ETA 'apology speech' convinces nobody

ETA revealed earlier this week that it had scheduled a press conference for today (Friday) ahead of its planned announcement on May 5 in Bayonne, southern France, where members are expected to tell the public they have formally dissolved the organisation.

Masked spokespersons admitted their actions – over 2,472 terror attacks – had caused 'immeasurably suffering' and that the cell is 'truly sorry', calling for 'forgiveness' to living victims who 'had nothing to do with the conflict', which centred on Basque separatism and the reunification of the Spanish and French Basque regions.

They spoke of 'deaths, injuries, tortures, kidnaps and people forced to flee abroad', for which ETA was 'directly responsible'.

“None of this should ever have happened and should never have gone on over time,” it said.

“A democratic solution should have been found much earlier.”

But they still attempted to justify themselves by saying that 'suffering had always reigned, even before ETA was created' and that it has long since 'abandoned the armed conflict'.

Its last attack was in Mallorca in 2009, and the organisation formally disarmed and handed in its weapons a year ago.

Authorities were the main targets – 352 terror attacks affected the Guardia Civil, including their family members as collateral where their living quarters were bombed – whilst 234 were aimed at the Armed Forces and the National Police suffered 212.

The Basque regional police force, the Ertzaintza, was attacked 11 times.

Thousands of civilians have been killed, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, as tourist hotspots were targeted to raise ETA's profile.

Attacks in later years were less likely to cause fatalities, or where they did, very few, typically one or two per blast, although in the most active ETA years, hundreds lost their lives in each single attack.

Some of the worst on record include the Hípercor supermarket bombing in Barcelona, where one man lost his entire family – wife and children – and the bombing in Madrid's Plaza de la República Dominicana, which the recently-extradited London exile Antonio Troitiño was involved in.

In December 2014, five years after its last attack in Palmanova, Mallorca, ETA confirmed a definitive truce, but the public was largely wary of this since the previous formal truce in March 2006 only lasted until December 30 of that year when the terrorists blew up the car park at Madrid airport Terminal 4 (pictured), killing two Ecuadorian men who were waiting for their families to arrive.

To date, a total of 197 deaths in ETA blasts remain unresolved – 23.2% of the total – and sentences have been passed for 546 violent crimes.

National government president Mariano Rajoy says ETA's apology should have come 'many years ago', whilst leader of centre-right Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera, says the only apology anyone will accept is for ETA to disband altogether.

Spaniards who have lost friends and relatives in ETA attacks say they do not consider the speech to have been 'a true and heartfelt apology', and Maite Pagazaurtundua, chairwoman of the Terrorism Victims' Foundation (FVT), says 'the small print' in the announcement 'cancels out all those nice words about being sorry'.

Maite's brother Joseba was shot three times and killed in a bar in the Basque town of Andoain in 2003, and knew he was on the ETA hit list.

His surviving sister says that behind ETA's announcement 'there are clear political interests'.