Seville, Spain – The militant Basque separatist group ETA, which has killed more than 800 people and terrorized Spain for nearly 40 years, announced a permanent cease- fire Wednesday, saying it would turn its attention to achieving independence for the Basque region through politics.
A permanent cease-fire, which the group said would take effect Friday, has been the paramount objective of successive Spanish governments since the establishment of democracy in Spain in 1977.
Politicians and victims groups said it was important to treat the announcement with caution, saying the ETA had a history of deceit and unfulfilled promises.
But the overriding tone of most comments suggested that much of the country was allowing itself to contemplate a future that was finally free of the threat of ETA violence.
“The government has to be more prudent now than ever,” Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, the deputy prime minister, told reporters in Madrid. But, she added, “our hope and desire is that this is the beginning of the end.”
ETA, which was founded in the 1950s during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, first announced the cease-fire Wednesday morning in a statement to Radio Euskadi, a Basque radio station.
Three of its members, whose faces were hidden by white veils, later read the statement during an appearance on a television station operated by the Basque regional government.
“The objective of our decision is to advance the democratic process,” the statement said, “in order to construct a new framework that will recognize the rights that we as a people deserve. At the end of the process, the Basque citizens should have the final word and decision about their future.”
ETA has killed more than 800 people, about half of them civilians, during its effort to create an independent Basque state encompassing sections of northern Spain and southern France.
It has not killed anyone since May 2003, and speculation has been growing for months that the group was contemplating a permanent cease-fire.
The group has been decimated by scores of arrests over the past several years and is widely considered to be weaker than at any point in its history.
Ever since the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, an attack thought to be carried out by Islamic radicals in which 191 people were killed, investigators and politicians have speculated that the group was reassessing whether it should continue with terrorist attacks.
Key events in the history of the armed Basque group ETA:
July 31, 1958 – Founded by dissident student members of the Basque Nationalist Party.
July 18, 1961 – First violent action: ETA tries to derail a train carrying supporters of Gen. Francisco Franco, Spain’s dictator.
Dec. 20, 1973 – ETA kills Prime Minister Adm. Luis Carrero Blanco with a bomb in Madrid.
Sept. 12, 1974 – First major attack: Twelve people are killed by a bomb at a Madrid cafe.
1980 – ETA’s bloodiest year with 91 victims, nearly half of them civilians.
June 19, 1987 – Bloodiest attack: Car bomb in the parking lot of the Hipercor department store in Barcelona kills 21 and wounds 45.
May 2003 – ETA commits final fatal attack, killing two police officers in Sanguesa in northern Navarra region.
2004 – Police arrest more than 130 suspected ETA members, including alleged leader Mikel Antza, who is detained in France.
May 2005 – Parliament backs Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s offer of talks with ETA if the group ends violence.
Wednesday – ETA announces permanent cease-fire.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS