Spanish News

Following violent confrontations between students and police on Monday, thousands of demonstrators marched once more from Valencia’s Lluis Vives public school on Tuesday afternoon, wielding textbooks in their hands and calling for the resignations of a host of government officials.

Similar protests popped up in Alicante and Madrid’s Sol square, where police armed with rubber bullets and shields kept a close watch. At press time, no incidents had been reported.

“Our weapons are our books,” said the students in Valencia. Parents, teachers and other adults joined them in what was the biggest gathering since last Wednesday’s demonstration, called to protest the regional cuts in education, which have left many classrooms without heating.

Compared to the past few days, there was little police presence at the school and along the march route, although a police helicopter was flying above the demonstrators.

Regional officials, including the government’s delegate in Valencia, Paula Sánchez de León, appeared to have backed down from the hardline stance taken against the students over the past few days. The Interior Ministry ordered the police to use restraint after receiving an avalanche of complaints from parents who said that there was an excessive use of force by the police, after they saw their children on television beaten, thrown around and pinned down. The students began protesting the cutbacks last Wednesday in a demonstration in front of the school, which ended with the arrest of 10 students.

On Monday, police once again clashed with students in violent confrontations that left a number of demonstrators injured.

Twenty people were arrested. In a radio interview, Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón said that the police were “forced to act” after they had been “violently attacked.”

Calls for the resignation of the government delegate Sánchez de León were on the rise on Tuesday, while similar calls were heard regarding executives of Radio Television Valencia (RTVV), for what critics called biased reporting about the protests.

Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz said Tuesday he believed that police in Valencia may have used “some excessive force” during the clashes with students in the previous days but defended the overall police action.

Nevertheless, representatives of the police union SUP called the interior minister’s statements “political and personal cowardliness” for blaming law enforcement for the violence. SUP said that it was Sánchez de León and police chief Antonio Moreno who gave the orders to move in on the demonstrators, and said that they had both “committed a serious error” in judgment. The images captured on video of police roughing up students flashed across television screens around the world.

In London, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that Spain “cannot provide this image” of violence to the world, and called for restraint. “Everyone has the right to protest but they need to understand that law enforcement officers have their duties to fulfill.”

Sánchez de León promised a full inquiry to determine if some officers went to extremes.

Students, parents and their supporters had also gathered in front of the Popular Party (PP) headquarters in Valencia for another demonstration. Alberto Ordóñez, the president of the Valencia Federation of Students (Faavem), said the students who were arrested on Monday were released with charges pending. In all about 38 people have been charged since the protests began on Wednesday. Ordóñez met with Sánchez de León to demand that she stepped down.

Complaints about the confrontations not only came from parents and other citizens but also the opposition political parties, who have called for Fernández Diaz’s resignation.

Socialist leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said the images he saw on TV were “intolerable,” and he called on the interior minister to explain them when he appears before Congress.

For her part, Soraya Rodríguez, the Socialist spokeswoman in Congress, called on Fernández Díaz to “belie” Sánchez de León for saying Monday night that she had hoped that day’s protests “ended up being an anecdote that is not repeated.”

In reference to police chief Antonio Moreno’s statements, calling the protesting students “the enemy” (see below), members of the United Left (IU) coalition in Congress held up signs that read: “I too am the enemy.”

All of the parties in the Spanish parliament, with the exception of the minority UPyD and Amaiur groups, on Tuesday agreed on an historic text dealing with how to bring about the definitive end of the Basque terrorist group ETA.

In October of last year, ETA announced it was abandoning its armed struggle for an independent Basque Country, but it has yet to disband or hand over its arms.

The text, which heralds ETA’s decision to lay down its arms as the “best evidence of the victory of democracy over organized terrorism,” was not approved due to objections by the centrist UPyD, which is seeking to have the left-wing Basque abertzale group Amaiur declared illegal on the basis, it argues that it is a political front for ETA. The UPyD introduced an amendment to that effect in the text.

The document urges ETA to announce its “definitive and unconditional” disbandment and calls on the central government, and the administrations of the Basque Country and Navarre, to formally acknowledge the victims of terrorism and move to promote “social harmony,” a euphemism that refers to reintegrating ETA prisoners into society.

The broad agreement was made possible by the ruling Popular Party, which has softened its stance toward matters regarding ETA. Interior Minister Jorge Fernández has spoken of ETA after its decision to abandon violence as a political problem.

For 43 years, ETA pursued independence for the Basque Country, in which it also includes Navarre and part of France. It was responsible for the deaths of 829 people in Spain and in France.

Right after an agreement was reached on a second bailout package for Greece in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Spanish Treasury reveled in being able to sell government debt at a cost not seen since the euro-zone crisis broke close to two years ago.

The fact the European Central Bank is next week due to hold another extraordinary liquidity tender — one of the main factors behind growing appetite for euro-zone sovereign debt of late — also helped clear the ground for the Spanish Treasury’s auction of three- and six-month bills.

Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said Tuesday that Spain’s share of the 130-billion-euro bailout fund for Greece would amount to some 15.6 billion euros, largely in guarantees. But the Treasury might feel this is a small price to pay if the agreement helps calm the markets and reduce its borrowing costs.

The Economy Ministry’s debt-management agency sold 1.736 billion euros in bills maturing in May at a cut-off rate of 0.44 percent. That was the lowest yield paid for three-month paper by the Treasury since March 2010. Only a month ago, it was offering rates of 1.3 percent for three-month bills.

The Treasury sold a further 764 million euros in six-month bills at a cut-off rate of 0.78 percent, less than half the amount it was required to offer in January, with borrowing costs now on a par with those of April two years ago.

The total amount sold for the two legs of the auction matched the Treasury’s maximum target of 2.5 billion euros. Bids for the six-month bills exceeded the amount sold by over 10 times, compared with 6.87 times last month. The bid-to-cover ratio for the three-month issue was five times.

Since the start of the year, the Treasury has issued 35.5 billion euros in government debt, about a fifth of the gross total planned for the year.

Reuters quoted Nicolás López, the director of analysis at M&G, as saying that Tuesday’s tender shows the markets are returning to normality.

“The fact that yesterday the ECB revealed that it had not intervened the previous week by buying Italian and Spanish bonds is also a positive sign because it means that the prices in the market are real and not artificially sustained,” López added.

The governor of the Bank of Spain, Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, on Tuesday argued that the “only” way for euro zone countries such as Spain to restore competitiveness was to push down wages and costs and increase productivity.

Earlier this month, the conservative Popular Party government approved a reform of the labor market, which makes it cheaper and easier to sack workers. But unions and other critics claim the ultimate aim of the reform is to push down labor costs.

“In the absence of the possibility of a foreign exchange devaluation, domestic devaluation — that is, an adjustment to prices and salaries, along with increases in productivity derived from better management of labor — are the only alternatives available in the very short term to give a push to and recover lost competitiveness,” the central bank chief said in a speech, a copy of which was made available on the bank’s website.

The governor lamented the fact that during the economic bonanza unleashed by entry into the European single-currency block, euro-zone countries failed to take the opportunity to make their labor markets more efficient. “Unfortunately, during the years of expansion, practically no progress was made in eliminating the frictions and structural rigidities that distort the working of the labor and product markets in a number of countries,” Fernández Ordóñez said.

