Patria (Homeland): so that hatred does not make our lives bitter

Before any further consideration of this autumn's most talked about series in Spain, one recommendation comes to mind: 'Patria' (Homeland), the fiction that is triumphing on HBO these weeks, should be seen as an exercise in remembering what happened in this country over the last half century. Without prejudice, but with a critical spirit, to facilitate a review of the collective memory without which it would be impossible to overcome it or to recall the memory of the real victims of ETA terrorism.

A series that cannot be discussed with a reconciliatory but revisionist objective, so that hatred does not make our lives bitter as some of the characters say during the story. Based on this, and considering that ETA terrorism destroyed hundreds of families of innocent victims, we can come to accept that it also destroyed many families of murderers, as the authors of the successful novel have stated.

But never, under any honest and dignified circumstances, can we claim that the suffering was the same in both cases, because the first came unexpectedly, by the summary and intolerant decision of some criminal mafiosi, and the second came because of an excess of tolerance that could have been corrected so that all those Basque youngsters who took the path of violence could lead their lives back. In one case death came without knocking; in the other moral degradation could have been combated. 

Patria' is a good example of the importance of forgiveness, but it requires two parties: the one who asks for it and the one who grants it. It is necessary to ask for it, but also to give it. And it may be necessary in order to reach that stage that is never fully forgotten, a forgetfulness that is so much in demand now by the abertzal circles and the parties that for their own interests come to them and cook Christmas dinners with them, for a few votes.

The mother, father, wife and children of any victim of ETA could forget part of their tragedies and their hatred, says 'Patria', if those who caused their pain had the gesture of asking for that balsamic forgiveness. In the series this happens, but in reality they don't ask for it except for some unremarkable exceptions. Look how simple it is: to ask for forgiveness honestly and open up a new era in relations between two irreconcilable worlds in the Basque Country, because terrorism breaks up peoples, destroys friendships and personal relationships, but time is capable of sewing up even that crack. But without forgiveness, and of course without the justice that punishes each and every one of the pending crimes, there will never be a new era. The previous one will have been falsely closed.

The two temporal planes that articulate this story with constant jumps in time are, on the one hand, a present anchored in the declaration of the end of what ETA called the armed struggle, and on the other, a past two decades ago in which real events occur that punctuate realistic fiction, such as the arrest of the ETA dome in Bidart, the attack on Palmanova or the assassination of Manuel Zamarreño in Rentería. Few spectators will know how to situate these events in real time (1992, 2009, 1998), because the collective memory of the Spanish tends to erase the worst moments of that nightmare that hit us for too long. That is why I recommend that young Spaniards watch 'Patria' at night for a few days with their mobile phone in another room. 

The aim is even a social realism, repeating for example in a continuous way the linguistic error that is common in the Basque Country by changing the simple conditional into the imperfect past subjunctive. There are turns back and forth in time with the attack on the Basque industrialist as the central axis of the narrative, which begins just when ETA announces that it will not commit any more attacks, although it does not lay down its arms in October 2011. The weapons were not left then, nor were they ever handed over, and there are still some loopholes to prove it.

The wife of the murdered man, the best character in the series, talks to her husband at his grave and in the house in the village where they lived. Talking to the dead is not bad. John Ford portrayed it in his characters many times, and Aitor Gabilondo captures the feeling of the 'Fordian' heroes when at sunset they sat at the grave of their loved ones and spoke in their presence/absence. With the Txato, the spectator creates evident complicities, because according to what is said "he was a murderable man". All for the cause that his murderers never achieved, because the Basque Country is still part of Spain. 

There is a clear and painful drawing of the future Etarra Josemari's relationship with his parents. At one point he gives his mother flowers, but he hardly looks at his father. The father, Joxian, is the most tormented character in the series, if that were possible because everyone's inner torment is so great, he will never forgive his son for having killed his lifelong friend, and he will not forgive himself for not having taken the offspring off the irrational road he took by burning buses in Donosti.

The mother is an obvious proetard, she converts to the religion of crime for maternal-filial causes. "This is what war has to offer", she will say when she sees the misdeeds of the gang on television (a terrorist gang, Mr Sanchez. Unambiguously terrorist). She has a son in "the struggle" and her vision of the liberation of her land changes since her son takes up arms.

Josemari's two siblings complement this marginal vision of the society eaten up by independence: Gorka, whom we will see reading more than defending violent causes, and the sister convalescing from a stroke, whose past romance with the murdered man's medical son leads her to understand and try to empathise with the antagonistic family. In fact, her relationship with this character will be the link between the two families and the only possibility of a peaceful future.

And since it was necessary to make the position of the series clear, far from the ETA positions, a character that caricatures the radical world bursts in: the priest who symbolises a Basque church that took part in the "conflict", starting by calling it a conflict, something that was nothing more than murderers and their victims. "It's my turn to take care of the living", says the priest when he is told about the death of one of his neighbours who was shot in the back of the head.

Patria' takes us together with the relatives of the prisoners to the prison in Cadiz so that we can see (in the background) the youngest son of a terrorist crying because his father is far away. And in moments that are fortunately not narrated with any epic, he takes us into the ETA safe house, living in hiding and concealing his horrible guilt as they prepare their next crime. They are the aperitif of the worst part of this Spanish series, which is undoubtedly of great quality: the way it shows the police torturing detainees in horrible police stations, a detail which, despite being a reality in some cases, does not do justice to the invaluable work of public servants in eradicating this cancer which has plagued us for fifty years.