ETA: Coming in from the Cold

An attempt to create a bridge between the different political positions that coexist, sometimes violently, in the Basque Country, in northern Spain.

The chronicle of the process, ten long years, that led to the end of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), a Basque terrorist gang that perpetrated robberies, kidnappings and murders in Spain and the French Basque Country for more than fifty years. Almost 1,000 people died, but others are still alive to tell the story of how the nightmare finally ended.

Ane, daughter of two members of the terrorist gang ETA, born in prison, and a film student, embarks on a search for her own identity, lost between collective memory and personal experience.

San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain, June 27, 1960. A bomb explodes at the Amara train station. Begoña, a child of only twenty months, dies a few hours later as a result of the injuries sustained in the attack.

When he was just a child, Jon discovered his father's past, Iñaki Viar, linked to ETA. Son, grandson, and great-grandson of Basque nationalists, Iñaki was arrested in 1969 by the political-social brigade and tried alongside Teo Uriarte and Mario Onaindia in the Burgos Trial. Years later, he organized the escape from Segovia and, finally, in 1977, he regained his freedom. Iñaki, like many other prisoners, renounces nationalism and condemns terrorist violence. Jon, a film buff, tries to understand his father's past while living with attacks, kidnappings, and a lot of silence. By then, Iñaki is already considered a "traitor" by the nationalist world.

The abject crimes of the terrorist gang ETA have marked the lives of many Spaniards; men, women and children who were silenced, harassed, persecuted, finally murdered. Thirteen stories, thirteen tragedies, just thirteen among thousands.

Documentary about the court martial held following the assassination of Melitón Manzanas, commissioner of the Political-Social Brigade of Guipúzcoa, in an attack carried out by ETA on August 2, 1968. The film includes a series of interviews and testimonies from those imprisoned and prosecuted in that court martial. Following the attack, a state of emergency was declared in Guipúzcoa and hundreds of people were arrested.

Spain, 1997. The story of twelve days in July during which Basque society left indifference and fear behind and faced the threat of the terrorist group ETA.

The relatives of the victims of the terrorist gang ETA speak of their suffering, their fear, their loneliness; of the systematic oblivion to which they are subjected by Basque society, both by those who remain silent and look the other way and by those who, accomplices of the criminals, share their repugnant ideology and celebrate extortion, kidnapping and murder, thus contributing to perpetuating a bloody reign of terror.

Basque Country, Spain. No one seems to know them. Some glances avoid theirs. Their social circle becomes smaller and smaller. They live under escort, watched by those who protect them and by those who threaten them: it is the experience of living in the shadow of ETA, a savage terrorist gang of unscrupulous criminals… of merely existing under the yoke of those who tomorrow could be their executioners.

The turbulent story of the Lagun bookstore — located in San Sebastián, in the Basque Country, Spain — is a powerful tale of courage, resistance and struggle; first against the Franco dictatorship, then against the terrorist gang ETA and its numerous and sinister acolytes.