ETA's Last Surviving Founder Dies In France Aged 88

The last surviving founder of Basque separatist group ETA, which waged a four-decade armed struggle for independence for their region straddling Spain and France, has died aged 88, friends and colleagues told AFP

Bayonne, France, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 6th Apr, 2021 ) :The last surviving founder of Basque separatist group ETA, which waged a four-decade armed struggle for independence for their region straddling Spain and France, has died aged 88, friends and colleagues told AFP.

Julen Madariaga died after a long illness in Saint-Pee-sur-Nivelle in southwest France on Monday, Jakes Abeberry, who heads the Basque weekly Enbata and was a former local councillor in France, told AFP.

His death was also confirmed by the spokesman of the Basque pro-independence party Sortu, Arnaldo Otegi, who hailed a man "who was committed to the freedom of our people".

Born in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao, Madariaga was the last alive out of four militant far-left Marxist activists who at the start of the 1950s founded the Basque group Ekin during the Franco dictatorship of Spain.

In 1959 it was renamed Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Liberty -- ETA) which led its armed struggle for an independent Basque country in southwest France and northeast Spain before renouncing violence in 2011 and then announcing its dissolution in 2018.

The group has been blamed for the deaths of 829 people in a campaign of violence that totalled 43 years.

Madariaga distanced himself from the organisation's violent methods from the 1990s, although he remained politically active.

He parted ways with Batasuna, a Basque pro-independence party which was banned in 2003 for being ETA's political wing, and joined Aralar, a non-violent Basque separatist party.

Imprisoned for the first time in 1961 after an action against a train of soldiers in San Sebastian, Madariaga was also sentenced in 1988 to four years in prison for criminal conspiracy.