SUMMARY
Spain has experienced limited but significant episodes of organized violence since 1989, shaped primarily by the long-running insurgency of the Basque separatist group ETA, jihadist attacks against civilians, and in recent years non-state violence between criminal gangs. The majority of conflict-related fatalities occurred in the capital Madrid.
Since 1989, Spain has experienced the intrastate, one-sided, and non-state categories of organized violence, as defined by UCDP.
Violence since 1989
Since 1989, the country of Spain has seen two different types of organized violence. One of them is the final chapter of a long-running intrastate conflict over the Basque territory,y between the Spanish government and Basque separatist outfit ETA, and the other one-sided violence against civilians perpetrated by jihadist groups.
The last chapter of a long-running insurgency
The small 1991 peak in organized violence marks the last year in which the long-running intrastate conflict between the [government of Spain] (/#actor/35) and ETA over the Basque territory was an active armed conflict as defined by the UCDP, having last reached the armed conflict fatalities threshold in 1987. The 1991 violence was geographically broad in scope, Basque County (in north-eastern Spain) and Catalonia accounting for two thirds of fatalities with the rest occurring in the capital Madrid as well as in the southern cities of Alicante and Seville. Bomb attacks conducted by ETA caused a majority of the conflict’s deaths in 1991.
In 1992, ETA saw several of its leading members being arrested, which weakened the group and set the stage for a trend of decreasing fatal violence in the conflict that would last for the rest of the millennium. In 1998-1999, a 14-month ceasefire contributed to the fact that no fatalities at all occurred in 1999, a remarkable milestone in the conflict’s history. After a brief increase in violence as the conflict almost became active again in 2000, violence again trended downwards in the decade that followed, eventually ceasing completely. The UCDP has registered no fatalities in the conflict after 2009, and in 2011 ETA declared a permanent ceasefire which held until the group’s subsequent disbandment in 2018.
The post-1991 violence that did occur in the conflict did so in many different regions of Spain. At one point in 2009 even the island of Mallorca was affected in a single event that would be the conflict’s only one not to have taken place on the Spanish mainland after 1989. However, most of the violence in these years were concentrated to two locations: Basque County and the capital Madrid.
Jihadist attacks
The 2004 peak in organized violence consists entirely of fatalities from a single event, as a result of which 2004 saw more fatalities in organized violence in Spain than any other year from 1989 onwards. On 11 March 2004, in an act of one-sided violence, the jihadist group GICM from Morocco—whose aims have been stated to include supporting al-Qaida’s attacks on Western targets—carried out a coordinated attack in the Spanish capital Madrid. In the morning, 10 time bombs placed by the group detonated nearly simultaneously across several trains on Madrid’s commuter rail network, causing massive devastation and a large number of civilian deaths. When the attack occurred, it was recognized as the second most lethal terrorist attack in Europe until then, being surpassed in fatalities only by the Lockerbie airplane bombing which occurred in United Kingdom airspace 16 years earlier.
In April 2004, Spanish government forces located and raided the hideout of the GICM cell that had committed the attack, preventing them from carrying out more deeds.
The notable increase in fatalities from organized violence in 2017 in comparison with the more than a decade long period of calm that preceded it is attributed to one-sided violence against civilians in Spain conducted by the jihadist group IS. Attacks were carried out over the year in Barcelona and in Cambrils primarily using the method of driving into a crowd of civilians using vans to kill. Some IS members were killed by Spanish government forces in Spain during the year, but the number was well below 25. As such, no active conflict between the actors has been registered in the UCDP data.
Pre-1989 conflicts
UCDP has recorded only one state-based conflict in Spain before 1989, that being the conflict over the Basque territory between the Basque separatist group ETA and the government of Spain. ETA waged a small-scale insurgency against the Spanish government from 1959 onwards, and were still engaging in operations by 1988. The UCDP has registered the conflict as an active armed conflict for two different time periods prior to 1989 with a short in-between hiatus, the first being 1978-1982, and the second being 1985-1987. No single year reached the fatalities-threshold for war.
