Belloc Abbey closes the doors that it opened in 1962 to the founders of ETA

The rule of Saint Benedict says, in its chapter 53, that “all guests who come to the monastery are received as Christ”.

He speaks of the Benedictine hospitality that the monks and nuns of this religious congregation fulfill to the letter.

60 years ago, the founders and ideologues of ETA took advantage of this attitude of open arms to meet in the abbey of Belloc (Urt, in the French Basque Country) and hold their first assembly there, which gave rise to the document

of the terrorist organization.

Surrounded by that atmosphere of recollection and spirituality, in this temple the foundations were laid for what its inspirers conceived as the Basque Revolutionary Movement for National Liberation, which during the following five decades sowed terror and caused 854 deaths and thousands of threats.

ETA is already history and monastic life in Belloc has also come to an end: the 14 Benedictines who live there will leave their cells in the coming months and will give the facilities to a humanist movement that cares for homeless families.

A flock of sheep graze peacefully in the meadows of Urt, a bucolic and peaceful spot along the banks of the Adour River, about 15 kilometers from Bayonne (France) and 40 from the Irún border (Gipuzkoa).

On a promontory, the Belloc monastery dominates an area far removed from civilisation.

It has 148 years of history, it was founded in 1874 by Father Agustín Bastres from Labour, and a group of Basque novices.

cheeses

that were previously made by the monks are very appetizing, its library is very prestigious and valuable, and the natural environment is enviable.

In May 1962, a group of "14 delegates" came to this place where the

rules , which has hardly changed in recent decades, none of them women, to celebrate the first assembly of ETA, which already had almost four years of existence, according to Iker Casanova, parliamentarian of EH Bildu, in his book

.

Between the walls of Belloc, the founding charter of the “revolutionary” organization was written, translated into four languages ​​and distributed in “more than 30,000 copies”.

A “collegiate leadership” was also elected from that conclave, whose leaders were Julen Madariaga, José Luis Álvarez Enparantza

, Patxi Iturrioz, José María Benito del Valle, David López Dorronso, Eneko Irigarai and José Manuel Agirre.

Madariaga assumed military responsibility and Sabin Uribe was in charge of "getting the first weapons" for the attacks, always according to Casanova's account.

There are no certainties about the reasons that led those activists to meet clandestinely in this religious center.

Juan José Agirre (90 years old), an archivist monk at the Benedictine monastery of Lazkao (Gipuzkoa), believes that the meeting took place "without the knowledge of the Belloc monastic community": "We Benedictines welcome everyone with open arms .

I have the impression that the brothers [de Belloc] did not know that an ETA assembly was going to be held inside the monastery”.

Father Jean Francois, hands crossed on his chest, chooses to remain silent and retires to the closed area of ​​the Basque-French monastery.

The historian Gaizka Fernández Soldevilla believes that the first assembly "was not crucial" in the trajectory of the terrorist organization, except to approve its declaration of principles and continue with the ideological debates that had been taking place within it.

By then, the person in charge of documentation of the Center for the Memory of the Victims of Terrorism tells in his book

, ETA had already begun its violent activity with the placement of three bombs in 1959 (against the daily

of Santander, the Civil Government of Vitoria and the Bilbao Police Headquarters) and decided in 1961 to open "a new phase of gigantic proportions" with the attempted derailment, on July 18 of that year, of a train where veterans from Requetés were traveling. that had just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the national uprising of 1936. Months later, with the open debate on the appropriateness of the armed struggle, the following quote was included in the

agreed upon in the 1962 assembly: “The most appropriate means should be used. adequate that each historical circumstance dictates”.

That formula was the one that left the door open for the indiscriminate use that ETA made, for a long time, of weapons.

This episode is added to a long story linked to Basque history.

Iñaki Anasagasti, deputy and senator of the PNV between 1986 and 2015, tells on his blog that in Belloc many Basque nationalists and republicans who fled after the outbreak of the Civil War received shelter and food between 1936 and 1940.

Among these refugees was, precisely, his father, José Luis Anasagasti, in addition to the lawyer José María Benegas, father of Txiki Benegas;

the anthropologist José Miguel de Barandiaran, or the priest Aitzol, later arrested and shot in 1936 in the Hernani cemetery.

The Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, went to the abbey in January 2020 to thank the Belloc Benedictines for their hospitality to the Basques escaping Franco's troops:

“Those people fled from the worst and found the best in the human condition.

They were fleeing the horror of war.

They found warm human solidarity”, he told them at that act.

The Belloc monks also suffered exile and persecution.

They were expelled by the French Government in 1903, they crossed the nearest border and had to be distributed in the monastic houses of Olza (Navarra) and Idiazabal (Gipuzkoa).

From here they moved to the neighboring town of Lazkao to settle in an old Carmelite mansion that soon became the current Benedictine temple.

The monks returned to Belloc in 1919 after the end of the First World War and played a very active role in the following world war when they supported the French resistance against the German occupation.

In 1943 the Gestapo arrested the prior and the abbot of the temple, who were deported to the Nazi concentration camps of Buchenwald and Daschau.

In the years in which ETA had installed its sanctuary on the other side of the muga and many militants settled in the French zone, Belloc was involved in another fact related to the gang.

In 1990, the novice Philippe Sáez was arrested, who had entered the monastery two years earlier after denying the terrorist fight in which he had participated as a member of

and collaborating in at least four deadly attacks in 1978 and 1979. The prior of that time he thus disapproved of the conduct of his novice: "The monastery cannot approve in any way what cannot be justified in essence."

Some time later, the French anti-terrorist services returned to present themselves in this monastery.

In February 2005, the Benedictine Martzel Etxehandi (he was 72 years old) was arrested, at the same time that the Spanish police kept Brother Agirre, who keeps abundant material on ETA and the history of the Basque Country.

Both were accused of serving as couriers for gang leader Mikel Antza, but were released hours later.

"That gave me more fame than harm," says Agirre now.

Temple of the abbey of Belloc, in Urt (France). Javier Hernández

The presence of the Benedictines in the abbey of Belloc will come to an end in mid-2022. The 14 monks will move to the neighboring convent of Santa Escolástica, with whose nuns they have already shared religious offices for three years.

The grandiose monastic mansion has been transferred, with the blessing of the Bishopric of Bayonne, to the Habitat et Humanisme foundation, created and directed by Bernard Devert, a former property developer who took the habits to dedicate himself to charitable causes, mainly to "respond to the exclusion and isolation of people in difficulty.

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