SPECIAL: 40 years of the Constitution
The only Spanish I live that voted “no” to the adoption of the Constitution in the Congress puts on the beret for the photo. We are in Bilbao. On the campus of the University of the Basque Country. A worker told reporters: “of outside” “that the beret is not going to like to here.” But Paco Letamendía, Ortzi, makes that gives it the win. And put it on.
Exactly as it was 40 years ago. When I was 33 and Jordi Pujol approached him on the Floor and said, “Letamendía, don’t scores, it’s going to be counterproductive.” And he who nothing.And then came Solé Tura, of the PCE, with the same thing. And he who nothing. People’s alliance was a strategy two-faced. Fraga was known as “boar-independence”, but “after Lopez Shot [ex-minister of Franco] approached me patronizing, gave me pats on the back, and said to me: ‘Quiet, Letamendía’, as if it were a puppy”.
But Letamendía, who had tried to enter ETA to 1971, “but it would not let me, they told me to follow up by a lawyer,” he has always done of your layer a sayo. So much so, that the day before to raise in the committees, the inclusion in the Constitution of the right of self-determination, “I came from a party that I’m not going to say, but that they were not interested in it to do that, because I was going to be split, to warn me of that…”.
– what’s PSOE?
– Not what I say.
– what is The PCE?
– That’s not what I say -he smiles-. But they told me: ‘be careful what you do, which has come to us the information that if you put you are going to kill you’. ETA had just killed two soldiers in the center of Madrid, the day before. It was no kidding that you were told that. But I thought: ‘Well, I kill. If I have come to what I have come to, and I do not… What a formula!”.
he Raised the right of self-determination and the thunderous “no” was only marked by five ayes: “Three catalans, and two of the PSOE”.
To Ortzi do not like to say it, but Gabriel Ruffian -“don’t ask me for the Rogue, they all tell me that my paper”- would have pergeñado similar farewell, that he of the upper House. Months after voting “no” to the Magna Carta -only six deputies did: five of the people’s Alliance and him. Angry because “there already there was nothing more to do.” It is not allowed to speak from the lectern -“UCD had sent people to the Mixed Group for impedírmelo” – so I got extranjis a harmonica, and he came up with a goodbye of the most cinematic: “two days ago the Guardia Civil had put the taco in the san fermin festival, so I was going to play the One in January, two in February…”.
however, action-reaction, “as many times my opponent came to my aid”. Fraga dedicated to him one of his invective from the microphone, he asked that the word “allusions” and were dismissed from the Chamber with a brief speech, crowned, his fist in the air, with a “long Live the Basque Country Free,” he left You “thunderstruck”, he says, and an iconic image for the library: a lord bearded, left fist held high, yelling to the Courts in Madrid postfranquista.
In reality -as the reader may have guessed-, Letamendía was and is a child well-born “in Donosti” in 1944. The son of a businessman of the rubber well-situated during the franco regime. So, as to share boat in the race, a photo in sepia taken in the 60’s, with a young boy named Juan Carlos de Borbón.
Student irregular Law, Ortzi suffered two conversions drifting toward violence, according to confession of its own before a friendly txakolí, in a bar near campus. The first, in the Barcelona of the late 60’s, when may ‘ 68 you got the love “by the movements of anti-imperialists, from Cuba to Vietnam,” with its b-side: “I had never experienced nor exercised violence, but there you started to see it as something heroic, wonderful, that you got closer to the olympus of the leaders”.
The second, and more important, when with 25 years defended one of the accused in the Process of Burgos, who tried in 1970 to 16 members of ETA. Ortzi the account, as we walk by a beautiful mountain next to the university, as a brilliant epiphany: “it Came to pass, when they condemned him to death. I was amazed. Those guys could not be more happy to be going to die! They hit jumps, I swear. It jumps for joy! What left me so impressed… I Ordered immediately the income in ETA”.
Was it necessary to break with the franco regime, but they were all conchabados for reform. And I played the role of crazy, of etarra official
however, the band chose to continue as a lawyer, “and less evil.” In 1977, in the midst of the debate in the abertzalismo on whether or not to participate in the embryonic democratic institutions, he travelled to Madrid as deputy Euzkadiko Ezquerra, to ‘cook’ the Constitution. “I thought that you could at least make pedagogy… Wrong I was. It was necessary to break with the franco regime, but they were all conchabados for reform. And I played the role of crazy, of etarra official”.
it is in many of his contemporaries, however, a memory of institutional loyalty. “They saw Me as something exotic, but I respected her, saw that she was going there to propose. Especially Tierno Galván, who impressed me: a true gentleman. The respect is the largest of the forces. With him I brought forward a law for the sexual rights of prisoners, which earned me that from the right would call me maricona… I said: ‘Yes? Bring your wives, traédmelas'”.
Ana: “Carrillo was the most ready of all, the most ready. Fraga inspired fear in their own, which in reality were four cats: for what I knew and how it was imposed. Felipe already knew what was going to be, it was very clear. How I was disappointed after becoming rich, tremendous. Suárez what I remember once I drove through the Carrera de San Jerónimo, was going with someone and pointed at me surprised… I was a green dog for them.”
After stepping down as deputy for the list itself towards Herri Batasuna, even in 1978 -“were published vignettes of the lions crying when I went in, gave them life!”-, Letamendía returns to the Basque Country. To become again, but in the opposite direction: “Remember that I, when I went to Madrid, he already thought that the violence had its days numbered… again so wrong…”. When you return, abjuring of the guns, but quietly: “it was Not the way. As they said in ‘ 68, the violence is prepolítica. I’ve never been ‘the worse, the better’. I believe in building, in the ‘better, best'”.
went into exile again, this time to Paris. You do not want to know, but go hungry. “It was very, very tough”. You try to stick your head in the university, and “never” goes against their former co-religionists, although it dissents from them. He lives a double exile interiorr: “For the State I’m a etarra, because I have always denounced the awful, brutal repression, and the torture there was, and mine was a plague, because ‘or with me or against me’, and because since then, since the early 80’s, never stopped condemning the actions of ETA”.
Returns back to “Euskal Herria”, and is dedicated to the university, as a professor of Policy, over the past 30 years. There, in the land of nobody, but without moving an iota of their principles: “This that we have had for 40 years is a semidemocracia, in the Basque country we call a ‘sasidemocracia’. I continue to be separatist and a marxist”
– But how to be a marxist in practice?
– Well, the analysis of the reality of marxist is impeccable, but you are completely wrong at the time of build. But what has failed is capitalism. I knew because I had lived in the flesh, when in the 70’s closed the company of my father.
you don’t like that links nationalism with selfishness: “I have No fucking idea of what that means, nationalism is identity.” And even less, despite having lived through the TWENTIETH century, with blood: “Blood of the State, which is founded on blood to survive.” But the abertzalismo don’t want to build a State? “True, that’s why I’m with the militancy of base: women, retirees, homosexuals… As has been seen, and as I knew, the Constitution has not fixed any of this.” Nothing? “Virtually nothing”.
Proud, fixed, scratch your beard to the inevitable question: “What if she would…? Haha… of course would vote no to the Constitution. And even more today.”
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