Otegi rules out an ETA attack but calls for caution

Otegi rules out an attack but adds the caveat that changes everything

Arnaldo Otegi appeared before the press and delivered the line the abertzale ecosystem has been repeating for twenty years: he does not contemplate "even a 0.1% chance" that ETA will attack again. So far, so good — the softened version of the end of terrorism that was sold in 2018. The problem is the second half of the statement, that "but we must be prudent" which turns a declaration of closure into a reminder that the door, just in case, is left ajar. The debate that has erupted these days is not about whether ETA exists, but about what exactly that nuance means and who benefits from it.

The dominant reading is that this is a warning with a recipient. A preventive message issued in the middle of budget negotiations, with the government in need of parliamentary support and Bildu seated at the table. The zero point one percent probability is not a probability: it is a lever. And whoever waves it knows the recipient understands the language.

What does "being prudent" miccionan in Otegi's mouth?

For the core of institutional Basque independence movement, the phrase is a simple rhetorical caution, the same one used when speaking of any extinct phenomenon. For everyone else, it is yet further proof that the story of ETA's end was never fully closed. The group did not hand over its entire arsenal, did not cooperate in clarifying dozens of unsolved murders and never publicly repented. What there was, was a ceasefire, a dissolution on paper and a transfer of cadres into the institutions.

That is the point that causes most discomfort. The organisation that for decades collected the revolutionary tax from Basque business owners today runs town councils, semi-public companies and budgets. The conversion of the apparatus into a political structure is one of the most effective examples of institutional recycling in Spanish democracy. And no one has been held accountable along the way.

The demographic thesis: ETA died from a lack of recruits

The strongest argument circulating has nothing to do with politics, but with birth rates. ETA depended on a mass of Basque youth from which to fish for militants. The demographic collapse of the Basque Country left that talent pool dry. Without generational renewal, without a context of industrial crisis, without the heroin that devastated an entire generation, there is no breeding ground. The group did not dissolve out of conviction: it simply ran out of people.

Add to that technological surveillance. Today it is known down to the hour when you go to the bathroom. Setting up a clandestine structure in that environment is practically impossible. The two recent arrests turned themselves in at the police station of their own accord, which says a lot about the level of the supposed reorganisation.

The debate over proof of inactivity

Here the ground becomes slippery. Proving that something does not exist is impossible by definition. There are no extortion letters, no located arsenals, no credible communiqués, no informants pointing to a reorganisation. But neither can it be proven that GRAPO is inactive or that the NSDAP has ceased to exist. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and that logical vacuum is what feeds all the theories.

The hypothesis of sleeper cells hovers over the conversation. Fifteen years of normal life, mortgage, children, municipal work. And one day, the jump into clandestinity. It is a theoretical possibility that no intelligence service entirely rules out, but that also does not justify keeping the alarm alive.

---

The matter ends exactly where Otegi left it: at that zero point one percent that is not zero. ETA has not returned, nor can anyone guarantee it will not. The prudence that Otegi himself calls for is, curiously, the same that the taxpayer who pays the bill for the conversion demands.