ago, there have been instances where central authorities continued to target non-violent, pro-independence attitudes as “terrorist,” thus confirming the fears of many that it was nationalism, rather than terrorism, that was seen as the bigger problem in/by the government in Madrid.