*3.1. A Functional Perception of Religious Intermediation*

The transnational mediation by the Catholic Church, and more broadly speaking by religious actors in the Basque conflict, was not monopolized by this first communication channel. Distinct sectors of the Basque political spectrum sought specific religious actors for their intermediation capacity. Even the Basque nationalist left, which had an anticlerical component, as well as many peace movements, were open to some form of intermediation by religious actors. Unlike the PNV, this call did not rely on a Christian democrat legacy or on a doctrinal convergence but, rather, on a functional view of religious actors as experts in peacemaking.

Transnational mediation was particularly necessary during ETA ceasefires and negotiation periods. This was the case when the Socialist Party came into power in Spain in March 2004 with more open positions with respect to negotiations on the Basque case.<sup>16</sup> A two-pronged process then followed, the second round of which clearly staged the functional perception of religious intermediation by political actors. A first round of meetings, in Oslo and Geneva under the aegis of the Henri Dunant Centre, put ETA envoys in contact with the Spanish government. A second round of negotiations took place between three Basque political parties: Batasuna (at the time illegal in Spain), the Basque Socialist Party (PSE-EE—Partido Socialista de Euskadi-Euskadiko Ezkerra), and the PNV. This political roundtable comprised a dozen meetings in the Jesuit sanctuary of Loyola. Had an agreemen<sup>t</sup> been reached between the three parties, an original copy would have been given to the Vatican for safekeeping (Murua 2010, pp. 67, 133; Murua 2017).<sup>17</sup>

Unlike the PNV, this attitude was less expected of the two left-leaning parties. During the 2004–2005 conversations between Batasuna and PSE-EE, Basque leaders of both parties (respectively,

<sup>15</sup> The Delegate of the President of Euskadi sent a letter in that sense to Mons. Dominique Mamberti, Secretary for Relations with States at the Holy See, 12 November 2007 (personal archive).

<sup>16</sup> The process of opening lines of communication with ETA was endorsed by the Spanish Parliament on 17 May 2005.

<sup>17</sup> According to Murua (2010), PSE-EE finally preferred to entrust it to the Society of Jesus. The parties' envoys were close to reaching an agreemen<sup>t</sup> on a text written in October 2006. This set out a scenario for an end to the crisis through a progressive alliance between Navarre and the Basque Autonomous Community, which would be subject to a referendum. However, the amendments introduced by Batasuna, followed by those of the PSE-EE, rendered the possibility for an agreemen<sup>t</sup> null and void. The ETA attack on Barajas Airport on 30 December 2006 sealed this failure, despite last-ditch meetings between the political and military wings in Geneva under the aegis of the Henri Dunant Centre in 2007.

Arnaldo Otegi and Jesus Eguiguren) turned to the Church in order to facilitate contacts between ETA and the new governmen<sup>t</sup> *because* of its transnational dimension. For Eguiguren, "the idea was to look for external mediation; and the Church was as an independent state; so if we wanted to talk with the Church, we had to go to Rome" (Eguiguren and Aizpeolea 2011, p. 32, my translation). Eguiguren met Etchegaray, but the French Basque cardinal kept the same distance as he had done before with the Basque government. He sent them back to his Basque counterparts and repeated that "the Holy See confirms, if things go well, but never baptizes" (Eguiguren and Aizpeolea 2011, p. 34, my translation). Given the stalemate in transnational mediation, Otegi and Eguiguren came back to the domestic Church. Interestingly, the Batasuna leader insisted on involving Mons. Uriarte, then bishop of San Sebastián, in the mediation, not because of his neutrality as a mediator but, on the contrary, because of his presumed proximity with the PNV and the Basque government, assuming that one would bring the other into the discussions. In this case, the legitimacy and credibility of the religious mediator did not stem from his position as an outsider but, as evidenced by Wehr and Lederach (1991) in Latin America, from his position as an insider, who could move peacemaking forward due to his profound understanding of the actors and the issues. Uriarte himself advised socialist and Batasuna leaders that local and direct mediation would probably be the most e ffective method.<sup>18</sup>