While lauding the action of the European Central Bank, the central bank chief urged European leaders to push ahead with the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, the permanent version of the European Financial Stability Fund. “Short-term measures by the ECB do not serve to resolve the core problem exposed by the crisis: the need for mechanisms that address the risks that occur as a result of countries having heterogeneous structures,” he said.

Education, Culture and Sports Minister, José Ignacio Wert, on Tuesday told L’Equipe that the Spanish government is planning to improve its international image in the fight against doping. The minister had made a similar statement in the wake of a diplomatic spat after a French television puppet show broadcast skits poking fun at Spain’s supposed leniency in the field.

However, Wert went to lengths to make it clear that there “is a problem with doping” but not “a problem of doping.” The minister explained that the problem “with doping” refers to the lack of World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)-backed legislation in Spain. Bringing the country up to speed with others had reached the floor of Congress last year but parliament was dissolved for the elections before the bill could be passed. Wert assured that “legislation completely adapted to the requirements of WADA” would be approved “very soon.”

There are as many controls in Spain as there are in other countries and approximately the same number of positive tests,” Wert said. “But we suffer from an international image problem because some cases of high media interest have emerged and this has placed us in the firing line.”

Wert also commented on the Canal + France Les Guignols de l’info show, which reveled in the two-year ban recently handed to Tour de France champion Alberto Contador: “I think I have a sense of humor, but it seemed in bad taste to me. Some athletes have been unfairly treated.”

The police in Valencia have made more arrests during the past few days of student protests than were made during all of the demonstrations in 2011 – a year that saw the 15-M popular movement spring up, as well as a number of marches against government cutbacks.

Since last Wednesday, when the police arrested a minor studying at the Lluís Vives school, the number of detainees has risen to 38 (including eight youths aged under 18).

The chief of police in Valencia, Antonio Moreno, refused to be drawn on the reasons behind such a high number of arrests when asked by the press on Monday. “Why do you think?” was his terse response to a journalist, before saying: “During the previous conflict, with the 15-M, we also had to use force when we were attacked.”

Moreno also refused to give details regarding the number of officers that were deployed to break up the student demonstrations, to protest against cuts in education spending, which have left many schools in such a dire situation that they do not have any heating. He said that he was unwilling to “give that information to the enemy.”

The police chief appeared on Monday with the government delegate for the Valencia region, Paula Sánchez de Léon, who made no comment until the end of the press conference, when she said that she hoped that the incidents, which saw a number of students injured from police charges, “ended up being an anecdote that is not repeated.”

Moreno defended the actions of the police, and denied that the officers had charged against the protestors in previous days given that they were not equipped with riot gear until Monday. “An increase in aggression demands a response,” the police chief said, pointing out that five officers ended up with light injuries on Monday, while a 52-year-old woman had been hurt after being hit with a bottle. “On previous days, whatever anyone says, there was no police charge, but rather a proportional response.

“There have been complaints because people cannot move around the city,” he continued. “And they have been insulted [by the students]. This is uncivil behavior on the part of 14- and 15-year-olds,” he said. “I hope that tomorrow [Tuesday] it will not be necessary to go on the defensive once more.”

The first time I slept out in the street was last summer, right after losing my home. I still remember how disgusted I felt at lying down on the ground in the gardens of Paseo del Prado. Cockroaches really gross me out. I had a backpack, a mat and my work uniform. I stayed away from my friends out of shame. I left my son with his grandfather. But I was not alone. The indignados [the protesters who coalesced into the 15-M movement in Spain, the precursor of Occupy Wall Street] took me in like one more member of their group. And so, from one day to the next, I became a squatter.”

This is the story of “Cuki,” a 60-year-old woman from Madrid who was evicted from her home and now occupies an abandoned building with three families on a street she would rather not name. She also refuses to give out her real name. She is aware that what she is doing constitutes a crime under article 245 of the Penal Code, but she justifies it with the following logic: “I had no other way out: I have to keep on fighting.”

There are hundreds of families in the same situation in the Madrid region alone, according to the 15-M movement and the evictees’ support group Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH). And not just families, either: there are single mothers, individuals out of a job and youths with precarious jobs who feel forced to occupy empty homes because they cannot pay rent, much less a mortgage. Most of them would rather not attract any media attention.

“We call this new type of occupation ‘discreet squatting,’ or ‘silent squatting’,” explains Ramón, a member of the 15-M movement who volunteers on the housing department. According to his group, there are three types of squatters: those who deliberately attract media attention, as in the case of Hotel Madrid, a former lodgings in downtown Madrid that was occupied last October by 15-M and PAH; those who live in social occupation centers, such as La Salamanquesa, and discreet occupiers of private homes.

“It is true that this practice has always existed, but in the last year the average squatter has changed prodigiously,” says Juan, a 27-year-old graphic designer who volunteers at the Casablanca social occupation center in Madrid’s Antón Martín area. “They are no longer just young people or fringe members of society, but family men who were left homeless and moved into the place next door.”

“Squatters have always been viewed negatively, but with the crisis this vision is changing, and society will end up accepting them,” says Julio Alguacil, a sociologist who specializes in planning issues and teaches at Carlos III University in Madrid.

Conchi Gil was evicted from her home last October, and now lives as best she can with her two sons, aged 19 and 17, inside a warehouse in a derelict food court in Leganés. “There are days when Adrián does not go to school because he can’t take a shower [they have no bathroom] and he’s ashamed to have his schoolmates see him in that state,” says his mother.

“As long as evictions remain on the rise, silent squatting will expand all over the city,” warns Chema Ruiz, a spokesman for PAH.

The figures speak for themselves. In the first three quarters of 2011, the General Council of the Judiciary recorded 7,145 evictions in the Madrid region. In the whole of 2008 that number was 3,878, suggesting that the number of homeless people has ballooned in recent years.

There is something of an irony in that a large number of people are being evicted while a huge amount of homes are sitting empty. Sources consulted by this newspaper last January said that there are an estimated five to six million unoccupied housing units in Spain, compared with three million in 2001. More specific figures are expected when the National Statistics Institute completes a building census later this year.

“Son, we’re inside,” said E. H., 25, to her seven-year-old child, Abraham, after managing to open the door without breaking the lock. She sighed and tried to turn on the lights, but they didn’t work. No matter, she had a flashlight, a backpack with some clothes inside and a couple of sandwiches. That first night, both slept in an armchair in the living room.

“I knew \[the apartment\] was empty because I am a resident of the neighborhood and the owner, who was childless, died four years ago,” said E. H., speaking over breakfast inside the apartment, which she shares with her partner and her son in the Pinar de Chamartín district.

“We looked for an apartment but could not pay the rent, plus they were asking us for a deposit,” said E. H., who is out of a job and lives off her partner’s unemployment checks. Although she is aware that any day now the police could show up with a warrant, she at least has the comfort of knowing that her neighbors back her up. “The president of the owners’ association asked me for my bank account number so I could pay the electricity expenses, and this week we attended an owners’ meeting in which we promised to respect the building rules,” she says.

The Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid (FRAVM) says that so far, they have yet to receive any complaints in connection with this new type of silent squatting. As a matter of fact, they support the practice as long as the squatters are families who are occupying empty homes that are owned by the banks. Planning expert Julio Alguacil also considers squatting “an absolutely legitimate action covered by article 47 of the Spanish Constitution,” which recognizes the right to a dignified home. This sociologist adds that we are witnessing the birth of an unstructured society where disaffection and street violence will rise because of the economic crisis. “To top things off, the social services are overstretched and Madrid’s Public Housing Institute (Ivima) lacks the necessary resources.”

