El Infierno Vasco [DVD]

The Basque Country, one of the richest regions in Europa with only two million inhabitants, is considered, by those who visit it, a small paradise.


But behind the temperate climate, the beautiful landscapes and its high standard of living, it hides a terrible reality: for thirty years, more than two hundred thousand of its citizens have had to go into exile to save their lives, escape from extortion, from social isolation. or nationalist impositions.




NIKO GUTIERREZ

For four terms he has been a PSOE councilor.

In 2008 he left the Basque Country.

"I have this longing to be able to walk down the street without looking back to see if the bodyguards are there, to surround myself with more normal people."



MARIA JESUS LEJARRETA

Lives in Madrid

Eldest daughter of a former mayor of Vitoria and former deputy general of Álava between 1972 and 1977.

He left the Basque Country in September 1980.

He was then 21 years old.

"It seems that we left like someone who is going to the next town because they have offered him a better job. Nobody expressed the slightest solidarity with us. And even though my father was a good man and very loved in Vitoria. But we left like outcasts "Nothing was done to prevent us from leaving. The opposite."



CRISTINA CUESTA

Lives in Madrid

His father was murdered in 1984 in San Sebastián.

Two years later, he created the Association for Peace in Euskal Herria, to work towards the normalization of coexistence in a society vitiated by violence. She came to work alongside victims of the GAL and was the first to obtain recognition from the State of the status of "victim of terrorism" for those affected by it. He began to be the target of threats, graffiti, posters with his name on a target and decided to go into exile in 2001.