As noted by a major expert on the Basque conflict and peacemaking, himself a former leader of the Elkarri peace movement, the fact that the independentist left always maintained relations with the Church also revealed some kind of overestimation of the power of influence of the religious institution, especially on the transnational side:

Curiously enough, the *abertzale* [Basque nationalist] left has maintained a strong relation with Uriarte [bishop of San Sebastián]. Significant leaders Arnaldo Otegi, Rafa Diez and Rufi Etxebarria have always maintained regular relations with Uriarte. And I would say that this is still the case. This in the case of the *abertzale* left. In the case of the PNV, the syntony was greater. Which is logical. But all of them maintained contacts. Additionnally, the *abertzale* left has always considered that the Vatican has this important power, almost magical, international influence, and so on. For instance, he is now very old, but there was Mons. Etchegaray, the French Basque cardinal, who had been very active in his time. All this rendered the role of the church very attractive to the *abertzale* left.<sup>19</sup>

In its further attempts, the independentist left kept on searching for transnational mediators as a political strategy to transnationalize the conflict settlement. If religious elites were mobilized and/or accepted as mediators by the *abertzale* left, it was due to their expertise in peacemaking, but also, and maybe above all, in view of their potential contribution to this process of transnationalization of the cause. This strategy was particularly obvious between 2010 and 2018, in the various sequences of events leading to the end of ETA. As mentioned earlier, this process resulted from the combination of many factors: police repression, loss of popular support for violence, and a strategic change within the independentist left regarding political violence. The peacemaking e fforts, and notably their transnational dimension, also played a significant role in this respect (Whitfield 2014).

### *3.2. The Global Church and the Political Work around Transnational Comparison*

Even if it remains hazardous to measure the contribution of mediation to the end of violence, one can be more confident about the political uses of transnational mediation by Basque nationalism in general and by the independentist left in particular. The mere fact of framing the end of the armed struggle as a "peace process" involved an implicit and semantic comparison with other violent conflicts all over the world. Transnational mediation appeared to be a strategic resource for the nationalist

<sup>18</sup> Taking into consideration that, on the global scale, the Basque conflict, as a low-intensity conflict, was probably seen as a minor issue by the Holy See (Mons. Uriarte. Author's personal interview, Bilbao, 2012).

<sup>19</sup> Director of the Baketik peace center. Author's personal interview, Arantzazu, August 2012, translated from Basque.

left struggling to frame the end of ETA as a step in a "peace process", i.e., one that implied a *political* contention and not merely a question of public order that would be solved through judicial and police measures (Zulaika and Murua 2017). This strategic use of comparison consisted first in involving the European institutions in the conflict settlement, with the Irish precedent in mind, thus updating an old strategy (Bourne 2003). The opposition of Spain restricted this involvement, which remained limited to the constitution of a support group for the Basque peace process in the European Parliament.

Given the lack of involvement of the EU and—at least publicly—of the states concerned, the actors of the Basque "peace process" turned to non-institutional forms of mediation, within and outside the EU. Zulaika and Murua (2017) labeled this role of international actors in the Basque process "virtual diplomacy". The announcement of the definitive end of its armed activities by ETA on 5 September 2010 was released in the wake of the Brussels Declaration in favor of the peace process. Presented to the European Parliament on 30 March 2010, the resolution was signed by a prestigious panel of international leaders, among them four Nobel Peace Prize winners (Frederick De Klerk, Desmond Tutu, John Hume, and Betty Williams), a former Irish Taoiseach (Albert Reynolds), a former general secretary of Interpol (R. Kendall), the Nelson Mandela Foundation, etc. On 20 October 2011, ETA announced the definitive end of its armed activities, two days after the International Peace Conference held at Aiete (San Sebastián) and organized by the citizen peace organization Lokarri, the Berghof Foundation, the Conciliation Resources, the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center, the International Contact Group (ICG), and a team of top-tier international mediators.<sup>20</sup> By September 2011, an International Verification Committee (CIV) had been constituted, composed of political leaders and experts engaged in conflict resolution in such diverse regions as South Africa, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Kosovo, and Iraq. The CIV monitored the steps in the decommissioning of ETA through to the neutralization of the military arsenal of the organization on 8 April 2017 in the French Basque Country. The mobilization of such a range of international mediators reflected the quest for legitimacy of Basque peace groups, who aimed to circumvent the lack of involvement of the Spanish and, to a much lesser extent, French states. This strategy was also a way to stage an honorable way out for a weakened armed organization.

