The changing story of Txiki and Otaegi. From ETA martyrs to fighters for democracy

Abstract

On 27 September 1975, two members of ETA political-military, Ángel Otaegi Etxeberria (Caraquemada) and Juan Paredes Manotas (Txiki), were executed (OR shot by firing squad) following convictions by court martials. Otaegi had been a necessary collaborator in the murder of a civil guard and Paredes had taken part in actions in which two police officers lost their lives. The protests against their execution turned them into symbols for a large part of the anti-Franco activists. In the following years, however, their figures were patrimonialised by the ETA mileu, which resorted to propaganda techniques such as the celebration of the Gudari Eguna to present them as martyrs of Basque homeland to whom natives and immigrants should imitate. Like the memory of those they had murdered, their terrorist record gradually faded into oblivion. In November 2012, the Basque Government recognized Paredes and Otaegi as victims of political violence. Now radical Basque nationalism intends for them to be considered ‘fighters for democracy’. This work analyses their trajectory as members of ETA, the changing memory surrounding their case and the difficulty of making them fit into the historical narrative of perpetrators-victims like them.