“We don’t have a magic wand,” retorts Carlos Martínez Serrano, coordinator of family and social services for the local government. The city runs 35 centers offering basic social services on a temporary basis. Martínez Serrano says that his department has signed an agreement with the Municipal Housing Corporation to make 200 homes available to people who lose their jobs over the next three years. Meanwhile Ivima, which runs 23,000 subsidized housing units, notes that around 5,000 families in serious financial straits have already benefited from rent reductions that bring the average monthly payment down to 50 euros.

But Alguacil feels that this is not enough. “Either they come up with new social housing policies, or the authorities will have to invest in law enforcement to throw out squatters,” he says.

Cuki’s 20-year-old son lives with his grandfather in a different part of the city. He does not know that his mother is a squatter.

“I’ve raised him to respect certain values and rules. Imagine if he were to find out that I am breaking them,” says Cuki, a house cleaner who lost her rental home when she refused to renew a bank guarantee for the property that she considered to be “excessive.”

The acting Ombudswoman, María Luisa Cava de Llano, says that “squatting is not the answer.” Although she admits that the problem is there, she holds that society should prevent individuals from resolving situations by themselves. That is why it is essential for them to receive all sorts of public subsidies. Asked whether the failure lies with the banks’ attitudes of the institutions, Cava de Llano said that “the entire system has failed.”

On February 6, Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón announced that ETA prisoners held in jails throughout Spain, some of them as far away as the Canary Islands, will remain where they are and will not be moved closer to their homes in the Basque Country. Interior Minister Jorge Fernández added the same day that ETA prisoners might be eligible for such privileges, although they would be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and must first publicly reject violence and ask their victims or their families for forgiveness. The Basque radical left refuses to consider this, as do the overwhelming majority of the 500 or so ETA prisoners in Spanish jails, still believing that they will not be required to question the use of violence in the past in pursuit of the goal of Basque independence.

But around 20 ETA activists who were being held in the Nanclares de Oca jail in Álava have been transferred to three prisons closer to their homes in the Basque Country, a process which started under the previous Socialist Party administration. This is because they have been prepared to undergo a process that included criticizing ETA's policy of bombings and shootings - while also looking at the excesses committed by successive Spanish governments over the last 40 years.

They may be a minority, but they say that they want their voice heard in the ongoing talks to reach a permanent, and peaceful, settlement in the Basque Country.

Around a dozen of the group, among them three of ETA's best-known activists, Joseba Urrusolo Sistiaga, Rafael Caride, and Idoia López Riaño, took part in a workshop in Nanclares with victims, academics, politicians, and journalists to discuss the violence in the Basque Country over the last four decades, along with its victims, and the hopes for a lasting peace. The prisoners themselves had asked for the chance to discuss the issues, a request agreed by the former head of the prison system, Mercedes Gallizo, who brought in the Basque government's office for victims of violence.

A group of the prisoners, who now call themselves Prisoners Committed to an Irreversible Peace Process - most of whom have been in jail for more than a decade serving life terms for murder or belonging to an armed group - agreed to collectively answer a questionnaire put together by EL PAÍS.

Urrusolo Sistiaga, Caride, Carmen Gisasola, Kepa Pikabea, Andoni Alza and Ibon Etxezarreta spoke on behalf of the group, highlighting their need to talk about their experiences and what it has meant to them to meet their victims and their families. They told journalist Gorka Landaburu, who was injured in a terror attack, that they were glad he had survived and that "it was an appalling thing" to try to kill him.

Question. How are the workshops organized?

Answer. They are discussions about how to find a way to live together based on looking at what happened in the past, about how to heal wounds at a personal and collective level, and what we can do to contribute to this.

Q. Why did you want to take part in them?

A. The organization that we belonged to has been responsible for a large part of the suffering many families have undergone over the years. Accepting that responsibility, we understood that it was necessary to build bridges and to create meeting points that would contribute to healing wounds, as well as contributing to the peace process and preventing such terrible situations from ever occurring again. We believed that it was essential to talk to a wide range of people, and hopefully break this silence that has existed in our country for so many years.

Q. What have you talked about?

A. About what still needs to be done so that we can return to some kind of normality. We have looked at the peace and reconciliation processes that have taken place in other countries; discussed the ethical bases upon which societies affected by violence have built a new future; and we have looked at the reality of the lives of the victims, from their perspective.

Q. What was it like to finally meet victims of terrorism?

A. We met three people, and it was very emotional. But at the same time it was a constructive and positive experience. For us it was very important that they agreed to come to the workshops. We were able to hear them talk about their fears and their doubts that we would all be able to move on and leave the past behind: it isn't possible just to turn the page and pretend that nothing happened. We understand that. We believe that the new era our country is entering with the end of ETA should be based on the recognition on the part of the whole of Basque society that so many people suffered for so many years.

Q. How did it feel to have those people so physically close to you?

A. In the first meeting we met the children of two people who had been killed in attacks. To be in the same room as these people, for them to be with a group of prisoners, to hear their stories; to hear not only how they suffered the loss of their parents, but to know that those around them offered no support - and worse, that they were rejected by their communities, adding to their pain - made us question not only the point of violence but the mentality that it engenders in people.

Q. And the second meeting?

A. This was with somebody who himself had been badly injured in an ETA attack, Gorka Landaburu, who was disfigured for life. You feel that you are happy that somebody is still alive, that it was an appalling thing to try to kill somebody. You really believe that, and you are emotionally affected, and you shake hands. You can't repair the damage you have caused; you can't go back. But at a human level you feel as though you are doing what you can. That is what you feel.

Q. Have the workshops set off any discussions among yourselves?

A. Of course. We have continued to look at the issues that have come up and that we have discussed, and how to move forward - how to take concrete measures, and how to understand the past beyond the purely personal dimension.

Q. What conclusions have you reached?

A. The important thing is to continue with these kinds of meetings because it is only through direct contact that one can really face up to what has happened and what one has done. In our country, we have come to live in stagnant worlds as a result of the violence; worlds full of prejudice and pre-established ideas about the "other." The end of violence means, among other things, changing the way that we think. We believe that meetings like these, at a community level, will have a positive impact and help us move forward.

Q. What can these workshops really do to help people overcome the past and live together?

A. They have an impact on the real world. They force us to go beyond declarations and statements and be part of the real world. We want to share our experiences and testimonies because we believe that by thinking about what we have done and the decisions that we took we can help others to question the thinking that allows political objectives to take precedence over the dignity of people.

Q. The majority of ETA prisoners are absolutely against any kind of self-criticism or reaching out to the victims of violence. Do you really think that what you are doing here can be extended to other prisons?

A. There are a great many other prisoners who would take part in these kinds of discussions if they were organized in the right way. It happened in Ireland; prisoners were allowed out to take part in activities to support the peace process. Before we began the workshops one of the first visits we had was from Rafa Larreina

[a moderate nationalist and now deputy in Congress for the Amaiur-EA coalition], who told us about his experiences when he met victims of violence. He made us see that it is possible to talk person to person. He understands the importance of the steps we are taking, and has encouraged us to talk to prisoners in other jails. The problem is that the issue of the prisoners is blocked by both sides. The nationalist left needs to start talking about it. We need to move forward on what to do about the prisoners.

