The conflict between residents of the Basque country and the Spanish authorities over ETA goes back decades, and has persisted even during the final phases of the group's long, anticlimactic decline. Founded in 1959 as a leftist organization that opposed the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, ETA soon became an armed paramilitary movement that engaged in sporadic but quite lethal violence from the 1960s up until 2010. It is blamed for causing the deaths of more than 800 people in its pursuit of an independent Basque state.
Read Full Article »
