Six years after renouncing violence in its long and bloody pursuit of a Basque homeland, the militant separatist group Eta has announced it will lay down all arms by early next month.
On Friday, Le Monde reported that Eta was ready to give up its weapons once and for all and intended to reveal the locations of its hidden stockpiles very soon.
Txetx Etcheverry, an activist with environmental campaign group Bizi – which favours Basque independence – told the newspaper: “Eta has handed us responsibility for the disarmament of its arsenal and, as of the evening of April 8, Eta will have completely handed over its weapons.”
Etcheverry said the disarmament should, if possible, be completed before France’s presidential election, the first round of which is set for 23 April.
Iñigo Urkullu, the head of the Basque regional government, said the authorities had been informed of the possible disarmament, adding that he hoped it would be “definitive, unilateral, irrevocable, complete and legal”.
He called on the Spanish and French governments to help facilitate talks to achieve “a goal with historic importance for our society”.
The Spanish government reacted guardedly to the news.
“Eta has to do two things: disarm and dissolve itself,” government spokesman Iñigo Méndez de Vigo told a news conference on Friday.
He said the government would not speculate on any potential disarmament.
Other politicians welcomed signs that a handover was nearing.
“The Basque government will do everything in its power to make sure this goes according to plan, even if not everything is in our hands,” said Urkullu.
Arnaldo Otegi, who joined Eta as a teenager and is now the leader of the far-left Basque separatist party Sortu, called the prospect of disarmament an “exciting historical moment”.
Otegi was released from prison last year after a six-year sentence for trying to resurrect Batasuna, the banned political party that was seen as Eta’s political wing,
“Let’s hope that this time the weapons handover will be final,” he told a news conference.
A disarmament would mark one of the last chapters in the drawn-out demise of Eta, which formed in the 1950s during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco with the aim of establishing an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southern France.
The group, which murdered 829 people in bombings and shootings, renounced its armed struggle in 2011 but has yet to hand over its entire arsenal.
Its last deadly attack was in 2010, when a police officer was killed during a shootout with Eta militants in a Paris suburb.
It has been severely weakened in recent years after hundreds of its members, including its leader, were arrested and police seized several of its weapons stashes.
Eta seeking to negotiate its dissolution in exchange for amnesties or improved prison conditions for its approximately 350 members held in Spain and France.