Q. Many victims of ETA violence question your sincerity, seeing your actions as just a way to get out of jail. What would you say to that?

A. We understand their doubts and misgivings, but we would say that we have been questioning what we did in the past for many years now, and have been discussing this among ourselves, discussing all the aspects of what has happened. It has taken years, and has brought us a great many problems, as well as making life difficult for our families. It has been hard. We could have chosen simply to avoid the subject, and looked at other ways of reducing our sentences. This would have been what those who are controlling the other prisoners wanted us to do. But we didn't choose to do that because we believe that it is our moral duty to accept responsibility for what we have done. The men and women who have come to the workshops have been able to see this.

"I talked with them about my story, about my family's exile during the Franco years, about the pain of those years, about ETA before Franco, and ETA after Franco, about my beginnings in journalism, in 1977, when my job was basically about covering attacks and funerals, one after another, about my own status as a victim of ETA after surviving the parcel bomb in 2001... I saw in them a desire to explain, to recognize the pain that they had caused, to question what they had done and to transmit what they were going through to the outside world. Above all they wanted to talk. We talked for more than two hours."

Journalist Gorka Landaburu visited Nanclares de Oca prison in the Basque province of Álava on November 29, 2011. He spoke with a group of former ETA activists that have broken with the rest of the terror group's prisoners and have asked for workshops to be set up for them to discuss their role in the violence of the last 40 years in pursuit of Basque independence.

"I told them: 'You have taken an important step, and one that required courage, because you are just 20 or 30 out of 500 and in all likelihood you will be ostracized for doing this by the rest of the prisoners, who do not want to make any move, hoping that the issue of their relocation or early release will be settled in talks'," says Landaburu. "Urrusolo said that he believed that in the long run, all prisoners would have to do as they had, but he was worried about just how such a process could be initiated. We talked about how they would have to make themselves heard outside the jail, that they would have to tell the world their stories, to explain how they had reached this point, that they now no longer believed that violence was the way to achieve their aims, and that they had changed their views... They still have a long road to travel, but I believe that theirs is the only approach. They have been brave, and we should recognize that. If only more prisoners would follow their lead."

When the workshop ended, two prisoners approached Landaburu: "We were part of the Buruntza cell, the ones who sent you that parcel bomb in 2001. We didn't take part in it directly, but we want to ask you to forgive us," they said. "I was grateful to them for that," says Landaburu. "Some people say that I suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, but it isn't true. I am lucky to have survived an attempt on my life. On that basis I want peace for my children and their children. I have lived through two dictatorships: Franco's and ETA's. I want peace. But not at any price: there has to be justice, remembrance, and reparation for the victims. That is fundamental."

A month earlier, on October 18, Jaime Arrese and Iñaki García Arrizabalaga had attended a workshop in the prison. Their fathers had been killed in 1980 by ETA.

"We each spoke about our own experiences," says Arrese. "I told them about the mood in those days, which was very different to that of today, and that people blamed the victims, and justified the attacks. At the same time as trying to get over the death of your father, you had to overcome the environment around you. They were very struck by that reality. They also had a lot of questions about the different associations representing ETA victims and their families, about how they were organized, and about the law. There were nine of them there that day, and they all took part in the discussion. But two or three were particularly active."

Arrese says that the prisoners were very critical of ETA. "I know that they are only 20 or 30 out of 500, but I think that this is the only way toward dealing with the moral and ethical issues involved, and we must also remember that they have very little to gain from this. They have talked about this for a long time, and they are perfectly clear about what they are doing. They also know what ETA has done, and they want to dissect the whole process. I think that they are earning the right to a second chance in life. They are looking at things in a way that can lay the foundations of peace. They recognize the damage and harm they have caused, and they want to make amends. They accept responsibility for the decisions they took. They are taking a moral and ethical stance."

The workshops took place once a week between between October 27 and November 30, 2011. Around 10 prisoners took part in the sessions, with some 10 outsiders coming in, among them writer Manuel Reyes Mate; the former rector of the University of the Basque Country, Pello Salaburu; Paul Ríos, the head of pro-peace civic group Lokarri; Jonan Fernández, the head of peace studies center Baketik; writer Carlos Martín Beristain; mediator Alberto Olalde, and Joseba Arregi, a former head of the Basque regional government's arts council.

"I spoke to them about the victims and about those responsible for creating victims," says Reyes Mate. "In the case of those responsible for the violence, it is a complicated process that must start with recognizing what he or she has done, and that what they have done is to cause tremendous damage and suffering, rather than an act of heroism. The final stage in the process, which may or may not happen, must be to ask for forgiveness. There was a very lively discussion in which they said that while it was essential to talk about ETA's victims, it was also important to remember those who had been affected by the state's violence: it was necessary for all sides of the story to be told. They aren't expecting to just be able to move on without addressing these issues: they know what they have to do. They are trying to explain the context within which they committed acts of terrorism, but they are not trying to justify what they did. They were all clearly at different stages in coming to terms with what they have done. Some talked in terms of what they had done to a particular person. Others went further and recognized the harm they had done to society as a whole. They were all very sure about being ready to talk to the victims of their actions. They also want the rest of society to recognize the cost to them and their families of what they are doing."

"I was very impressed with what I heard and saw," Reyes Mate continues. "This was a very intense discussion, like nothing I have ever experienced. You are talking to people who have committed serious crimes, but who now recognize how pointless what they did was. One of them sat there throughout and said nothing, but at the end got up and gave me a big hug and said thank you. Pikabea was very articulate. Urrusolo was more combative, more dialectical. He asked what they could do. I told them that they had to create a critical space within Basque society in which to look at violence and to find a way to reach out to the victims and to heal the wounds of the past. The people who committed the crimes have a role to play, a very important role to play, in the healing process."

"I found it very emotional," says Salaburu. "They wanted to know what was going on in the outside world. They are not allowed access to much information. They are very isolated. They had read my articles about the importance of the peace process not leading to a dead end, and they had talked long and hard about this. Many of them were very critical of the way the Basque radical left was dealing with the issue of the victims of violence."

For the moment no further workshops are planned, although the Interior Ministry is considering starting them up again. But for the moment, the issue of ETA prisoners remains stalled, with neither the government nor the Basque nationalist community prepared to make the first move.

In a close race between the four Best Film nominees, it was No habrá paz para los malvados (or, No rest for the wicked) that ultimately emerged the biggest winner at the 26th Goya Awards, the Spanish Cinema Academy’s annual prize-giving gala, on Sunday night. The tough police thriller swept the last three prizes: Best Actor for José Coronado, Best Director for Enrique Urbizu and finally the coveted Best Film award. Before that it had picked up gongs for sound, editing and original screenplay.

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In, which had led the nominations with 16, left with a total of four prizes: Best Actress, New Actor, Music, and Hair and Make-up.

Even before it started, there was a very notable police presence at the ceremony, with tight security measures, including roaming police dogs, both inside and outside Madrid’s Palacio de los Congresos. But that still wasn’t enough to stop a protestor from the Anonymous group of internet activists, and a man requesting financing for a western in his native Extremadura, from invading proceedings.

The invited guests themselves, however, behaved. And this year they included the Hollywood stars Antonio Banderas, accompanied by wife Melanie Griffith, and Salma Hayek, who enjoyed a night of humor and musical numbers ably guided by first-time host Eva Hache, and featuring a brilliant routine from comedian Santiago Segura in which he hilariously dissected the thought processes of an academy voter.

