Modern Europe’s longest violent conflict still weighs on the former guerrilla who five years ago helped bring it to a quiet end. Arnaldo Otegi, then in prison, was credited with persuading his comrades in the Basque separatist group ETA to declare a permanent cease-fire after 52 years of fighting the Spanish state. Released this year, Mr. Otegi hit the campaign trail and is leading ETA’s political wing in the Basque Country regional election Sunday. His path is familiar. In other Western countries emerging from civil conflict, insurgent leaders have put away their bullets to compete for ballots. Their passage is a measure of how well those societies heal.
Familiar, too, is Mr. Otegi’s predicament: Like others who present themselves as forward-looking converts to peace, he remains to many an unsettling, even hated, symbol of a bloodied past.
Gerry Adams, the Irish revolutionary with whom Mr. Otegi is often compared, persuaded the Irish Republican Army to abandon armed resistance and tolerate a continued British presence in Northern Ireland. But his refusal to dissociate himself from the IRA has limited the appeal of his party, Sinn Féin.
Full Article: Former ETA Guerrilla Trades Bullets for Ballots in Basque Election – WSJ.