The Basque Ball: Skin Against Stone (Spanish: La pelota vasca: la piel contra la piedra; Basque: Euskal pilota: larrua harriaren kontra) is a 2003 Spanish documentary film written and directed by Julio Medem.
The film's purported intention is to create a bridge between the different political positions that coexist, sometimes violently, in the Basque Country. In order to do so, Medem edits the interviews giving a sense of dialogue between parties that refused to sit down and talk. Due to its lack of contextualization, the film may be hard to understand to audiences without previous knowledge of the Basque problem—it is obviously a film designed to be viewed by Spanish audiences, or people familiar with the issues.
The movie also utilizes footage from the Basque portions of the 1955 travelogue Around The World With Orson Welles, and continually intercuts between interviews and jai alai players.
Criticism
One of the main controversies of the documentary is that the two principal protagonists in the controversy, the then incumbent Partido Popular and ETA refused to take part in the interviews. The former went so far as to request the organisers of the Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival to reconsider the film's suitability. This, in turn, has led some to call it an incomplete documentary.[1]
It has also been openly criticized by both extremes, and Medem, who is Basque, has been accused of being both pro-ETA and pro-"Spanish occupation". Indeed, two of the interviewees, Iñaki Ezquerra and Gotzone Mora (both members of the intellectual group the Ermua Forum) demanded that Medem retract their interviews, accusing him of presenting the Spanish Guardia Civil and police forces as torturers and ETA and their followers as victims.[2] Despite these protests, their interviews remained due to the film's imminent release date. They did not, however, appear on the 7-hour DVD Edition.
There is a three-disc special edition DVD ( ISBN0-499-01513-4) released with seven hours of edited footage that goes deeper into the history of the Basque Country and a Spanish-language book ( ISBN84-03-09425-6).
ETA, an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, was an armed Basque nationalist and far-left separatist organization in the Basque Country between 1959 and 2018, with its goal being independence for the region. The group was founded in 1959 during the era of Francoist Spain, and later evolved from a pacifist group promoting traditional Basque culture to a violent paramilitary group. It engaged in a campaign of bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings throughout Spain and especially the Southern Basque Country against the regime, which was highly centralised and hostile to the expression of non-Castilian minority identities. ETA was the main group within the Basque National Liberation Movement and was the most important Basque participant in the Basque conflict.
Julio Medem Lafont is a Basque film director, producer, editor, and screenwriter.
Mikel Laboa Mancisidor was one of the Basque Country's most important singer-songwriters.
Miguel Ángel Blanco Garrido was a Spanish economist and municipal politician and a member of the People's Party, in Ermua, the Basque Country. He was kidnapped and murdered by the Basque separatist group ETA.
Jaime Mayor Oreja is a former Spanish conservative politician of the People's Party. He served as member of the Basque Parliament, of the Spanish Parliament, and of the European Parliament, as well as being Spanish Minister of the Interior between 1996 and 2000. He is known for his outspoken anti-ETA rhetoric and social ultracatholicism
Melitón Manzanas González was a high-ranking police officer in Francoist Spain, known as a torturer and the first planned victim of ETA.
Ermua is a town and municipality located in the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of Basque Country, northern Spain. In 2019, Ermua had 15,880 inhabitants.
Jon Juaristi Linacero is a Spanish poet, essayist and translator in Spanish and Basque, as well as a self-confessed former ETA militant. He lives in Madrid.
The Foro Ermua was a Spanish civic association, the membership of which was composed of Spanish citizens. It was founded on 13 January 1998; its last president was Mikel Buesa.
Telemadrid is a public television station in the Community of Madrid, Spain, the flagship channel of the regional public broadcaster Radio Televisión Madrid (RTVM). It began its broadcast on 2 May 1989.
The Basque conflict, also known as the Spain–ETA conflict, was an armed and political conflict from 1959 to 2011 between Spain and the Basque National Liberation Movement, a group of social and political Basque organizations which sought independence from Spain and France. The movement was built around the separatist organization ETA, which had launched a campaign of attacks against Spanish administrations since 1959. ETA had been proscribed as a terrorist organization by the Spanish, British, French and American authorities at different moments. The conflict took place mostly on Spanish soil, although to a smaller degree it was also present in France, which was primarily used as a safe haven by ETA members. It was the longest running violent conflict in modern Western Europe. It has been sometimes referred to as "Europe's longest war".
Eduardo Madina Muñoz is a Spanish socialist politician. He was the Secretary General of the Socialist Parliamentary Group in Congress between April 2009 and September 2014.
Itziar Ituño Martínez is a Basque Spanish actress, who performs in her native Basque language as well as in Spanish. She is best known for her role as Inspector Raquel Murillo in the Spanish television series La Casa de Papel.
José Luis López de Lacalle Arnal was a Spanish journalist and trade unionist. A columnist for El Mundo newspaper, he was killed by ETA.
Hasier Arraiz Barbadillo is a former Basque politician. He was the first president of Sortu, and a member of the Basque Parliament.
Edurne Uriarte Bengoechea is a Spanish politician, political scientist, and sociologist. She is a member of the Spanish Congress of Deputies for the People's Party of Spain, representing The Constituency of Madrid.
Mikel Zabalza Garate, also known as Mikel Zabaltza Garate, was a Basque bus driver, and employee of the San Sebastian Municipal Trolley Service. In 1985, he appeared dead in the river Bidasoa. After 35 years of inaction by the Spanish tribunals, it was concluded that Zabalza died as result of torture inflicted on him by Civil Guard operatives at the headquarters of Intxaurrondo in San Sebastián.
Maixabel is a 2021 Spanish drama film directed by Icíar Bollaín and co-written by Bollaín and Isa Campo. The film stars Blanca Portillo and Luis Tosar alongside Bruno Sevilla, Urko Olazabal and María Cerezuela and is based on the true story of Maixabel Lasa, a woman whose husband, Juan María Jáuregui, was killed by ETA, a Basque separatist group, and who receives an invitation to talk with the killers of her husband eleven years after.
Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, alias "Txapote", is a Basque separatist terrorist who is responsible for the assassination of several Basque politicians. He is also known by the aliases Perretxiko, Jon, Xabier, and Otsagi, among others. He was part of the "hard wing" of ETA and never showed any sign of repentance for his actions or condemned those of the group.
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