The Road to the Fall of ETA and the Decline of the European Separatist Terrorism

Abstract

The Basque Fatherland and Freedom (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna – ETA) separatist terrorist organization committed its most lethal attack at the Hipercor shopping mall in Barcelona, on 19 June 1987. The explosive device hidden in a car killed 21 people and injured 45 others. The Hipercor bombing had been the most lethal terrorist attack in Spain until the March 11, 2004 Madrid religiously inspired attacks which caused nearly 200 deaths. 30 years after the Barcelona bombing, the biggest challenge for Spain regarding terrorism is not ETA but the religiously inspired terrorism of Muslim extremists. Therefore, much less attention has been paid to the Basque terrorist organization since the definitive ceasefire declared on 20 October 2011. This paper offers a short overview of the current trends in separatist terrorism in the European Union and the threat of terrorism in Spain. Moreover, on the one hand I evaluate what kind of measures did the Spanish law enforcement and counter terrorism agencies use to suppress and destroy ETA, on the other hand I examine what factors ultimately caused the fall of the Basque terrorist organization.