Politics only reared its head in the form of scattered references to the crisis, and when the award for Best Documentary went to Escuchando al juez Garzón, Isabel Coixet’s extended interview with the controversial judge who was recently banned from the bench for 11 years: “The Supreme Court can take Judge Garzón out of the justice system but it will never be able to take the justice out of Judge Garzón,” she said.

But it was Urbizu’s night, and for many it was well deserved. Already with a long career behind him (although he has made just eight films), he thanked everybody who had supported his vision for the film, saying he had so often rejected more commercial projects out of integrity. “Now the reward has arrived,” he said.

His star Coronado, one of the big favorites of the night, was full of praise for his director when he picked up the Best Actor prize: “I love Enrique, deeply. It is a dream come true, inexplicable. I love this profession above everything else and this statue will sleep with me tonight so tomorrow I can wake up and see that it is real.”

Almodóvar, sitting in the gala audience for the first time in seven years following a falling out with the Academy in 2004, may have left empty-handed, but he received similar plaudits. “I had the best director by my side,” said Elena Anaya as she accepted her Best Actress prize for The Skin I Live In. “He pushed us to create the identity of a human being in two bodies, and two performers fused ourselves in this way.”

“Pedro has always pushed me and I’m grateful he didn’t let me get comfortable,” added composer Alberto Iglesias, collecting a record 10th statue for his score for The Skin I Live In. “I hope that is what I’m being rewarded for: my running away from a single style or repetition.”

Special effects technician Reyes Abades, however, remains on nine Goyas after the academy chose Eva over The Skin I Live In for the Best Special Effects prize. The debut film of Catalan director Kike Maíllo also picked up awards for Best New Director and Best Supporting Actor for Lluís Homar.

It was a night of other records, too. For the first time an animated movie, Arrugas, took a major award other than that for Best Animated Feature, winning Best Adapted Screenplay. And for the first time the Academy president, Enrique González Macho, shared the reading of his speech — focused on the changes in the industry and on the internet — with his two vice presidents, Judith Colell and Marta Etura.

King Juan Carlos' son-in-law Iñaki Urdangarin, who is the target of a public corruption investigation, got royal treatment from the then-regional head of the Balearic Islands government, his former friend testified in the case.

José Luis "Pepote" Ballester, who served as the Balearics sports chief from 2003 to 2007, said that then-premier Jaume Matas ordered him to approve all of Urdangarin's government contracts, regardless of the price, which amounted to some three million euros.

"I met with Urdangarin in the summer of 2003 eight or nine times to discuss the sponsorship and promotion of the [Illes Balears] cycling team," said Ballester, whose testimony has been seen by EL PAÍS. "Urdangarin gave me a budget that had different figures [...] and Matas told me to approve it." Urdangarin is set to testify in the case for the first time this coming Saturday.

Urdangarin's Nóos Institute was given contracts by both the Balearic and Valencia regional governments to organize sports and tourism conferences. The non-profit entity received some six million euros from the two regions between 2003 and 2006, but prosecutors believe that a lot of the money was diverted to Urdangarin's private companies.

"I never put up any objection to Nóos' prices because it was Matas who agreed to the costs and approved them," Ballester said.

Matas, a former Popular Party (PP) minister, is currently on trial in a wider corruption case involving the mismanagement of public money. Ballester, who had been a close friend of the royal son-in-law until they had a falling out, has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in exchange for his testimony.

Despite a massive turnout across Spain on Sunday at protest marches against the government’s radical labor reforms, as well as widespread cross-party opposition to the measures, the ruling Popular Party on Monday dug its heels in and said it would only contemplate minor changes to the legislation it approved in the form of a decree earlier this month.

“What we saw [on Sunday] was not a majority response,” said María Dolores de Cospedal after emerging from this weekend’s PP congress reinforced as the party’s deputy leader.

“The PP has received a reformist mandate from an immense majority of Spaniards, and the government is determined to carry out an authentic overhaul of the labor model in this country, even though it is not popular,” she added.

De Cospedal was referring to the landslide the PP won in the November 20 general election, which guaranteed it an absolute majority.

The reform makes it cheaper and easier to sack workers, allowing firms to cite so-called objective clauses, such as falling sales, to carry out layoffs unilaterally.

The leader of the main opposition Socialist Party, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, on Monday described the reform as “unjust, unnecessary and ineffective,” and reiterated his group’s intentions to seek its complete amendment in Congress.

Members of the center-right Basque Nationalist party PNV, the centrist UPyD and the United Left also had harsh words to say about it, the latter terming it a “weapon of mass destruction of jobs and rights.”

However, De Cospedal insisted that “the body of the labor reform must be maintained in its spirit and its core.”

With the ink barely dry on the Official Gazette that brought the far-reaching reform of Spain’s labor laws into existence, the head of the CCOO union, Ignacio Fernández Toxo, said Monday that the effects were already “visible” in some services sectors, such as hostelry, where employers have imposed wage cuts.

The makeover of the job market makes it easier and cheaper to fire workers. It also allows companies to unilaterally adjust salaries by citing “objective causes” such as falling sales.

In an interview with Spanish radio station SER, Toxo said that there have also been incidents of changes to the terms of planned layoffs and collective bargaining agreements that were being negotiated prior to the introduction of the reform, which was gazetted on February 11 after being passed by the Cabinet as a royal decree.

People took to the streets en masse across Spain on Sunday to protest the reform, whose ultimate aim, labor unions claim, is to bring down wages, but which the government insists addresses the problem of mass unemployment.

Later, at a presentation of a manifesto drawn up by the Socialist Platform for the defense of the Welfare State and Public Services, Toxo’s counterpart at the UGT union, Cándido Méndez, asked: “If the impact of the labor reform won’t be seen for months, why was it put in place by means of a decree?”

The unions have been accused by the Rajoy government of putting their own interests before those of the unemployed. Méndez said the massive turnout at Sunday’s protests was a clear sign that the unions have tapped the public mood.

Spain's Music Awards, which have been organized by the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Music since their inauguration in 1997, are in danger of not going ahead this year, in large part due to the economic chaos caused by the corruption scandal at the SGAE Society of Authors and Publishers.

SGAE, which controls the Academy, and whose former president, Teddy Bautista, is the main target of a police investigation into the siphoning off of some 400 million euros from the organization, had decided to cancel the event, but it now transpires that the industry is considering giving the awards a facelift.

"We're refurbishing the academy," said Sabino Méndez, its president and spokesman for the SGAE board. "We want to be like the Cinema Academy, integrating all classes of music. We want the next awards to be done by the new academy, not just SGAE: incorporating producers, associations, and independent and international artists. The problem is that it's February... It's clear it's not going to happen in April."

Madrid isn’t Athens and — except for one minor skirmish, when a group of demonstrators threw eggs filled with yellow paint at labor leaders — Sunday’s massive march against labor reform went without a hitch.

Carrying placards calling for opposition to the “Guantánamo work system” that the Popular Party (PP) government recently passed via a decree, and criticizing the “incompetent politicians” who are paving the way for “mass firings,” demonstrators — the unemployed, young people, retirees and students — all had their reasons to take to the streets of the Spanish capital.

