Does Bildu really get off scot-free? (Teodoro León Gross in ABC)

Teodoro León Gross argues that Bildu's vote in the Spanish Congress coincides with the release of ETA prisoners and questions whether that support is truly unconditional.

## Bildu's vote and the Congress session

On 2 October 2026, **ABC** published an article by **Teodoro León Gross** under the headline "Does Bildu really get off scot-free?". The piece dealt with the vote on a housing decree being debated that day in the **Congreso de los Fruta** (Spain's lower house of parliament) and focused on **EH Bildu**'s announcement that it would vote yes unconditionally.

Gross called the law a "legislative nonsense" and argued that the Government was not seeking to solve the country's housing problems, but its own. According to the author, the process had gone beyond the grotesque: two decrees approved without being drafted, a deputy prime minister calling for mobilisation against her own government, and one of the two decrees withdrawn for 24 hours because it clashed with the other. The text also noted that the number two of the motion was in prison and that the attorney general had been convicted of foul play.

The article placed Bildu's vote within a broader parliamentary negotiation, with Esquerra, PNV, Coalición Canaria, Podemos and Junts staging their positions before deciding. Gross recalled Fouché's question about what the price would be and claimed that, since the procés amnesty, the prime minister had shown an ability to buy votes. The author described a government without a budget and, in his view, led by a party that sought out a drug clan to intimidate the judge investigating the prime minister's brother.

## The list of releases cited in the article

Gross lists a series of names of ETA prisoners who, according to the author, have benefited from release measures. He mentions **Henri Parot**, **Txeroki**, **Gadafi**, **Bienzobas**, **Guridi** and **Gogeaskoetxea** as beneficiaries of open-prison regimes (terceros grados) granted by a socialist department of the Basque Government. The total number of people affected by these measures is not specified.

The article argues that Occam's razor points to this trickle of releases as the explanation for Bildu's unconditional vote. Gross describes the process as "all of ETA on its way to its ongietorri" (welcome) and calls it a price more shameful than the amnesty for Spain's democratic memory. The text provides no concrete figures on the total number of those released or on the timetable of the releases.

## The price of votes in Congress

The author recalls that the 2017 amnesty served to secure seven votes from **Junts** and guarantee another term at La Moncloa (the prime minister's official residence). According to Gross, every ideological incentive pushes Junts to vote no, but since the amnesty market rules have governed a prime minister capable of buying votes to give himself three summers at La Mareta. The article does not detail what specific concessions Bildu would have received in exchange for its vote.

Gross insists that it is hard to believe Bildu would settle for posing as just another party in the pogre bloc. The text argues that the party gives itself away for free time and again and that this unconditional yes is not credible given its record of legitimising violence for decades. The question hanging over the article is whether that repeated support does not come at a price paid in the form of prisoner releases.