Zulaika and Murua (2017) proposed a thought-provoking reading of the involvement of the international community by using a theatrical metaphor. They argue that Aiete's "theatrical tolerance" (Zulaika and Murua 2017, p. 352) was particularly useful for the nationalist left "in that it turned the presence of the Spanish State into a sideshow, while it was the international community that acted as the ultimate witness" (Zulaika and Murua 2017, p. 352). Again, semantic debates were at the heart of this process: "indeed, even calling it a 'conflict' is a misnomer and an anathema for much of the Spanish elites and media." (ibid.). However, the attitude of the Spanish state varied according to the political color of its government: "Zapatero's governmen<sup>t</sup> realized that the end of terrorism required international actors, and allowed for them while keeping a distance from them. This added the sense of 'theatre' and 'comedy' to the entire dialogue process that was o fficially denied while it was taking place" (Zulaika and Murua 2017, p. 352). The post-November 2011 PP governmen<sup>t</sup> returned to harder positions with regard to the process and distanced itself from the confidential roadmap that had been drafted by the international facilitators.

Transnational religious actors were not at the core of this process. However, and together with the local church, some religious organizations and individuals had been involved in various attempts at mediation, before and after ETA's definitive ceasefire. The community of Sant'Egidio, known for its expertise in peacemaking (Holmsen 2018), had already attempted to mediate between ETA and the Spanish governmen<sup>t</sup> in 1998 (Whitfield 2014, p. 93). Some attempts by the Society of Jesus were also reported in 1984 (Garaikoetxea 2002, pp. 179–80). The proximity of the Irish and Basque conflicts and the mutual strategic uses of comparison by activists (Espiau Idoiaga 2010; Alonso 2004; Bew et al. 2009; Bourne 2003) led a few religious mediators to circulate from one conflict to the other. In 2002, in a tense

<sup>20</sup> Kofi Annan, Gro Harlem Bruntland, Bertie Ahern, Gerry Adams, Jonathan Powell, and Pierre Joxe.

political context due to the outlawing of Batasuna in Spain, new discussions were opened between di fferent Basque nationalist parties and organizations (moderate parties PNV and EA, ELA<sup>21</sup> and LAB<sup>22</sup> unions, Batasuna, cross-border association of municipalities Udalbiltza, abertzale lawyers). Alec Reid, a redemptorist Irish priest who had been involved in the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland (Brewer et al. 2011), worked then as a mediator-broker in the Basque Country. Reid was initially asked by the Elkarri peace organization and by Joseba Segura, a priest from the diocese of Bilbao, to intervene in the Basque Country (Whitfield 2014, pp. 87, 230). Reid engaged in the Basque Country with a wide range of political actors and proposed a tactical ceasefire by ETA in order to reach a proposal of negotiation with the state. He was associated with various meetings and peace conferences held by Elkarri, together with Sant'Egidio, but also in direct intermediation between ETA and the post-2004 Spanish socialist government.<sup>23</sup>

Religious peace mediation, be it performed by local or transnational religious actors, was generally discreet in nature. Confidentiality was the condition for its e fficiency.<sup>24</sup> The most recent sequence around the ceasefire, decommissioning and dissolution of ETA was, on the contrary, signaled by a regular and highly publicized international mediation. The ICG, led by South African lawyer Brian Currin and then by the IVC led by Ram Malikkalingam, held meetings with representatives of the local church. In this case, transnational mediators, through the mediation of the Lokarri peace movement, asked for the presence of representatives of the Church as observers. Moreover, the presence of the Church was complicated by issues of representativeness and the lack of unity of the Church of the Basque Country. The point was highly sensitive, as underlined by the then Vicar General of the Diocese of Bilbao, who participated in the talks as an observer:

When they asked me: did you go there as a representative of the Church? No, I went there on my own, I am a member of the Church, I didn't go there in the name of the Church, but I had permission and support from my bishop. And we went there also because it was discreet. This became known later on, but on that day, there was no press or anything. We stood there, presentation, discussion, and nothing more. We took part in two of these meetings. I could not take part in the third one, I was in Rome. As a tourist, not as a mediator (*laughs*)! The forehead of social pastoral a ffairs [of the diocese of Bilbao] went. But, again, only for information.<sup>25</sup>

Representatives of the local clergy also participated as observers in the Aiete conference in October 2011. In this case however, representatives of the Church asked to be present as observers:

We were not on the first list. The list was made up of political parties, unions, some associations from here [the Basque Autonomous Community], from the French Basque Country, from Navarra. But we were not included. Once I was made aware of that, I told Paul [Rios, Lokarri]: we are ready to be there. In the wake of the work done by the church, of what we did in Bilbao. ( ... ) And they invited us. Now, in Aiete, I didn't say anything. I stood there. There was a small issue there: of course, we are the church of Biscaye. I told the bishop: if I have to go to Aiete, you must inform the bishop of San Sebastian. And the bishop of Vitoria as well, even though it is taking place in San Sebastian. The bishop of Vitoria had

<sup>21</sup> *Eusko Langileen Alkartasuna*—Basque Workers Solidarity.

<sup>22</sup> *Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak*—Patriot Workers Union.

<sup>23</sup> T. Whitfield observes that, beyond these direct contacts, some of them through the good o ffices of the British government, Reid was credited with encouraging the idea of dialogue. However, this mediation also reached its limits: Reid "did not speak Spanish, and his knowledge of the political situation was strongly influenced both by Northern Ireland and what even some within Batasuna would recognize as a degree of wishful thinking about the intentions of ETA" (Whitfield 2014, p. 142). On Reid's role, see also Eguiguren and Aizpeolea (2011, pp. 36, 242) and Alonso (2004, pp. 702–4).

<sup>24</sup> In that respect, the publicization by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior of the mediation by Mons. Uriarte, then bishop of Zamora, during the ETA 1998–1999 ceasefire, was interpreted as one of the causes of the failure of the process (Eguiguren and Aizpeolea 2011, p. 35).

<sup>25</sup> Vicar General of the Diocese of Bilbao. Author's personal interview. Bilbao, June 2012. Translated from Basque.

no objection. And we came across the bishop of San Sebastian in the airport, in Paris or somewhere, and we told him that I would be there, since we wanted him to be aware. Then it was released in the press, that I had been there and all the rest ( ... ) well, as an observer. The Vatican also has observers in the UN. But I didn't say anything in Aiete. In informal discussions yes, but not during the conference. No evaluation, no opinion. Of course, there was some kind of o fficial stance, but more from our diocese, from our bishop, not as a representative. They [the bishops] agreed on my presence, but nothing more. There remains, of course, another problem: there is no unified voice at the head of the Basque church.<sup>26</sup>

Inevitably, any presence of representatives of the Basque Church in these arenas raised issues related to the lack of unity of the Basque Church and to its internal divides.<sup>27</sup> Resorting to transnational religious mediators was a way to avoid this di fficulty. By contrast, the presence of international religious leaders among peacemakers was highly publicized during this last sequence of events. On 8 April 2017, many observers were surprised to see, among the figures gathered to witness the disarmament of ETA in Bayonne, Matteo Zuppi, the Archbishop of Bologna and former ecclesial assistant of the Sant'Egidio community, and Harold Good, an Irish Methodist minister who had been involved in the disarmament of the Irish Republican Army (Brewer et al. 2011). The list of locations of ETA's weapons caches was disclosed to these mediators. Their presence, however, was far from unanimously praised by the French and Spanish Basque diocesan authorities, in a further illustration of the internal pluralism of the Basque Church.<sup>28</sup> The complex nature of the religious institutions made a multilevel presence in peacemaking possible but at the same time aroused tensions within the institutional apparatus of the Church.
