Terrorist group ETA consigned to history after 50 years of guerrilla warfare
The final chapter in the gradual demise of the Basque separatists was met with some relief but also resentment
BASQUE terror group ETA has completely dismantled itself, ending 50 years of attacks.
It will formally dissolve at an event this week.
In a letter dated April 16 and published by the Spanish online newspaper El Diario on Wednesday, it said: "ETA has completely dissolved all its structures and ended its political initiative."
ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Basque Country and Freedom) declared a ceasefire in 2011 and handed over weapons in 2017, bringing Western Europe's last major armed insurgency to a close.
These decisions were aimed at "shaking off the situation of the last decades and building a future from a new starting point," ETA said in the letter, which followed an apology it made to its victims last month.
The final chapter in the gradual demise of ETA, which was formed in Madrid in 1959, was met with some relief but also resentment.
"I don't believe in the end of ETA because there are lots of deaths that haven't come to light, lots of murders that have never been cleared up, lots of victims who have not been compensated," said Carmen who lives in the Basque city of San Sebastian, declining to give her surname.
Around 850 people have been killed in ETA's drive for an independent state in northern Spain and southern France.
Violence escalated in the 1960s as the group assassinated politicians and officials as well as bombing public places, and Franco's regime responded in kind.
A 1987 car bomb at a Barcelona supermarket, which killed a pregnant woman and two children, horrified people in Spain and abroad, and crackdowns by Spanish and French police weakened ETA.
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Spain will continue to pursue terror suspects.
A Government spokesman said: "We will never turn a blind eye to these terrorists and we will never bow down."
Polls on support for independence vary, with a recent one showing just 14 percent of people in favour.
While ETA is now consigned to history, the letter said, the drive for Basque independence would continue.
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