The World: The Basques: Business

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The E.T.A. was founded in the late 1950s, and until a few years ago its several hundred members did little more than paint slogans on walls. But in the mid-1960s a group of young Basque patriots rejected the moderation of their elders and secretly formed the terrorist "Fifth Wing" of the E.T.A. Consisting of a few dozen men at most, it is a tautly disciplined, highly trained guerrilla band, well supplied with arms either captured from the police or bought in Sweden and Czechoslovakia. Most Basques have scant interest in the E.T.A.'s brand of terrorism. But though unlikely to achieve its ultimate goal of Basque independence, the E.T.A. is today the group with the greatest ability to create serious trouble for Franco's regime. It has proved that it can strike when and whom it pleases, and it clearly intends to make more trouble for the Madrid government.