There were no doubts in Inés García’s mind. “This is the place where we have to be. The labor reform is the perfect excuse for a government whose strings are being pulled by the banks and big corporations who want to change our lives,” said García, a teacher.

Carmen Lucea, a dance instructor, charged that the European Union wants to push Spain into a corner as it has done with Greece. “We need to organize ourselves so that we can stop this any way we can. We have no other choice,” said the 52-year-old, who also explained that the crisis hasn’t really affected her private and public dance classes but that this is no reason for her to stay at home.

César, a 33-year-old unemployed sociologist, said that he thought that Labor Minister Fátima Báñez’s predictions that the reform would help the country’s 5.3 million jobless find work was “nothing but demagoguery.”

“When I get a job, I want to have a respectable contract, but with the new rules that isn’t going to happen.” César believes the government needs to go beyond reform. “You have to change everything because this system is rotten to the core, including the labor leaders who are closer to elected officials than the electorate.”

García also believes that an entire transformation is needed. “Before, each teacher had at the most five students with special education needs in their classes; now some have eight or nine. And, of course, this adversely affects the time and attention they can be given.

“Everyone has been defrauded by this system. The only thing we can do is pass the contagion to one another in the hope that it will encourage us to change the way things are being run,” said García, who was wearing the official green t-shirt of teaching professionals who have been demonstrating against cuts in education by the Popular Party-run Madrid regional government.

Pedro Ramírez marched alongside his colleagues from Arcelor Mittal in Villaverde, a plant that the world’s biggest steel firm is set to close down. “They want to impose the American system on us, where workers have no rights,” the 50-year-old declared.

The Cabinet on Friday approved a decree that puts a ceiling on the remunerations of directors of Spain’s approximately 4,000 state-owned companies that translate into effective pay cuts of between 25 and 35 percent.

The move is part of the government’s austerity drive to bring the country’s public deficit back within the cap of three percent of GDP in 2013. Public-sector workers in general saw their wages reduced by an average five percent under the previous administration of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and remain frozen at those levels.

Managers of large public companies now cannot earn more than 105,000 euros a year in wages and bonuses. The cap for medium-sized companies is 80,000 and for smaller ones 55,000.

Salaries will also be set according to the volume of business, sector and number of workers under the responsibility of the manager. Limits have also been placed on fringe benefits such as housing. The new legislation also imposes restrictions on the number of directors in the boards of public companies.

Police detained 19 students, some of them minors, during clashes on the streets of Valencia Monday as protests against cuts in the education sector in the region entered a fourth day.

Some 50 police vehicles were deployed to disrupt the demonstration, with running battles ensuing across the city center.

The protests began outside the Lluís Vives public school last week, when a student at the center, a minor, was detained.

An ad-hoc negotiation between Alberto Ordóñez, the president of the Valencia Federation of High School Students, and a police chief ended with the latter saying the 19 would be released if the protest dispersed “in five minutes.”

Ordóñez was held by police himself last Thursday and reported that he had been struck in the face “three or four times.”

He spent 30 hours at the Zapadores police station in the city, where parents of those arrested in Monday’s confrontation gathered to demand the release of their children.

“Agent 97754 grabbed my daughter by the throat and threw her to the floor,” said one mother. Hundreds of parents have since joined the protest.

Valencia police arrested six people on Friday after security forces reportedly charged a group of students who had gathered near a police station to protest the arrests of 10 people in another demonstration the previous day.

Riot police armed with shields and clubs surrounded the students — many of them juveniles — who had gone to the Zapadores headquarters to demand that police release those who were arrested for protesting social service cuts by the regional government. Some parents said they will file charges against the police for illegally detaining some of their children.

The use of hidden cameras on television has suffered a direct hit. This information-gathering method, which had been increasingly popular on all types of programs, from gossip shows to investigative reports, can no longer be legally used. In a recent decision, the Constitutional Court ruled that so-called "intrusive capturing" of images is "illegitimate" because it breaches a person's privacy rights, which come before freedom of information, the court argued

But while the country's foremost court has finally spoken on this longstanding source of controversy, the debate continues unabated.

Professionals are divided over the matter. Supporters of hidden cameras hold that they help obtain data and documents that would otherwise be very difficult to access. Detractors appeal to journalism ethics and claim that the method alters the information itself, especially if its targets are not allowed to express their own viewpoints once they have been captured on video without their knowledge or consent.

The colossal battle for audience ratings on television has often encouraged abuse. In recent years, many celebrities who regularly make the covers of gossip magazines have been caught off-guard in embarrassing situations by hidden cameras. These attacks on their private lives were often provoked or even directly fabricated.

But celebrities are not the only targets of hidden cameras. Sometimes at least, Spanish journalists use them to uncover cases of corruption, drug trafficking and organized crime.

Is there a difference between both types of information? Is the use of a hidden camera justified depending on the seriousness of the situation that is being exposed?

According to the Constitutional Court, the answer is a simple no. No distinction is made in its ruling. Regardless of whether the matter being investigated by the journalist could be said to be in the public interest and not merely of entertainment value, what is constitutionally forbidden is the use of the method itself, the court argues.

Specifically, the top court's decision puts an end to the years-long conflict between the Valencian regional television, Canal 9, in conjunction with the production company Canal Mundo Producciones Audiovisuales - linked to El Mundo newspaper - and a beautician who was filmed with a hidden camera at her private practice to illustrate a story about how non-professionals have infiltrated the health industry. The cosmetologist figured that her privacy and her good name had been violated, and brought a suit against the station. That view has now been confirmed by the Constitutional Court.

There are many other similar cases out there, and although none have reached such a high court, they have made a big splash in the media.

"With the advent of new technologies, social networking, the digitalization of communications processes and the policies that guide this technological development, there is a growing sense of living under surveillance. The privacy of communications is being constantly placed under threat," says Víctor Marí Sáez, a professor of broadcast communications and advertising at Cádiz University.

A decade or so ago, hidden cameras, while very popular in countries like the UK, were hardly used in Spain, except for very specific cases of investigative reporting. But in recent times, TV schedules have filled up with programs based on just this sort of technique. In one case, a female journalist passed herself off as a contender for the Miss Spain prize in order to prove that the title could be bought for the right price; another show tried to prove that weight-loss centers could be harmful for clients; a third uncovered the continuous abuse of elderly people at a senior residence. Is the use of a hidden camera justified in these cases? And what if it's a politician that is being investigated?

Marí Sáez mentions the case of a photograph someone took of Socialist leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba's cellphone as he was checking an SMS that could be clearly read. The scholar wonders what the limits of privacy are when the target is a politician and the space is public (Congress, in this case).

In 2008, the news outlet Intereconomía caught several officials at the provincial authority of Almería talking and laughing about their jobs. In a conversation that was recorded with a hidden camera, they were heard saying that they did "practically nothing" all day. They were fired right after the recording was aired.

Mercedes Milá, a veteran broadcast journalist at Cuatro network who hosts Diario D..., a program based on catching lawbreakers with hidden cameras, believes that in some cases their use is justified and can even be very useful.

"If we didn't have the hidden camera, we couldn't prove 80 percent of the wrongdoing we are reporting on," she says, citing examples such as the stories about the unlawful behavior of a local police chief who was subsequently suspended, or the owner of a call center who laundered money on the side, and was arrested for it. That is why Milá believes that the Constitutional Court's decision is "a glaring mistake."

