Burgos trials

The trial at Burgos was in part a reaction to ETA's first known murders, committed in 1968. The first incident occurred on 7 June of that year when two of the organisation's members, Txabi Etxebarrieta and Iñaki Sarasketa were stopped by a traffic control near Amasa-Villabona. When prompted to present the car documents by José Pardines, one of the controlling police officers, Etxebarrieta opened fire and killed the officer. On the same day, the men were again stopped by police near Tolosa. Sarasketa was arrested while Etxebarrieta was killed in retaliation for the murder of Pardines. The extrajudicial killing of Etxebarrieta elicited widespread outrage among the Basque populace. Two months later, on 2 August 1968, ETA committed its first premeditated murder by assassinating Melitón Manzanas, local commander of the Brigada Político-Social accused of torturing Basque detainees, at his residence in San Sebastián. Intended as a retaliation for the death of Etxebarrieta, the murder provoked a harsh reaction from the Spanish authorities: constitutional rights for the province of Gipuzkoa were suspended and by the end of the year many members of ETA had been arrested. ==Buildup to the trial==

In August 1970, the Spanish government resolved to hold a military tribunal, whose task was to convict the members of the ETA involved in the crimes of the preceding years. 16 people gives their names as , , , , and Larena and . With the trial the government sought to continue its successful campaign against ETA which had resulted in the arrest of many of the group's leaders in 1969. Although mainstream media attempted to portray the defendants as "members of an isolated terrorist band", the trial generated widespread popular support for ETA among the Basque public. According to Casanova, this was aided by ETA's efforts to distribute pamphlets and other tokens of protest against the trial in the weeks leading up the trial date. By the time of the trial, about 100,000 workers in the cities of the Basque Country were on strike, while the court-martial proceeded with 15 defendants (one, Maria Aranzazu, had her charges dropped). The situation had escalated to such an extent that the government was forced to enact a state of emergency for the province of Gipuzkoa. Up until its beginning, ETA tried to compromise the trial through paramilitary action; according to Casanova, a tunnel that they had dug underneath the prison in which the defendants were held failed to break through a concrete wall. On the other hand, efforts to kidnap the West-German honorary consul were successful. While ETA demanded that all planned death penalties be commuted, they eventually released Beihl after 25 days without a clear indication that their demands would be met. ==Trial==

, one of the defence's attorneys The planned military tribunal was convened in the northwestern city of Burgos in Castile and León on 3 December 1970. In a bid to showcase its new internationalist attitude, ETA hired a group of prominent left-leaning lawyers. They included the future co-author of the Spanish constitution Gregorio Peces-Barba, the political theorist , and the future senator . The defence's strategy was to use the highly publicised trial as a platform for criticism of the regime of Francisco Franco and its oppression of dissenters and ethnic minorities. As the trial focused on events which occurred between 1968 and 1969, it was "not generally understood" that ETA had since split into several factions. Splinter groups ETA-V and ETA-IV issued contradictory reports to the press, which "only added to the confusion". During its first four days, the trial heard statements from the defendants. In a 2015 book, the historian John Sullivan said: [The statements] seemed to show that ETA had been transformed into a Marxist-Leninist organization which, while it confined its activities to Euskadi, sympathised equally with the oppressed elsewhere in Spain, and had completely abandoned anti-Spanish chauvinism. Some, however, took a "more traditional nationalist stance", including declaring that ETA was a "movement of national liberation". They also recounted incidents of torture experienced at the hands of the Spanish military police. According to historian Luis Castells, the trials thus became "a milestone in the anti-Franco struggle", generating "an unreleased mobilization in the Basque Country, in Spain and internationally". On 7 December, the trial was interrupted because one of the presiding officers had fallen ill. When proceedings resumed the following day, the tribunal adopted a more rigid approach, suppressing statements not related to the accessions to prevent further digressions by the defendants. In response, most of them exercised their right to remain silent. However, the final defendant to speak, attempted to attack the tribunal with an axe. Onaindia was overpowered quickly; during the struggle, the rest of the prisoners stood up and sang the Basque soldiers' anthem, and the incident became subject to significant foreign media coverage. Afterwards, the court was reconvened, with the press and public excluded. ==Verdict==

After proceedings had ended on 9 December 1970, the tribunal took several days to deliberate and announced its verdict on 28 December. All the prosecution's demands were granted: six defendants were sentenced to death, and three were sentenced to a symbolic "second execution". The remaining defendants were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. However, domestic and international observers, including the Vatican, criticised the Spanish government for what was perceived as an exceedingly harsh judgement. On 30 December, Franco commuted all death penalties to prison sentences of 30 years, except the "double death sentences", which were commuted to 60-year sentences, to which were added various other sentences ranging from 20 to 30 years. While some of the sentences reached 80 to 90 years, the New York Times described these as "theoretical", noting that Spanish law at the time prohibited prison sentences longer than 30 years. ==Aftermath==

The Burgos trials turned out to be a debacle for the Spanish government. ETA, a separatist organisation of little relevance outside Spain before the trial, became a symbol of the opposition against the dictatorship for the international public. The group began to attract support from civil society, including the Basque Nationalist Party, the Spanish Communist Party and the Catholic Church. Franco's decision to commute the proposed death penalties was greeted with relief by the international community. The Holy See was reported to have received the news "with particular satisfaction" after Pope Paul VI had advocated for the defendants' lives. The trials nevertheless gained notoriety for being "one of the last occasions on which political prisoners were sentenced to death." ==Notes==