The Challenge: ETA

The State agrees to negotiate with ETA, although its leaders have no intention of giving in to anything and continue to put dead people on the table. Especially in view of the year '92, the great showcase of Spain with the Universal Exposition of Seville and the Olympic Games of Barcelona. At that critical moment there will be a great victory for the State and the Guardia Civil with the dismantling of ETA's leadership.

The escalation of ETA reaches an unusual level: car bombs that kill dozens of people, especially guardias civiles. Their aim is to force the government to recognize the independence of the Basque Country. And to do so, it will eliminate anyone who stands in its way, including its dissident members. But the State is reacting with operations that put ETA on the ropes, one of them with the help of the CIA.

With Franco's death, many political prisoners are released; some are true victims of the dictatorship, others are mere murderers, like the Etarras, who will go out and walk a path of death; like Jesus María Zabarte, the Butcher of Mondragón, one of the most bloodthirsty. ETA starts an open war against the State, with the assassination of businessmen, politicians and military, while bringing terror to the heart of the civilian population.

Terrorist gang ETA is born in the Basque Country, in northern Spain, during General Franco's dictatorship (1939-75), as a movement that is supposedly fighting for freedom. All begins in 1968 with the first murder, that of traffic officer José Pardines Arcay, a guardia civil who pulls over a couple of terrorists while they were going to collect explosives. Soon there will be more crimes, until reaching the assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco, the president of Franco's government. Franco dies and democracy is established, but ETA will continue to kill.