Assassination Week #1: How ETA Launched Spain's First Astronaut

The gang talks about ETA’s assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco and kicks off assassination week with a bang.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Assassination Week. P Bang Bang time, lix, pulsive device, etcetera. Hello,

(00:12):
welcome to Assassination Week. I hope you like that intro
from our good friend when we commissioned to do that
intro from some big props to them for giving us
like ten seconds of their time to record that intro. Wow,
it's it's been so long since we've been planning to
do this, yep, but here we are talking about killing people.

(00:36):
It's great because when we first thought of Assassination Week,
we're like, how are we going to fill five episodes there?
And then there's like so many more assassinations happened there
were there were to the next day. Yeah, yeah, we've
we've decided to stop imagining things into the ether and yeah,

(00:58):
and so maybe Assassination Month. It's me who knows. Hey, well,
here's the thing. If if people keep getting assassinated, we
will do more assassination episodes. That is the way it works. Yep.
That's that is sadly part of our job. So we've
already done one. I guess we did. We did shinzo

(01:18):
Ab a little bit, but we're coming back to him. Yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna do. We're gonna later because we
have a lot more context information about the assassination now,
but that that is later this week. So we have
we have five episodes all about assassinations, most of which
have happened or tried to happen this year. Most most
of these are gonna be pretty pretty topical. Yeah, mine

(01:42):
is not so well. I mean, look, we got we
gotta we we we we got, we got, we got
to start with the historical assassination. We can't we we
can't completely have it be just randomly jumping back and
forward between times. There has to be some kind of logic. Well,
the assassination is a logic. But yeah, today we're talking

(02:03):
about Eta Basque nationalist leftist group and more specifically, I
guess they're Operation Agro, the killing of Luis Carrero Blanco
in Spain in nineteen seventy three. It's like, obviously not
very very current. It's often pointed to is like a

(02:25):
very influential assassination, right, one that made a difference and
made a change. Often it's called the only thing that
ever did to advance the cause of Spanish democracy, which
I think, like this is not and I'm sorry if
you think that they're like based leftist terrorists. This is
not not a generally as as an organization. We don't

(02:46):
like people who murder journalists. That's one of us dances.
And so there's going to be a little bit of
context around this that we need to give first. So
maybe if we kick off with who they are and
then we can talk about that assassination in particular. How
familiar folks do we think with with Eta? What do
people know about him in US? Not at all? Yeah,

(03:06):
people all eat Okay, I think well they're they're I
think they're famous for this asascination and for having literally
the worst outfits I've ever seen in my entire that
that that the combination of like the face mask in
the beret is like one of the most unfortunate things
I've ever seen. It is hideous. It is you you've

(03:27):
got just just wear the mask. It's cooler a batch.
It's awful, truly dogshit. Okay, Chris, come in with the
fashion police early on. I say, where what you want.
I think you will look great and really alienating ski
mask and beret audience right at the start. So if
you've if you've managed to, you know, stick around through

(03:48):
that hate speech. We're going to talk about eta. They do, Yeah,
they do like to wear a ski mask. It's part
of an esthetic, isn't it though, Like that's an aesthetic
of like I guess eighties terrorism. That is like like
woodland pattern kind of DPU camoufly, dBm camouflage, a cheap

(04:09):
black schemask, balaclava and a berry like sometimes you can
pick two of those things. But it's definitely like a
vibe from that time period. M I wonder, I wonder
why none of these groups worked. It must have nothing
to do with the fashion, to be fair, the Zapatista's
big scheme mask. Maybe it's the bubble. Maybe the bubble

(04:29):
is what sets then Yeah, no, it's it's it's the
fact that yet you don't wear the barret on the
scheme mask necess because they just wear the masks. Yeah, okay, Yeah,
I think we're we're united, and I believe that the
Zapatistas look cool and in many ways are cool. In fact,
we're not talking about them today, we're talking about it.
So it's an acronym, right, Um, it's an acronym in

(04:51):
Scara or Basque. I don't I don't speak Basque. It's
a very hard language for me to learn. At least
I'm not going to say it's a hard language too length.
I think it depends on who you are, but it
is and that I have historically struggled with understanding. It
does have a generous smattering of xs, and so you know,
if you're seeing it out there, good luck to you.

