“Are you proud to belong to ETA?” Josu Ternera He hesitates and decides not to repeat what he had expressly said in a French court. This time he opts for the aseptic “I was an ETA militant.” As in the hour and a half of the documentary that follows, in Don’t call me Veal the ex number one of the band measures his words to carefully present a justification for his life as a terrorist.
Thus, it removes a possible crime of glorifying terrorism, of which the victims warned as soon as it was announced that the documentary produced by Netflix It was going to air this Friday on the San Sebastian Film Festival. They asked that the Prosecutor’s Office I watched it beforehand to see if it glorified terrorism or humiliated the victims. Aside from the legal aspect – a conviction for these crimes is extremely difficult today – half a thousand signatures unsuccessfully requested that ETA not be laundered with its issuance.
To the interviewer, Jordi Évole, Veal He explains with candor what he is looking for with the documentary. “There are others who have spoken for me, they have written books and I have had few opportunities to express myself. A trophy has been made of me. My figure has been dehumanized. They talk about me as if I were with horns and a tail, thirsty for blood. I am “Any person, with political, social and cultural convictions. I have a family like anyone else,” he begins.
The apotheosis of self-whitening comes at the end, when the question is whether, now over 70 years old, he regrets anything. “If we had not done much more to stop this spiral of violence much sooner.”
In the form of a documentary, it is actually presented a long interview with the former ETA boss. Added to this is the reaction of one of his victims, to which Évole reveals that Veal participated in his attack. On February 9, 1976 Francisco Ruiz Sánchez accompanied the mayor of Galdacano when he was murdered. He was left dying.