3rd Division Barcelona FC Sant Andreu antifascist ultras, Desperdicis, remembering the unpunished killing by Basque police of the unarmed football supporter Inigo Cabacas in 2012.

On the sixth anniversary of his death at the very site of his killing by Basque police, relatives and friends gather to remember football fan Inigo Cabacas. The youth's father laments that many of those who fired rubber bullets will not be facing trial, much less those who ordered them into action against a peaceful crowd celebrating the success of their football team.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=478308935917995&id=100012166787478

XABIER REY URMENETA, BASQUE POLITICAL PRISONER HAS BEEN FOUND DEAD IN HIS CELL. He was sentenced to 26 years in 2006 for alleged participation in ETA. As part of the Spanish State's policy of dispersing political prisoners throughout the territory, xabier was 1,000 Kms. from his hometown and family in Iruñea in Naffaroa province and spent long periods in solitary confinement. According to the Cadiz prison authorities, he committed suicide. His family said that it was cruel to have to regularly travel over 1,000 Kms. to visit him (and the same back home) and now to have to make that journey again to take his body home. He was only 38 years of age. AMNESTIA AND AGAINST REPRESSION MOVEMENT STATEMENT (TRANSLATED FROM CASTILLIAN): The Pro Amnesty and Against Repression Movement wishes to express its sadness and anger at the death in his cell of Basque political prisoner Xabier Rey Urmeneta and wishes to extend sincere condolences to his family and friends. Likewise, we must denounce that the death of Xabier has been brought about by the Spanish State and that, therefore, we consider it a political crime. If the living conditions they impose on political prisoners in all Spanish prisons are not at all easy, those imposed in Puerto III are the hardest among the harsh ones. We have to remember that the Puerto III Station has been an extermination centre from the moment of its opening, and that from the beginning it has been used to carry out experiments with Basque political prisoners. Its prison regime is well known for its harshness, and its jailers are also for their active fascist attitudes. In May 2010 they beat up prisoner Arkaitz Bellón (deceased in Puerto I) from Elorrio. The total isolation to which Arantxa Zulueta was exposed and the first phase of the first degree, which is the most restrictive penitentiary regime, imposed on Iñaki 'Txikito' (which has already been removed) of Bilbao. At the moment they continue maintaining Iñaki in the isolation module (where he remains since 2007), as with another extradited from France, Jon Bienzobas. The latter has also been subjected to the first phase of the first degree as soon as he set foot in Port III. As we said at the beginning, Spain has murdered Xabier Rey in the camouflaged war that it wages against Euskal Herria. In Euskal Herria there is no peace, nor is it possible while there remains a solitary political prisoner, exile or person deported politically. In Euskal Herria there will be no peace as long as the exploitation of its working class persists nor as long as Spanish and French imperialisms exist. This should not be the occasion of easy phrases or of romantic tales of distant revolutions. In these times in which pretending has taken the lead over action, the Pro Amnesty and Against Repression Movement wants to emphasize that today, just like yesterday and tomorrow, is a time of struggle. We want to achieve a free Euskal Herria without political repression, and for that reason we want to make a new call to the fight, because only by fighting will we achieve the objectives to which we aspire. War against the States always! Agur eta ohore, Xabier! (Trans: Farewell with Honour!) In Euskal Herria, on March 7, 2018.

https://aboutbasquecountry.eus/en/2018/02/10/elsa-artadi-will-a-basque-oak-take-root-in-the-government-of-catalonia/

https://rebelbreeze.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/political-prisoners-solidarity-brings-up-to-100000-on-to-bilbaos-streets/