Lucrecio Rebollo, a professor of constitutional law at UNED, Spain's correspondence university, disagrees and thinks the decision is a wise one. Rebollo highlights two important issues, the first of which is consent.

"Just like with data protection, if there is no consent, you cannot use someone's image or voice," he says. The other issue is that the information is gathered by surreptitious means - in other words, by deceit.

In the case that triggered the historic Constitutional Court ruling, a journalist passed herself off as a patient and saw the beautician at her private practice, which was considered by the court to be part of her private sphere.

But there are times when journalists go much further, and set out on a veritable news hunt. These stories are, in fact, provoked. It happened in 2009 when reporters for British newspaper The Sunday Times posed as lobbyists for a fictitious Asian businessman who wanted to invest in London; these phony intermediaries met with several British Lords and offered them money to influence the drafting of laws that would be beneficial to their patron.

Several politicians fell for the trick, and then remembered that inducing people to commit a crime is considered a crime in itself.

"In the same way that we request that the police and judges be respectful of the rights of individuals, so can we demand the same of news professionals. The right to public communication must not always come first," says Rebollo. "The journalist with a hidden camera must be aware that he is not the county sheriff."

Undercover recording teams have been used on some investigative reporting for the popular gossip show El programa de Ana Rosa, which airs on Telecinco. A spokesperson at her production company, Cuarzo, said that the recordings always follow two premises: "We always had tacit consent from the people concerned, and [the recordings] were always carried out in public places."

This last point is important, as the court's decision underscores the fact that the recording was done in the plaintiff's private sphere. According to some experts, this leaves the door open for hidden cameras to still be used on public figures in public areas.

So is this the end of hidden camera reporting? Rebollo thinks it is when it comes to catching individuals in their own personal space. "But the Constitutional Court's jurisprudence does not condition future jurisprudence. This ruling is definite, but it would be desirable in future to have another one establishing the limits," he says, citing cases of public health, for instance, in which freedom of information could prevail over other rights.

This scholar explains that in order to make that call between fundamental freedoms, several factors must be taken into account: the context and the location of what is being recorded, and whether the target has any public relevance or not. These considerations can tip the balance on either the side of personal rights or that of freedom of information.

Journalists see things differently, however. Manuel Núñez Encabo, president of the Complaints and Deontology Committee at the Federation of Journalist Associations (FAPE), believes the leading court's decision is "incomplete" and that it should not establish jurisprudence. Núñez Encabo, who is also a professor of law at Complutense University, says the court stopped at the threshold of the plaintiff's personal privacy rights, and did not weigh the public interest factor of the topic that was being investigated.

"It did not weigh her rights against those of the journalists to inform or those of the citizens to receive accurate information of public interest," he says. Núñez Encabo proposes a wholesale re-examination of the complexities of journalism in the information society.

Malen Aznárez, president of Reporters Without Borders in Spain, says that "such a broad, generic ruling can seriously harm freedom of information and investigative journalism that cannot be carried out in the open, camera in hand."

Yet Aznárez is also aware that freedom of the press cannot be used as a weapon to commit "all sorts of outrages."

FAPE's president, Elsa González, holds that the Constitutional Court has delivered a massive blow to investigative reporting. "Journalists must seek the story behind the story; they have to dig deeper than what is being offered to them," she says. Yet she also admits that there has been some degree of abuse in the use of hidden cameras, a method that has become excessively common in recent times. A large proportion of TV reports appeals to the prurient interest of viewers, with journalists regularly investigating illicit massage parlors and the like.

"But without hidden cameras, some stories about drug cartels or people traffickers that later led to charges being pressed could not have been made," she adds.

Pepa Bueno, who heads the newscast Telediario 2 on TVE, also admits to the use of hidden cameras in certain cases. "There are parts of the world where practicing journalism is next to impossible, and these methods make it possible to unveil cases of torture or crime. No working tool should be criminalized. What should be taken into account is the way in which it is used," she notes.

The problem is, who or what limits that use? At the public broadcaster RTVE, the use of hidden cameras or microphones to secretly capture a person's behavior is only justified in very special cases. "Like when you are trying to prove the existence of unlawful or criminal behavior that affects the public interest," says a spokesperson. These instruments are "the last resource to prove an accusation or a claim that has real public interest."

Even then, this type of recording can only be carried out after it has been approved by RTVE management, and can only be broadcast after the individuals concerned provide express authorization if they are going to be recognizable. Without their consent, their faces will be pixelated out so they cannot be identified.

Leading news organizations in other countries, such as the BBC and The New York Times, accept the use of hidden cameras in similar circumstances. Neither outlet permits undercover recordings just to catch a good news story. Their use is only approved for public interest stories that could not be covered in other ways.

Investigative journalism is not just about hidden cameras. But turning them off completely may deprive citizens of public interest testimony by people who do their best to flee the inquisitive eye of the press.

After a long and private match that lasted more than two years, Rafael Nadal has finally lost out to the tax authorities. The tennis player has been forced to move his company headquarters from the Basque Country to the Balearic Islands, and pay back millions of euros he was saving by doing business out of a region with a special tax rate of just one percent. The regular state corporate tax rate is 30 percent.

Between 2005 and 2011, the three corporations owned by the 10-time Grand Slam winner had estimated revenues of 56 million euros. For the last six years, these firms reported their headquarters as being in San Sebastián, even though Nadal is resident in his home town of Manacor, in the Balearics.

"This is a private issue. We are not going to reveal how much he paid," said a Nadal spokesman. Sources placed the amount in back taxes at several million euros.

The investigation into Nadal's business dealings was part of a wider five-year program against hundreds of companies that are suspected of having their headquarters in the Basque Country and Navarre for the sole purpose of benefiting from the ultra-low tax rates for so-called SPEs, special firms that invest in other companies. Nadal's businesses fit this profile, tax sources said.

"The law is very clear: the headquarters must be in the same place where the activity and the management take place," said a source. "Rafael Nadal [...] makes his money honestly, but he was only in San Sebastián to get his share of the pie. He took the wrong advice, because his companies should never have been here."

"Marisa: my faithful shadow at all my tournaments until I turned 20, is a strong-willed woman for whom discipline and victory came ahead of any other consideration, when perhaps what I really needed at the time were a few words of sympathy," writes the former tennis champion Arantxa Sánchez Vicario about her mother in her new biography ¡Vamos!

"It's clear that we failed with her," retorted Marisa Vicario in a press release following the presentation of her daughter's book last Tuesday. "For 20 years we were devoted to her. We put everything aside for her, mortgaging our lives and our marriage."

Both sentences capture the breakup of a family. Their case is not unique, either. Some sports have changed their own rules to factor in the parents. There are clubs where parents are strictly prohibited from attending training sessions; a few judges have granted young athletes early emancipation to spare them negative influence from their mother or father.

When children turn professional in any given sport, their relationship with their core family members runs the risk of being altered, according to sports psychologists. These experts describe two extreme outcomes: the child tyrant who ends up dominating their parents on the strength of their success and money, and the over-pressured child who suffers from their family's high expectations and stifling control.

"What happened in this case, viewed from the outside, is not such an odd thing," says José Manuel Beirán, an Olympic silver medalist in basketball and a sports psychologist. Although Beirán is a supporter of the beneficial effects of sports on most children, he admits that "in athletes that start playing at the professional level so soon, parents naturally need to be on top of them, and sometimes, with the best of intentions, they create unrealistic expectations that derive into risk situations."