(05:12):
I will try and pronounce things as respectfully as I can.
I spent a lot of time in the Basque country
by Graceeing. I really really love bast people. They're very nice.
I enjoy their food and their cider and their countryside.
But today we're talking about this group Escot. It stands
for you scadi to askatasuna, which means like Basque homeland

(05:34):
and liberty, which they were going to call it ata,
but in certain backdown dialects that means duck, so they
moved away from that. That would have been so much
funnier write you've been ducked, but they didn't do that.
They right from the get go they were about like
like this dual process right of politics and political violence.
Their slogan means keep up on both sides, and their

(05:55):
logo is like a snake wrapped around the acts. The
snake is politics the actors access I guess political violence, terrorism,
whatever you want to call it. And over the years
of action, they killed people so that they were pretty
serious terrorist group, right, Like I can't I don't know
how many people the ira A killed, but I'm thinking
of groups in there. I don't think it would be

(06:17):
that many killed. Like I think they killed like over
a thousand. Okay, Well, I mean I said, like the
entire troubles killed thirty so it's like a not in
significant fraction of that. Yeah, I mean the British government
did a decent amount of that and definitely yeah, but
like it's a not in significant fraction of the total
number of people who died in the troubles, So they're
not like nothing, no, but like it's only up there.

(06:39):
And look, this is much of a similar thing as
we're going to see right where the Spanish state killed
a lot of people too, and sort of armed groups
acting in sort of coalition with the Spanish state. It's
the safest way to say that, but certainly with the
complicity of the Spanish state played a large part in this,
this dirty war that ETA conducted with the Spanish state. Right,

(07:03):
and to understand them, you have to understand a little
bit about Basque nationalism, early Basque nationalism. We we can
like find the guy who really constructs the idea of
a Basque nation, right, and Sabina is the guy. Um
he takes what is like a language, it's a very
old language, right, predates Latin and places where that language

(07:23):
is spoken, and takes it from like these are the
areas where this language is spoken to, like this is
our nation. And all nations are created, right, Like nations
don't come from the primordial soup, Like we don't evolve
into one nation or another an abrogation. Yeah yeah, yeah,
they they're constructed by like entrepreneurs identity, which war leads

(07:43):
to some kind of false consciousness, one might say, to
maybe distract people from other things. But that's the right
Zapatistas watches, that's the yeah, yeah, we're coming for you
with a work mob. We're going to cancel you. Nations

(08:09):
begin to exist when religion losers a claim on university
nandas in the speed and we don't need to go
into the history of nationalism particularly, it's important people to
know where the Basque land is. So the Basque Land
is in the northwest of Spain and the southwest of France. Right,
it's these provinces where historically they're mountainous provinces. People there
were often shepherds. You'll often find Basque people in the

(08:32):
United States like growing wine or doing cheap herding, and
that's their sort of historical images themselves. And they speak
this Basque language. Right. So ETA come onto the scene
as a Basque nationalist leftist group, Like they sort of
have some elements of Marxism, but they're obviously like nationalist. Um.

(08:56):
They they center, they don't center Catholicism, which is what
previous Basque nationalisms have done. Right, Previous Basque nationalisms have
been elite constructs that centered language, poetry and the Catholic identity.
Don't do that. They have this that's where they're slightly better. Yeah, yeah,
right there. They're better than like the Carlists, who are
like things went wrong when Spain moved away from this

(09:19):
line of royal secession and we need to go back
to that and like extreme religious totalitarianism and a monarchy.
Like they're better than that. I feel pretty comfortable saying that.
And they've done some cool stuff that they used to
kidnap bosses who refused to negotiate with striking workers, which

(09:39):
like I know, watch out rail rail company owners. But
they they definitely have like a leftist lean, right, they
have this sort of pan third world is idea, this
pan sort of colonized people idea. They begin assassinating people
when they take revenge for this guy who's called Chabby

(09:59):
at stabata Um. You can look at that name if
you want to see some ex is in the name.
But they they kill the local chief of police. Right.
What happened is Barrietta, and this was a guy we're
killed by a policeman. The police stop them at a roadblock,
they run away the police, the police shoot them. In response,

(10:20):
they kidnapped the local chief of police who has probably
been torturing people. Right like that, you have to understand
that all this is happening in the context of a
Spanish state, which is extremely violent and repressive. And they
kill this guy right with this Franco right, yes, no so,
but they begin under Franco. Right, so they and their

(10:40):
support probably peaks under Franco, right, like they What what
we're going to see is actually they are somewhat integral
to not bringing down the Franco regime, and in a sense,
Spain never does bring down the Franco regime, right and
I want to get into that a little bit, but
in destabilizing the Franco regime, and they certainly there was

(11:01):
more support for this kind of political violence when the
state is so obviously like undemocratic, unjust and incredibly violent
towards people, right, so they when they're killing members as
a guard Seville, these are people who are torturing prisoners,
right A. Prisoners pretty often when they're captured, turn up

(11:21):
tortured in court, like very obviously that they have been
victims of beatings and physical violence, right, A lot of
things you'll see. They also kidnapped this guy, forget it.
He's one of the founders of Vox, and they kept
him in a seller for months and months and months
and months. They like, I don't I don't like Vox,
but they also don't like lucking people and sellers, So

(11:43):
two things can be bad. And Vox is a right
wing populist Spanish party, if people aren't familiar. They also
did a lot of extortion. They also did a lot
of extorting local businesses, right they called it the Revolutionary tax.
So they got into some sort of more classic kind
of organized crime stuff there. And but the assassination we
want to talk about today is so the way they

(12:07):
do this is they rent this flat right there, that's
an apartment for American listeners. And they rent this flat
claimed to be students, like sculpting students, right, like they
were art students, were into sculpture. That's that's why we're
covered in dust every day and we and we wear
these overrules. And for five months they spend every day

(12:31):
digging a tunnel underneath the road by their flat, right,
and in that tunnel they packs of explosive. And what
they're doing there is they're waiting for this guy, Luis
Carrero Blanco to come in his car, which he travels
in every day, right, and they're gonna explode that explosive
and they're going to kill him. The reason they want

(12:52):
to kill him is because they say that he is
the the best example of pure fascism. Right. He's a
former admiral, he's Spain's sort of prime minister. He's Franco's
chosen successor, right, so he's going to take over from Franco.
And so by killing him, they're able to destabilize the
whole Franco Regimer. Franco cries in public when he finds

(13:15):
out cal Blanco is dead, and so spoiler alert, career
Blanco is extremely dead. The way they did this is
they dressed up as electricians, which is also a lot
of dressing up in this which is kind of fun.
And they painted a little line on a wall to
be like, Okay, when the car gets to here, we
explode it. So the car gets to there, they explode it.

(13:36):
They launched this car over a church and it lands
on the second floor terraces on the other side. Sometimes
this is called like the Basque Space program or Luis
Carrero Blanco is referred to as Spain's first astronaut. Yeah,
you can find a picture of it. It is his

(13:57):
hysterical the core like it's just it just goes. So yeah,
it's it's periodically in Spain, like someone will be prosecuted
for making this joke. This Spain's first astronaut joke. And
so it happened someone pretty recently and she had really
made it a thing of making jokes. Actually, I think

(14:20):
his I think it's his grandchildren have noted that it's
a problematic restriction of free speech that the people keep
getting prosecuted for this. And the court recently found that
they weren't mocking his family or his memory, but they
were just pointing the objectively funny way in which he died, which,
you know, great for the court to agree that it
was objectively funny that a terrible fucking person died by

(14:43):
being blown literally sky high, and it's his driver and
his bodyguard were also killed. Shouldn't be a bodyguard for
a piece of shit. But they THETA guys had disguised
themselves of electricans. After the bomb went off, they ran
around shouting, Oh no, we've hit a gas pipe, like

(15:03):
there's been a gas explosion. Every everybody clear out. YEA
was yeah, so pretty pretty entertaining stuff, acting as their
side passion, I guess, and and like the reason they
did if they did a pressor not longer afterwards, wearing
their outfits, which some of you may find offensive, and
they they cited like his irreplaceable place in the hierarchy

(15:27):
right and him being this they called him a pure
Franco list and oddly like ETA were not. At this point,
they were less unpopular than they became later because they
weren't doing quite as much extortion and they hadn't been
engaging in quite as many murders of journalists, right and
and you used to see this. I'll get to that later. Actually,

(15:48):
they got grudging praise from almost everyone for doing this,
right and because it really does destabilize and kind of
keep their legs out from under the Franco regime. And
it makes Franco cry, which I think is a laudable goal,
like it's good to Franco cry Franco crime or so
they well it kind of it kind of it kind
of astomizes the Franco a state, right between people who

(16:10):
are like this bunker tendency who want to go hardcore
and crack down, and those who are like, we don't
have the ability to crack down, like we'll lose all
popular support if we do that, and it really sort
of vaporizes the consensus for what to do after Franco dies,
which he does a few years later. I want to
point out that people will you'll read these articles on

(16:31):
like the popular news websites or like you know, like
hot take websites where they're like, oh, this carbon launched
Spain it's a democracy. I don't do that. I think
first of all, the major r with that is the
idea that Spain quote unquote transition to democracy. When you
have a pacted transition where the people who did the

(16:52):
war crimes in the previous regime specifically not prosecuted an
exempt from prosecution, that's not what democracy looks like. I
think the most accurate way of just driving west Spain
is is a post dictator like a post dictatorship, and
Spain is still there now that we see that with
these prosecutions for mocking him, right with the fact that

(17:13):
there are people in Spain who are still in prison
from mocking the crown, like, that's not what democracies do.
Good thing that could never happen in Britain. Yeah, yeah, okay,
you won't find you won't find me defending that either,
But we don't. We don't make a big industry of
talking about Britain's transition to democracy. Maybe don't talk about

(17:36):
transitions at all, given the powerful turf discourse in Britain.
But yeah, I think it's problematic that that folks talk
about this like, yeah, it spin his fixed, like Spain
has some dark ship that it needs to process like
it was not until the middle of the last decade
that we started exhuming the graves from the civil war.
And that's still highly contentious, right, you still have a

(17:57):
political party that doesn't want do that. Spain is still
processing the fact that the Catholic Church took babies away
from people who had considered to be leftist and gave
them to people who it considered to be more appropriate
to raise them. It's called Nino bios if you want
to look it up. Yes, Spain not transitioning to to democracy.
And I want to make like that very clear. Some

(18:19):
of the other ship that Etta does is really this
is where they start to lose any any claim to
being like a liberation movement, right Like they bombed anpair
Core that's like bombing a target for American folks in
Barcelona and they killed twenty one people. Now I will
say this isn't this is exemplary bad policing. They called

(18:43):
the cops and we're like, hey, we've put a bomb
Underneas the supermarket. You will ought to clear it out.
And the cops were like, I can't tell if that's
a real threat or not. And as a result, did
do anything and as a result the bomb went off.
I think he's a supermarket and twenty one people died. Right,
They also did a newspaper in Catalonia beforehand. Reporters Without

(19:04):
Borders still for a long time classified Spain as a
place that was hostile to journalists because of the attacks
on journalists by Etta. Right. Also, the state isn't hostile
to journalism, but I want to point out that they
killed journalists, they killed university professors who disagreed with them,
they killed local counselors, and it was some of these,

(19:24):
like these very unpopular murders which really sort of strip
support from them. And one thing that the Spanish state did.
A couple of things the Spanish state did that really
were extremely repressive against Etta was they would move Basque
prisoners out of the Basque homeland and sort of hold

(19:44):
them thousands of miles away from their families, like in
the Canary Islands and ship like they're probably closer to
Africa than you are to to your your home country
when they do that, right, and you would often see
I don't know if maybe you guys have seen this.
It's a white flag. It's got an outline of the basquetland.
It's got an arrow and it says aria, have you

(20:05):
seen that like protests? Now if you if you've been
at the protests, I is that like you know, in
like the early two thousands in Europe, you would see
that flag a lot. It just means Basque prisoners to
the Basque homeland. Like a lot of people got behind
that who might not have got behind other things that
ETA did, right, but it does seem deeply inhumane to
move these people so far away from their families. It's

(20:26):
sort of an extra punishment. The Spanish state also had
this thing called gal gal Is groupo anti terroristadi li
braction so I guess like anti terrorists liberation group. And
these were desquads right, These were discord dated and inverted
by the police. Etta enjoyed like a safe space in France,

(20:49):
I guess, or like at freedom for prosecution. Certainly under Franco.
France was like, you know what, Franco really sucks, So
you guys go ahead and send it. Do your terrorism
about a clauvist. I'm sure the French also objected to
their beret style, but this is this same space. It's

(21:09):
basically what they said, Yeah, yeah, this is like a
whole thing with Midterrand in France in the seventies, like
France kind of became this weird like like they basically
had this, they had this open policy. Were like there
was a bunch of well, they're there're a bunch of
people in Italy who got like falsely accused of like
being the Red Brigades. What's that guy's name, the guy
negri An Toto who's like a kind of famous. This

(21:32):
theory kind of sucks by the end, but like they
arrest him for like being a terrorist, and then he
gets himself elected to parliament so we can get parliamentary immunity,
and then flees the country to France. Yea, yeah, this
was a weird time. Was in Carlos Jackal also in
Paris for a while. Yeah, yeah, you love it, france

(21:52):
open door policy to terrorists, Like this is this is
this is the only cool thing France has done since
Like yeah, yeah, you're not wrong. They invented parkour. When
was that, Oh that was like in the resident xt Okay,
there you go. Okay, so the second cool thing, you're
going to hand that to them? Yeah, they'll tend that
to the entire country of Reds. Yeah, maybe not actually,

(22:14):
given their treatment of migrant deaspirts in recent years. And
sometimes the firefighters will go out and beat the ship
into the police. That's true. Do you think we all
have to give that to them? I wanted to maybe

(22:39):
end with this quote from Supercomman Anti Marcos. So we've
talked a little bit about So this is from a
piece code I shipped upon this, I shipped upon the
Revolutionary Vanguards of the Earth. Yeah, it's something. Yeah. All
the titles are like having problems translating total in bundo,

(23:02):
which is like yeah, if you I couldn't find it
written in the original Spanish. Maybe that's just because I
was googling wrong and I didn't put a lot of
time in it. But I found so many of the
Zapatist text of preserves better in these weird English translations.
And I don't know if they're written in English, it's
supposed to be posible. They're written in English the first time.
I don't. I don't think this one. I think I

(23:23):
think these. I think this particular one is a translation. Okay,
but yeah, yeah, yeah, I've tried to find in Spanish. Actually,
But so I'm just going to go with a translation.
I think it's probably from lib Calm or a similar
website with like aging red and black asthetic vibes. But
I love those websites, so it's had a bit on

(23:44):
I hope you'll enjoy it. We don't see why we
should have like the ETA or kind of like reaching
out in solidarity and the Zapatis just has previously been
like Now, dude, we are not the same. You're not
just like ascetic society. We are not the same people.
We don't see why we would ask you what we
should do or how we should do it. What are
you going to teach us to kill? You a list

(24:05):
who speak badly about the struggle to justify the death
of children for the reason of the cause. We don't
need or want your support or solidarity. We already have
the support and solidarity of many people in Mexico and
the world. Our struggle has a code of honor inherited
from our guerrilla ancestors, and it contains, among other things,
respect of civilian lives, even though they may occupy government

(24:26):
positions that oppress us. We don't use crime to get
resources for ourselves. We don't rob, not even a snack store.
We don't respond to words with fire, even though many
hurt us or lie to us. One could think that
to renounce these traditionally revolutionary methods is renouncing the advancements
of our struggle. But in the faint light of our history,
it seems that we have advanced more than those who

(24:48):
resort to such arguments. Like, I deeply enjoy this critique,
you can look it up. Was big on killing people
who are tangently related to the regime in any way,
which I don't agree with. We should also add that
they more or less definitively stopped doing stuff in eighteen
and that they had a press conference, and in their
press conference, actually Arenaldo Teggi, who was a former member,

(25:12):
said that they wanted to express a sorry for the
pain and suffering other people have endured. He goes on, like,
we feel their pain, and that sincere feeling leads us
to affirm that it should never have happened. Sure, buddy,
you want to say sorry because you did terrorism. But
I do think that, like we should, we're talking about assassination.
Is gonna be talking about assassinations a week. There are
ways to do leftist political struggle that are not killing

(25:36):
random civilians and their friends and family members and bombing supermarkets,
and those are the better ways. But making Franco cries
good sending Franco's successor into near Earth orbit is pretty funny.
So we we enjoyed that one at least, if not,
I think it is worth pointing out, like we weighed
this pretty obvious by by that line. But it does

(26:00):
not get a free space, a free bask homeland. The
Zappatistas have actually taken and still controlled territory, a thing
that none of these weird thrilla groups ever pulled off.
So you know, yeah, they don't even get majority support
really at any point. Like occasionally there will be people
who are like, yeah, you know what, Like I agree

(26:21):
with some of what they say, but their tactics are
deeply flawed. You know, these keeping people, like torturing people.
That kind of thing in the context of the dirty
war with the state is important. But yeah, they don't succeed, right,
And I don't think you do succeed by by extorting
the people you're claiming to liberate. That generally doesn't work well.
So up the Zappatistas, I guess, Yeah, that seems like

(26:45):
a good place to end. Yep, cool, yeah, this is
this has what may could happen here and join us
tomorrow from more assassinations and also the day after that,
the day after that and the day after that. Yep,
don't wait, m it could happen here as a production
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(27:07):
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