An Invisible Mediation? Catholic Peacemaking in the Basque Conflict
The Basque conflict has long constituted one of the last ethnonationalist violent conflicts in Western Europe, until the definitive ceasefire (2011), decommissioning (2017) and self-dissolution (2018) of eta (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, Basque Country and Freedom). In that respect, the role played by some sectors of the Roman Catholic Church in the conflict resolution has been underestimated. Yet, since the Spanish democratic transition, various mediation initiatives originated from the Church. This mediation effort concerned both the social promotion of peace and direct intermediation between conflicting parties. In return, the nationalist conflict also deepened the internal cleavages of the Catholic institution, with at least three distinct normative approaches (legalist, alternative, deliberative) to the democratic treatment of the ethnonational question. Political actors have also resorted to the central institutions of Catholicism in order to overcome the divisions of the local Church and to give a transnational dimension to their definitions of the conflict and its resolution.