False accusations against Josetxo Ibazeta, secretary of San Sebastian city hall

Josetxo Ibazeta was until yesterday Secretary of the Donostia-San Sebastian City Hall. It has been recently known that he had a heated discussion with some Spanish nationalist hooligans who were celebrating the the Spanish football Euro-success some 10 days ago.

Incidentally the media has repeated once and again that in the video he issues threats against hooligans, very specifically that he said: "I'm going to shoot you twice" (a sentence, sadly, common in Spanish but that has poor translation into either English or Basque - and all the conversation was in Basque language).

As you can see in the following video, it is absolutely false: he appears to be drunk, he is clearly annoyed but he is not being violent in any way (nor could he facing alone what appears to be a large group of Spanish nationalist hooligans trying to provoke a fight in the old quarter of San Sebastian).

The video (low quality image, conversation in Basque with Spanish subtitles - my translation is below):

He just protests the use of the Spanish banner in the Basque Country and does cry Up with ETA militar!:

• Hooligan: Gudari*, come here, gudari!
• Ibazeta: But what: with the Spanish flag?
• Hooligan: What did you cry, what did you cry?
• Ibazeta: What are you telling me?
• Hooligan: What did you cry, what did you cry?
• Ibazeta: Up with ETA militar**!
• Hooligan: Ah, so it's that way?
• Another hooligan: What's your name, what's your name?
• Ibazeta: Why would you care?, why would you care?

Translator's notes:

*Gudari means warrior or fighter in Basque and has been a term used more or less informally by several armed groups here since at least the Spanish Civil War. A popular nationalist hymn is the Eusko Gudaria (The Basque Fighter).

**Since the schism between ETA militar and ETA political-militar in the 1970s, and after the dissolution of the later in the 1980s, there is only one ETA: ETA militar or ETA(m) or just ETA these days.

Following the media siege against Ibazeta and their lies, he has resigned in his office and the political parties and coalitions he belonged to have felt legally obligued to expel him, because by law and statutes they are forced to reject ETA.

This actually underlines how the ample sociological sectors who do support ETA from unconditional or critical viewpoints do not have political space under Spanish occupation, making very difficult any solution to the armed conflict in the long term, regardless of whether this specific incarnation of ETA, or more specifically the Basque struggle for its political rights as nation, is disbanded or not.

A difficult thing to even state without risking prison here under Spanish occupation law but the truth nevertheless.