ANTI-BASQUE GANG GUNMAN ADMITS MURDERING CHILDREN'S DOCTOR AND HERRI BATASUNA LEADER SANTI BROUARD -- IMPLICATES SENIOR OFFICER OF THE GUARDIA CIVIL AT THE TIME Comment: GAL was a Spanish state-run murder gang kidnapping, torturing and assassinating Basque Abertzale-Left activists. Although the article refers to Mas as "ex-commander" of the Guardia Civil, Rafael Mas was not dismissed until 1995, on a case of torture committed in 1981 against the father of an ETA Volunteer. Two Guardia Civil were sentenced for the torture and Mas and another Lieut. Col. José Martín Llevot and officers Ángel Fuentes, Diego Cerón, Julián Pérez Montesinos, Santiago López Rico and Miguel Caballero Sánchez were all sentenced to 6 years in jail. The officers appealed their sentences and all were reduced, permitting them to return to the Guardia Civil and also to claim their pensions. The GAL gang ran amok from 1983-1987, causing at least 27 dead and 26 injured, with Brouard's murder in 1984. During that time Mas was a Lieutenant-Colonel under Spanish Minister of the Interior Barrionuevo, who was also jailed after a newspaper investigation by the right-wing El Mundo newspaper exposed the relationship between the Spanish PSOE Government of the time, police and military and the GAL murder gangs. It was Morcillo's statement that brought Mas to trial for murder but Morcillo later withdrew his testimony and the court failed to convict. In 2002 Mas was convicted of drug-trafficking 188 Kgs of pure cocaine through the Basque port of Santurtzi and sentenced to 11 years of prison and a fine of €12,000,000. Our Translation of article below: 'The GAL gunman José Luis Morcillo has admitted for the first time being the material author of the shots that ended the life of the leader of Herri Batasuna (HB) Santi Brouard in his pediatric consultation surgery in Bilbao on November 20, 1984. ' "When Santiago Brouard left his office, I shot him twice and shot him again on the ground," admits Morcillo, in an interview with the newspaper El Mundo. 'After publicly asking forgiveness of Brouard's family and expressing his repentance, he explains that it was ex-commander of the Civil Guard Rafael Masa who told him that "if we did not do it, his boss would sack him. His boss was surely San Cristóbal, former director general of Security Spanish State, with whom I worked in the Interior ". 'The Granada-born ex-businessman also explains that Masa "forced (him) on several occasions" to commit the crime together with Rafael López Ocaña. He enjoined him "For all that you hold dear, Luis, go and organize that however you can, but do it fucking soon, because they are going to throw me out of the Ministry". 'Morcillo confesses that for that murder they paid him 7.5 million pesetas, although of that amount he had to give 2.5 million to Rafael López Ocaña, sentenced to 33 years in prison for the murder. However, he says that someone from the Ministry of the Interior kept the greater part of the money destined to cover the killing of Brouard. ' "Later I found out that 25 million pesetas were released for the Brouard affair, but I only got five," he says. 'On Tuesday, Morcillo will give a statement by videoconference before a courtcase in Bilbao about some recordings made by José Amedo in which he would confess his participation in the murder, of which he was already acquitted in 2003.' Photo: Homage being paid to Santi Brouard memory.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5050229/Basque-people-march-support-Catalonia.html Demonstration yesterday in Bilbao, in the southern Basque Country (i.e within the Spanish State) marching in solidarity with Catalunya and in protest at the repression of independists and democrats by the Spanish State. Despite the rain, 44,000 took part according to Basque sources (the total population of the Basque Country, both sides of the Spanish-French states' border, is just around three million). Other videos further down on this link, including Catalan Minister of the Interior Joaquim Forn arriving at Barcelona-El Prat airport on Tuesday being med by protesting right-wing Spanish unionists, including fascists giving the banned fascist salute with impunity from the Spanish police. This is the Spanish State which the Basques have been combatting for decades.

Well-researched article by Stew Redin published in the Cedar Lounge blog https://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2017/11/03/internment-torture-executions-the-basque-country-in-the-dying-days-of-the-franco-dictatorship-by-stewart-reddin/

OCTOBER 28th IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE MASS EXECUTION OF 42 BASQUE ANTI-FASCIST SOLDIERS BY THE SPANISH FASCIST FORCES. IT IS ONE OF TWO GUDARI EGUNAK (Day of the Soldier) COMMEMORATED IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY (and in some of the Basque diaspora in Latin and Northern America). The Gudariak fought on land but also at sea and some memorials commemorate their heroic struggle against bigger and better-armed craft. On October 28th in 1937 the Spanish fascist forces carried out the the executions of 42 Gudari (Basque anti-fascist soldiers) in the prison Penal de El Dueso (Santoña). After the surrender of the anti-fascist forces, some gudariak carried on resistance in the mountains and from the northern Basque Country (in the French state). Later, they also formed resistance groups against the French collaborationist regime and the Nazis. Basque soldiers also fought in the Free French columns in the Allied armies. The PNV-EAJ (Basque Nationalist Party) followers commemorate those executed members of the Euzko Gudarostea (Basque nationalist army) on this date but the Gudari Eguna of the Abertzale Left is on 27 September, the date of the execution by Franco's regime of two ETA and three FRAP members. The Spanish State tends to tolerate the commemoration of the October 28th Aberri Eguna but to ban the September one as "glorification of terrorism". For example, in 2009, a Spanish judge forbade 24 planned acts of Gudari Eguna commemoration planned for September (and in Donosti, six were arrested following disturbances in resistance to or protest against the banning). Given the times and the dominant mores in society, the images are overwhelmingly male (unlike for example Madrid or Barcelona in the same period) but women played an important part too largely in the auxiliary roles without which effective combat cannot be sustained. Images: 1) The Amaiur Batallion of Basque soldiers, 1937. 2) Poster for Gudari Eguna 2011 (but which one?) 3) Basque women keeping industry going during the antifascist war. 4) Grafitti for Gudari Eguna, perhaps for the September one. 5) A child flying the Basue flag cycles past the photo of an ETA martyr, commemorating the Gudari Eguna in September.

OCTOBER 28th IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE MASS EXECUTION OF 42 BASQUE ANTI-FASCIST SOLDIERS BY THE SPANISH FASCIST FORCES. IT IS ONE OF TWO GUDARI EGUNA COMMEMORATED IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY (and in some of the Basque diaspora in Latin and Northern America). On October 28th in 1937 the Spanish fascist forces carried out the the executions of 42 Gudari (Basque anti-fascist soldiers) in the prison Penal de El Dueso (Santoña). The PNV-EAJ (Basque Nationalist Party) followers commemorate those executed members of the Euzko Gudarostea (Basque nationalist army) on this date but the Gudari Eguna of the Abertzale Left is on 27 September, the date of the execution by Franco's regime of two ETA and three FRAP members. The Spanish State tends to tolerate the commemoration of the October 28th Aberri Eguna but to ban the September one as "glorification of terrorism". For example, in 2009, a Spanish judge forbade 24 planned acts of Gudari Eguna commemoration planned for September (and in Donosti, six were arrested following disturbances in resistance to or protest against the banning). (Please also see later post)