ETA to vote on permanent break-up: “Our function and cycle has reached a natural end”

After months of discussions and votes, the cell – which started its violent reign in the early 1970s in its fight for Basque independence – is now in the process of an intense debate which could lead to members voting to break up the group.

“The end of the cycle is becoming more and more evident and, as a consequence of the decisions taken, has largely come about already,” a press release sent to the Basque newspaper Gara, the organisation's historic channel for announcements, reads.

“The end of the political and military strategy marked the beginning of the end of the organisation,” the message continues.

“It is time to close the chapter on our armed conflict and related situations and put all our energies behind a political process...and the only way of doing this is if we take the initiative directly, without waiting for anyone or anything.”

ETA has ruled out continuing as a 'conventional organisation' following its official disarming in April 2017, since it would then have to 'reinvent everything else: strategy, concrete functions and methods of fighting and influence'.

The group has also rejected the idea of becoming a 'civil organisation' because 'the object of maintaining any type of moral authority' would not have any real purpose.

The 'military force' created 'under ETA's influence' was aimed at supporting the left-wing move for Basque secession, but has 'matured' and is now 'much more efficient' in terms of 'making the challenge reality'.

“This is not the time to pack up and go home. On the contrary, the current political phase requires the efforts and impulse of everyone more than ever before,” the press release argues.

As for the future roles of ETA militants, they will 'have to act with the responsibility that corresponds with their condition' as former cell members, 'maintaining the honesty, consistency and responsibility necessary for the liberation process'.

ETA has not committed any attacks since 2009, when a police car bomb killed an officer in Palmanova, Mallorca, and its last major incident was on December 30, 2006 when a bomb planted in the car park of Madrid Barajas Terminal 4 killed two Ecuadorians waiting to pick up their families.

This was the attack that broke the historic truce of March 2006, after which the then socialist president of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, controversially planned to 'negotiate' with ETA to end the violence for good.

But the Barajas T4 blast saw Zapatero abandon any notions of opening dialogue with the cell.

Prior to this, attacks post-Millennium were infrequent and low-key, mainly causing injuries and property damage rather than deaths, and included hotel blasts in Alicante and Benidorm in summer 2003 and another at the Saga hotel in Dénia in January 2005.

But police car bombs have led to officers' deaths, and a blast at the Guardia Civil station living quarters in Santa Pola in 2002 caused widespread anger and grief when an officer's six-year-old daughter was killed.

ETA's most vociferous campaigning in more recent years has been for its prisoners to be moved to jails in the Basque Country so they can be near their families, and they have not posed a security threat in Spain for the past nine years.

But the wounds remain open and raw, especially for those permanently injured or bereaved in its bloodthirsty and widespread attacks of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s – each of which claimed dozens of victims – meaning the public has had little sympathy with their cause.

Support among the general public for Basque independence is now at an all-time low, with fewer than a third of the region's natives wanting to see the northern territory break away from Spain and polls showing that a referendum would lead to its remaining part of the wider country.