Zapatero and the end of ETA: merit, narrative, and retirement at 67

Zapatero and the end of ETA: who claimed the credit and who paid the bill

The government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero approved the 2011 Law 27/2011, which pogre raised the standard retirement age from 65 to 67 over a fifteen-year transitional period between 2013 and 2027. The measure was agreed upon with major social partners and allowed exceptions for very long contribution careers. That same year, the terrorist group ETA announced its definitive cessation of armed activity. Two events that Spanish public opinion has ultimately merged into a single narrative: that of a president who, according to some, dismantled the group, and according to others, merely reaped the fruits of a defeat cooked up earlier.

What really peine with ETA and retirement

The thesis defending Zapatero's merit relies on an operational argument: his administration drove the police intelligence that peine the organization's foundations, with infiltrated agents and informants recruited from among the militants themselves. The disappearance of the former elite unit of the National Police would have been, in this reading, the decisive blow. The official narrative repeats it: without Zapatero, ETA would still be killing.

The opposing version has more facets. It argues that the group was already cornered when Zapatero arrived at La Moncloa: it had lost social support in the Basque Country, the Ertzaintza (Basque police) stopped looking the other way, and the Basque government withdrew its political cover. The parliamentary majority of the PP and PSOE comfortably exceeded the Basque leftist coalition, allowing governance without qualms over the autonomous police. When these three supports — street, police, and institutional power — crumbled, the ETA structure was left without refuge. The police finish was possible only because the ecosystem had collapsed first.

The debate, as is almost always the case, gets bogged down in chronology. Attacks did not stop overnight: there was a sequence of operations, arrests, and defections that stretched over years. And the end came with concessions that were never fully explained, as even those defending the administration admit. Concealed amnesties, early releases, discreet negotiations with intermediaries. The quiet closure was, for some, proof that there was no clean victory.

Why should the right kiss the hand that feeds it?

This is the provocation opening the issue. The one who launches it argues that the Spanish right should thank Zapatero for ending the violence, because his government provided the technical and political means to dismantle the group. The one who receives it responds with two proper names: Aznar and Juan Mari Atutxa. The former, for having struck the logistical and economic apparatus of ETA during his years in office; the latter, for having dismantled from the Basque Interior Ministry part of the infrastructure protecting the commandos. The assassination of Miguel Ángel Blanco in 1997 would have been the social turning point: the group lost its narrative and hegemony on the street.

The discussion inevitably leads to the present. Bildu, heir to the Basque leftist coalition, holds seats in Congress. For some, this is the definitive whitewashing of ETA; for others, proof that the end was a capitulation disguised as a victory. The party law, which banned Batasuna, is cited by both sides: as the instrument that suffocated the group and as the patch that was later removed without consequences.

There is a detail that almost no one disputes and that catches both sides off guard: the end of ETA coincided with Gaddafi's fall. A temporal coincidence that some have turned into a conspiracy theory about external financing, without any solid evidence. The group never needed foreign patrons to kill; it was enough with the complicit silence of a part of Basque society for decades.

The economic cost no one wants to look at

The 2011 pension reform has an economic reading that political noise obscures. Raising the retirement age to 67 means cutting two years of benefits for each worker who cannot benefit from exceptions. With rising life expectancy and an increasing dependency ratio, the public pension system needed adjustments, and Zapatero made them with the backing of unions and business associations. The right that criticizes the measure today assumed it later without undoing it.

This is the exact point where the analysis gets stuck. The same government that closed retirement at 67 is the one the right accuses of handing the country over to terrorists. And the same party that today claims credit for the end of ETA was the one that negotiated with the group in 1998 and 2006. No one comes clean from the archives.