LAGUN, a bookshop in San Sebastián, opened 50 years ago in March, just weeks before ETA, a Basque terrorist group, carried out its first killing, of a policeman. Lagun’s owners were socialists and were fined for closing their shop during a strike against General Franco, Spain’s dictator from 1939 to 1975. But it was ETA that made their venture almost impossible. The shop, in the city’s old quarter, suffered years of politically inspired vandalism culminating in the public burning of the stock by ETA sympathisers. After the husband of one of the owners was gravely wounded in a terrorist attack, the shop moved to a safer site in the city centre. ETA’s hostility was for the same reason as Franco’s, says Ignacio Latierro, its surviving owner. “We weren’t prepared to do what they wanted.”
Over the past decade, Mr Latierro has seen the fading of ETA. The group’s disbandment, marked by a ceremony on May 4th across the border in...Continue reading
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