[The following editorial originally appeared here and is reprinted with persmission of the author]

THE BASQUES, SPAIN AND ETA: RETROSPECTIVE & PERSONAL VIEW
By Joe Gandelman

When the bombs went off in Madrid yesterday they pitchforked back into the headlines a group that was in international news a lot in the 1970s -- and even in the late 1990s: ETA (which stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom).
---ETA formally denied responsibility for the murders, but the Spanish government is skeptical, maybe because ETA attempted to assassinate Spain's Prime Minister a few years ago, wanted to assassinate King Juan Carlos and was believed to be the group behind a batch of explosives found for an apparently planned big attack in February.
---On the other hand, a news report quoted Spanish security forces saying the bombs were set off by mobile phone and contained copper detonators. ETA usually uses aluminum detonators. So Spanish investigators -- like terrorism experts elsewhere -- are so far divided over who staged the attack. Still others insist that while fingers within Spain continue to point to ETA, the carefully-timed murderous attack has all the makings of an Al Qaeda operation.
---I dealt with the ETA story a LOT during the mid to late 70s as the Madrid-based "Special Correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor"" (I also did some stories on it for the now defunct Chicago Daily News). I made several trips to the "Pais Vasco" over the years. And most folks there were decidely NOT clamoring for the Basque goal of a separate Marxist state carved from regions of two countries.
---Here are some notes that might help provide context, if ETA is indeed behind the massacre or even IF the ETA was working with Al Qaeda to pull it off.

---WHEN I ARRIVED IN SPAIN: I arrived after nearly two years in New Delhi writing for the Daily news. When I arrived the Basque story was raging due to periodic random terrorist acts. I helped Madrid's make-shift Newsweek bureau there with some incidental material on the big fall of 1975 story: Spain's decision to execute (by mechanical garrote) five convicted ETA members for terrorism, despite angry international protest.
---News about the executions, outcry, and the 82-year-old dictator's steadfast determination were carried by worldwide media. (I was WAY in back of a monster crowd when the wizened Franco gave his famous "last hurrah" speech in his high pitched wispy voice, defying international opinion and warning of the influence of the Masons...)

---WHY THE BASQUES? There is a long history that you can find on many different sites, but one thing is this: the Basque separatists formally burst on the scene in 1968, born as the Franco era slowly began showing signs of age. And if they never achieved their major goal (a separate Marxist state) they contributed to another: shifting the Franco's plans for Francoism without Franco.
---It came in ETA's first spectacular act: in 1973 ETA explosives blew Franco's friend Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carerro Blanco's car sky high.
---Spaniards often told me this joke: St Peter: Who are you? Carrero: Luis Carrero Blanco. St: Peter: We don't mind having you here, but did you have to bring your car?
---The Prime Minister's assassination unleashed a chain of events that probably sped up democracy: Franco had other government heads who increasingly loosened the government's controls. Juan Carlos was on the scene and his influence grew. And once Franco died, under King Juan Carlos, various governments used "evolution without revolution" to kill off parts the old system until the first democratic elections since the Civil War took place in 1978.
--- So Spain changed -- ETA DID NOT.

---SOME THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT THE BASQUES AND SPAIN: This is not the definitive fact sheet (and some reports are contradictory) but:
-----Some reports say ETA was founded as early as 1958 by some radical youths who wanted to carve a Marxist Basque nation from four Spanish and three French Basque provinces.
-----Spain's regions are culturally diverse and there have periodically been separatist tendencies throughout Spanish history.
-----The Basques had a Swiss-style Democracy with their own parliament, army and money but backed the losing side in the 1800s Carlist wars. Madrid imposed central rule.
-----The then-autonomous Basques backed the losing Republic side in the 1936-1939 civil war. Victorious Franco banned autonomy, renamed streets and banned the Basque language.
-----During the Franco years ETA would gain limited sympathy with parts of the Basque public. They would shoot officials such as police inspectors and the government would angrily respond, usually in a way that made it more enemies. In April 1975 Spain imposed "state of exception" status on two Basque provinces, suspending freedoms and civil rights, and giving police and troops nearly limitless powers. There were widespread and highly specific allegations of torture which led to outcries in Spain and abroad.
-----Until Franco's regime died, the Basques would get back 30 percent of the tax money sent to Madrid versus 100 percent elsewhere in Spain. It was perceived as a form of punishment.
-----During the Franco era, ETA honchos often lived across the border, in France's Basque country. France usually looked the other way. France was also then home to Basque moderates which had set up the Basque-government-in-exile.
-----During the time I was in Madrid, the Basque region would occasionally hold general strikes to protest Madrid policies. They did more than 10 under Franco.
-----Sources at the time and reports indicated ETA raised much of its money by kidnapping and extortion.
-----The attitude in 1975, as expressed to me by a businessman: "Look, I'm a Basque and a businessman...But police have made us realize we are Basques so we look the other way when ETA runs by."
---WHAT I COVERED: I did many of the reports from Madrid but on various trips to the Basque Region I did several long reports from the field. But no matter where I did the report, it was clear that Basque moderates were going to be increasingly in control, as they were...once Franco died. ETA was like any terrorist group: small but brutal enough to kill its way into the headlines.
---Among other things, in June 1976 I visited an "Ikastola," a Basque language school that was allowed to operate following a late 1975 decree signed by King Juan Carlos allowing unofficial use of regional languages banned by Franco.
---But I wanted to do one more long piece that would contain quotes from ETA militants about its plans for the new democratic era. I had never talked directly with an ETA militant. Various sources told me to talk to a member of a Basque party,who then had a younger party member call me. This young Basque student told me he wanted to talk over lunch, and if things went well he'd tell me where to show up...where I would be secretly evaluated again (in those days they feared everyone was a CIA agent).
--- We talked over a huge Basque style lunch with pre-dinner drinks, wine, after dinner drinks, then he later called to tell me to show up for dinner at a village. The village had a dinner that was bigger than the lunch. I was told the answer would come "in time" but I ran out of time up there and had to go back to Madrid. I had planned another visit to the Basque Country but stories in Madrid kept me there and I decided to leave after the country's first democratic elections. I left in December 1978.

--- MY CONCLUSIONS:
---1. ETA is small. But you don't need big numbers to do damage as terrorists.
---2. ETA's longtime goal will never happen: Spain's Basque County won't unite with France's Basque Country and there are no signs the majority of Basques want to totally break away.
---3. There are Basque moderates and leftists. They're not in sympathy with ETA.
---4. ETA's one hope, then as now, is in provoking the government to overreact and do things that upset moderate or leftists. Think of it as a wedge issue, with higher stakes involved.
---5. If you look at the history of ETA in recent years, no matter what chronology you read, you see that ETA simply never adjusted to the times and was even battling Spain's first post-Franco Socialist government.
---6. If ETA's point is to provoke the government, then murdering 200 people and injuring 1200 would be a good test of the government's patience. If they DID do it and deny they did it and the government cracks down hard on them, they can call it a diversion -- that the government doesn't want the people to know it was really done by Muslim terrorists. (In this view, evidence the police found with Muslim links was to make the government look like it's lying about who did it)
---7. ETA has gone through various incarnations with varying styles of leadership and, in that context, and you can just hear some young ETA terrorist say: "Just kill THREE people? That's so 20th century!"
---So, in the end, what happened in Madrid may be an example of Al Qaeda as a bad role model for youth......

Joe Gandelman is former Madrid-base Correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor