welcome to the Basque Country

So I normally don't do the whole politics thing, and I'm not going to pretend I know anything profound about the Basque situation, but there's some crazy shit been going on that I think should come to light. First observation, the way news about the Basque Country is presented here and outside Euskadi is very different, and I can notice that without hardly ever watching the news. But I'll get to that more.

So big thing that's going on right now is the discovery of an ETA affiliate's body. The whole time I've been here there have been posters up asking 'Non dago Jon?' (Where is Jon?) This refers to Jon Anza, who disappeared in April of last year. He went to take a train to Toulouse and no one ever heard from him again. Perhaps could be considered suspicious because the Spanish government was following his whereabouts closely... then he disappeared, and suddenly they had no information as to where he was. So some people are like .....Riiiight. Sure.

Now posters have popped up with his picture, with 'JON ERAILA' (Jon murdered) as the new title. Turns out they finally identified a body in a hospital in Toulouse as being him. About time. So far the autopsy's ruled out any trauma to the body and internal hemorrages, and has pronounced the cause of death a heart attack. The toxicology report is still pending. The family's up in arms because they won't allow the family's doctor to do an autopsy on his body.

Anza only entered the hospital 11 days after he disappeared. Someone found him in a park, unconscious, and brought him in. No one checked the lost and found for his passport, and somehow they only checked the missing persons list against the unidentified-bodies list now. The question is still: where was he for those 11 days? Did the Spanish/French governments really not know anything about where he was? Did they have anything to do with his disappearance? Etc. The French press recently came out with a couple of stories saying that they believed the governments must have known where he was. So certain elements of Basque press had a hayday with that.

Living here is making me realize that there really are two sides to every coin. And also, how incredibly different the coverage of this stuff is inside and out of the Basque country. What really gets my goat is articles like this, from El País:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Francia/halla/Toulouse/cuerpo/Jon/Anza/muerto/infarto/mayo/elpepiesp/20100312elpepinac_12/Tes

The first lines: "So much for more of the 'dirty war' against ETA. What ended Jon Anza's life - whose disappearance, torture, murder and burial was blamed on Spanish and French security forces by the group - was a heart attack." And with that they write the whole thing off. The third paragraph reminds us that ETA is still extorting people, that they blew up the T-4 parking garage in Madrid... etc.

Talking to some of my (American) friends, I've heard also that Anza had cancer, that ETA had actually turned on him, and that Anza was a horrible criminal. (He participated in the murder of a police officer in 1981.) So, a 'good riddance' sort of thing.

Yeah, nobody likes terrorism. In fact, most of us rightfully hate it. So some people write off the Jon Anza thing because he was a terrorist. But I think people have a right to know what happened to their loved ones. Will the truth ever come out?