I once again violate the basic rule of not writing in the first person, but I must do so to make my painful and unfair testimony known within a left-wing party.
I entered the PSOE, more specifically in the PSN, in 1990, after a long militancy in the PCE a part of it during the anti-Franco fight.
Curiously, he was already predestined, having been born precisely in the 70 Ferraz street its current headquarters.
I did it as I have already mentioned on occasion for two reasons, because I considered that it could and should be “The common house of the left” and because following the classics I understood that the purpose of that left was to transform society and by being the PSOE the majority party had to work within itself to transform it in that direction.
The first years were not easy, because a sector of those who then led the PSN considered me as a communist infiltrator, even more so having continued my militancy in CCOO, since two changes, party and union, seemed excessive to me.
Maintaining loyalty to my principles, to my ideas, contrasted with a culture of loyalty to the leader. It was especially difficult due to having to carry out institutional tasks, two terms in the Parliament of Navarra and three as a councilor of the City Council of Villava-Atarrabia, in a particularly turbulent time as it is the town of Navarra in which we suffer the harshest harassment from the world of ETA.
So eleven years with two bodyguards as a result of two attempted attacks, tensions, threats, graffiti, rallies, even pressure on my son at his school. We held firm without taking a step back, perhaps because of the spirit inherited from my communist militancy in even more difficult times.
It was curious to go from the terror imposed by Franco to that of the ETA world, from the torture suffered in the first by “Billy the Kid” and his sinister BPS, to that of ETA and its people.
But despite this, I learned from the beginning to empathize with my enemies, to also try to understand their suffering, the reasons, in my opinion wrong, for their fight.
That led me to have contacts with their leaders, to even make friends who, upon being known by part of the PSOE leadership, led me to act as a bridge, as a person of communication and meetings. Among them the most significant; that meal in Leitza in which I participated with Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, further Enrique Curiel on the one hand and Joseba Permach, Pernando Barrena and Patxi Zabaleta of the other.
Hence the episodes of 1991, 1999, 2003, 2010 etc.
I always understood that one day ETA would disappear, that its end would come through police, judicial, social pressure, or international collaboration, but that in the end we would need complicity from within that effectively came through the Bateragune initiative promoted by Arnaldo Otegi.
Curiously, those contacts, that collaboration that my “elders” used, brought me incomprehension and tension from the PSN leadership, which culminated in my expulsion in 2010.
It was through two false accusations, that I had dedicated the rocket at the beginning of my town's festivities to Otegi and that I had invited Pernando Barrena to the event.
I demonstrated with reliable evidence, radio and TV recordings, audio and visual documents, what I said that day in front of hundreds of people, that it was not dedicating that rocket to Arnaldo Otegi and at the same time with documents from the Secretary of the City Council and the Head of Protocol attesting that Barrena was not among my guests. Even the municipal spokesperson for EH certified that he had attended at the invitation of his group.
What would have worked before ordinary justice in this case was not and I found myself without my PSOE card, although having moved to Catalonia the PSC did welcome me within a few weeks. Even as a member I participated without any problem in all types of PSOE events, including Congresses, conferences and primaries.
Subsequently, my return to Navarra and some devious trick left me once again an orphan of socialist militancy.
Thus, as an unlicensed socialist, I continued the defense of my ideas; the need to promote the unity of the left, to give a turn in that sense to the PSOE, to understand that since ETA did not exist, the policy of isolation of the nationalist left no longer made sense, or that it was necessary to find new solutions to old problems to eliminate the center-periphery tensions, or even that we should promote a Second Transition and the transformation of our country into a Plurinational Federal State.
Curiously, the same ideas that PSOE SG Pedro Sánchez now defends and is willing to put into practice.
So what problem is there right now for him not to play in this party? I was wondering just on January 7th, watching the triumph of his investiture. Isn't it obvious that I have my card again, if Pedro Sánchez and the PSOE now agree with my ideas defended for 30 years?
For these reasons, the next day I went quickly and quickly to request again for the third time (the last, without a response, was the day that Sánchez won in a primary in the process in which process he had my absolute collaboration and help) my membership, my card. of the PSN-PSOE, to the Pamplona headquarters on Paseo Sarasate.
Now we just have to wait to recover a card that should never have been taken from me. I hope Pedro Sánchez reads these lines and understands it that way too.
Because now we live in a new time with more lights and less shadows, with fewer disagreements and more coincidences.
We will see…