"Sports where competition begins early, such as tennis, are especially dangerous," he continues. "The parent becomes a source of stress for the children, whose life at that point is devoted to pleasing their parents. They do not feel that they are playing a match or a tournament, but that they are playing to improve the atmosphere at home, or simply out of love for their parents.

"Children who succeed in elite sports give up a certain number of things that they're not aware of until later in life," adds Beirán. "Arantxa, for instance, began competing when she was really young. Also, parents are more on top of girls, until they become independent. It's important for the family to keep the athlete grounded and provide emotional balance, but there are parents who view their children's careers as an extension of their own, and their children's successes as their own."

"Mary, kill that bitch!" The phrase is attributable to Jim Pierce, father of Mary Pierce, the French tennis player who won two Grand Slam titles. Jim Pierce was expelled from Roland Garros and barred from the French team meetings for five years after hitting, insulting and threatening his own daughter on several occasions. This led tennis officials to create special regulations to keep abusive parents and trainers under control; it also reflected the fact that these cases often occur in individual sports that are open to very young players whose personalities are still being formed and who are subjected to a life of constant travel.

Arantxa, just like Mary Pierce, eventually quarreled with her family. They are not the only ones. Australia's Jelena Dokic reported being abused by her father, who was barred from entering tournaments, and the French federation was forced to hire bodyguards to prevent the father of Aravane Rezai from assaulting her rivals.

"My father taught me how to play when he was stationed in Melilla," explains Feliciano López, 30, who is currently 15th in the ATP ranking. Feli, as he is popularly known, had a three-for-one system at home: his father was also an army lieutenant and his personal trainer.

"Although he kept giving me advice, when I turned 10 he stopped being my trainer. It's not an easy relationship," he says. "Every day there is friction, there is a lot of time spent together, from what I've seen on the circuit. I didn't have that problem, but I have seen it in others."

Thoughtful even under extreme stress, last summer Feli did the following thing during a match at Wimbledon: when he noticed his father, who was sitting on the sidelines, grimacing in desperation over the outcome of the game, he walked over in the middle of a decisive tie-break and said: "Dad, please, calm down."

"He's a very nervous guy," Feliciano laughs over the phone as he recalls the incident. "The person on the sidelines needs to convey a sense of calm. I was lucky. Both my father and my mother were demanding when it came to our studies, and they instilled positive discipline in us. Becoming a tennis pro is very difficult. My brother was brave: he dropped tennis at age 16, got a degree in economics and business administration, and is now a happy man. Other parents insist on their children turning pro. That's the biggest mistake a parent can make. Not all kids like sports so much as to make that kind of sacrifice. You also need to study."

Family conflicts, of course, are not the exclusive domain of tennis or of female athletes. Mickey Mantle, one of the best players in baseball history, used to wet his bed until he was 16 years old. His biography, A hero all his life, explains how that was one of his reactions to the pressure that his father placed him under; their relationship included a lot of love, toughness and up to 14 hours of training a day as a child.

Meanwhile, it is impossible to understand the iron will of the cyclist Lance Armstrong without knowing that his father left his mother when he was still a child. The gymnast Dominique Moceanu, a gold medalist at the 1996 Olympic Games, got a court to grant her emancipation from her parents. Jennifer Sey, a US champion in the same sport, wrote a book that described a world of merciless trainers, overzealous parents, eating disorders and failed Olympic dreams.

"When children become elite athletes, family life needs to be readjusted," explains Fernando Gimeno, a professor of sports psychology at Zaragoza University. "Many families are financially conditioned by the sport, or else they decide to move to help with their child's training."

Gimeno, who notes that sports should bring positive things to a child, says that parents can err on the side of excess or defect. "Either they stifle the children and prevent them from maturing and becoming self-sufficient, or they create problems by failing to provide support and recognition. Every father and mother out there should be able to look at Arantxa's case and think, 'What would I not want my child to blame me for, years down the road?'"

Gimeno notes that this type of parent-child relationship is not exclusive to sports, and can manifest itself over academic or professional issues as well.

But is this type of tension as common in team sports, where children's matches are held every weekend and parents can be heard howling at their kids from the stands?

"Team sports are different, because you don't need to make such a huge investment in terms of time and money so early on," says Beirán. "It usually starts at school, and the pressure gets diluted within the group, because the results do not depend on one person alone... But the pressure also increases with the money at stake."

"When the child sees that the whole family has moved to a different city just for their sake, or when they start signing major contracts and making more money than their parents, they can turn into tyrants. Preventing this is up to the parents, who should not turn them into the star of the house and should keep their feet firmly on the floor," he warns. "Then again, you can get the opposite case: parents who stress out the child by constantly reminding them that the whole family moved just for their sake."

These cases are easy enough to find in soccer and basketball, although not only in those sports. Teams that are particularly devoted to training young players, like Sevilla FC, which trains over 400 kids aged seven and up, have had ample time to analyze the issue. In order to produce players like Sergio Ramos, José Antonio Reyes, Antonio Puerta or Jesús Navas, something else is needed besides natural talent: good facilities and trainers, an entire team of psychologists who periodically write to the parents, and a few strict rules. The first and most important of them all is that parents are categorically prohibited from showing up at training sessions.

"Family pressure exists, although sometimes it is more evident and other times less so," says Pablo Blanco, head of the Seville club's youth academy. "For some parents, the main goal is for their kids to make it. They pressure them into being soccer players, and the kids no doubt feel that pressure. That is often detrimental. That's why, five years ago, we barred parents from attending training sessions."

Blanco, who notes that Barcelona FC does the same thing several days a week, explains that their own psychologists sent a letter to parents underscoring all the benefits of not having them around: players get to be praised and criticized by the coach more freely. It also prevents parents from trying to direct part of the training session.

"They used to cry out things like, 'Keep going! Run! Go!' The family environment has a huge influence on the soccer player, who is always a very young person. In the case of low-income people, the weight of the family falls more heavily on them."

This former player makes one last comment based on personal experience. "It's funny, but the most talented players are those who feel cold more often, who have fewer blankets to cover themselves with, who come from underprivileged family conditions. Now, with the crisis, a lot of parents try to pressure us financially, telling us that they've had offers from other clubs."

"The vociferous parent or spectator is an unfortunate reality; it is not the most frequent case, but it is the most noticeable one," notes Gimeno about the accompanying adult who screams at the child from the stands. "It's a terrible thing for the child, for whom sports morphs from something to have fun with to a life or death situation."

"And all these risk situations can cause trouble at the end of an athlete's career, when retirement comes around," says Beirán. "There are team leaders and coaches who encourage limiting the athlete's life to his or her sport. But that's very dangerous. Athletes must have something else to hang on to. In extreme cases, otherwise, they might get the feeling that the people around them - friends, partners - are only there because of their fame and their success, and not because of the way they are as individuals."

Arantxa's case is now fodder for the television gossip shows, which are busy deconstructing every last detail of the bitterest aspects of her life. Every day, newspapers and magazines analyze the coming apart of a family that was a role model and icon of Spanish sports in the 1990s. Arantxa is now embroiled in four lawsuits against her relatives over control of her fortune, which experts estimate at 30 to 45 million euros. Arantxa, the public figure, is in the spotlight 24 hours a day. About Arantxa, the married woman and mother of two, all we know is that her life is still scarred by her experience as a teen tennis player.