People gathered early evening Thurday (21^st) on O’Connell Street, Dublin city’s main street, to protest the convictions and sentencing of the Altsasu Eight. They held Basque and Catalan flags and displayed placards demanding “Free the Altsasu Eight!” and another pointing out the severity of the sentences for what was a bar brawl with Spanish police.

From the leaflet distributed: “In November 2016, during a festival in Altsasu, Nafarroa (Navarra) Province of the southern Basque Country, a lieutenant and sergeant in the Spanish Guardia Civil police force, both off-duty with their girlfriends, entered a late-night bar well-known as a place for pro-independence Basques to socialise. An altercation occurred in which the police said they were attacked by the Basque youth and claimed a fractured ankle suffered by one; others say it was just some shoving and pushing.

“The Navarran regional police force, the Policía Foral, first on the scene, treated it as an alleged assault case which is how the local court wished to deal with the issue. However the Spanish state Prosecutor intervened and, transferring the case to Madrid, accused eight youth of “terrorism” for which they could face a total of 375 years in prison. He failed to prove that but on charges of public disturbance, assault and threats alone, on 1^st this June the eight youth were variously sentenced to between 2.5 and 13 years in jail as well as fined thousands of euro.”

Leaflets were distributed to raise awareness of this injustice and many passers-by stopped to talk and ask questions. One group of interested youth was from Zaragoza, which is in Aragon province and not far from the Basque Country.

Live music was provided for the participants and passers-by: two women sang Txoria Txori in harmonies and a Basque sang a new song that has been composed about the Altasasu 8, while another accompanied him on guitar (hope to post the lyrics and translation). Txoria Txori is a short simple allegorical song about a man who loves a bird and says that if he cuts its wings it would stay with him but he can’t do that because then no longer would it be a bird – and he loves the bird. This song is well-known and loved in the Basque Country.

The picket was an event of internationalist solidarity, not only because it was carried out in Ireland in support of victimised youth in the Basque Country, but also because the picket line included Irish, Basque, Catalan and Italian people.

Further information in the English language on this case (and other events in the Basque Country) will be posted from time to time on https://www.facebook.com/dublinbasque/