Did she need to be talked about after her participation last weekend, in Bilbao, in a pro-ETA demonstration calling for the release of the hundred and a half terrorists who are still in prison once they were transferred to the Basque Country? It was not the first time that she was at an event of this kind nor will it surely be the last. Itziar Ituño (Basauri, 1974) has no hairs on the tongue. He has been on everyone’s lips after two major companies, BMW and Iberia, have decided to remove his name and image from their advertising campaigns. In the fearsome social networks she has been insulted or applauded, depending on her positions.
Ituño, coming from a working-class family, has played many roles before devoting himself to acting, especially on television, but also in film, in addition to being a singer. He has never hidden his ideals. This is what it is, she has stated in more than one interview when asked about politics. He believes in Euskal Herria as a nation and understands the armed struggle that the ETA members carried out for half a century, causing more than 800 deaths until announcing in 2011 that they were putting an end to the violence. In the band’s jargon, it was as if to achieve the goal of independence, suffering had to be socialized at any price. As if the end justified the means even at the cost of taking the lives of so many innocents. They twisted their vocabulary to avoid asking for forgiveness and repentance, and it is today that they point the finger of blame at the State and the police as the main causes of the spiral of blood that the Basque population has experienced.
The artist, who will turn 50 next June, has combined her activity and commitment to radical and violent nationalism with her love for acting. She studied Sociology at the University of the Basque Country and made a living working for the defunct Fagor company manufacturing refrigerators. But that didn’t make him happy. He found it in political idealismin the adventures of Latin American popular democracies, and naturally in what attracted him most: the stage.
It was working in university theater circuits that helped him make the professional leap to television. The small screen was his launching pad and even today he continues to be that way, although he has also made films. He debuted at just 19 years old in that syrupy Antena 3 program, What you need is love. One of his films, Flowerswas unsuccessfully chosen by the Spanish Academy for the Oscars for best foreign film in 2015. In Euskadi she became very popular playing the role of a lesbian agent of the Ertzaintza in Gookans. Set in a fictional coastal town, the series turned out to be a great success for Euskal Telebista (ETB) and the longest running to date: more than 20 years. She liked Nekane, as that was her name, despite being a police officer. On TVE she had a minor role as an ETA member in one of the episodes of Tell me how it happened.
But Where he truly established himself was in the successful Antena 3 and then Netflix series, The Money Heist. In it she starred as Inspector Raquel Murillo, an efficient police officer with family problems, who is in charge of the operation to put an end to the gang led by The Professor, who wants to turn the State upside down by attacking the National Currency and Stamp Factory and later the Bank of Spain. Murillo tries to understand the peculiar psychology of the leader and ends up falling in love with him and becoming part of the group with the war nickname of Lisbon. A few weeks ago, Netflix began airing a prequel to the series, Berlinin which she also works.
It is curious that many of her roles on television or film have been police officers or public figures like that mayor with problems after being recorded in an erotic video. Because Itziar has not identified himself in his public acts with order, with the system. On the contrary. He insists on the supposed innocence of the ETA members despite being tried and convicted of terrorism crimes and is placed in the front row in the complaint, clearly visible, as in the demonstration a week ago. In 2012, during the proclamation of the festivities in his town, Basauri, he paid tribute to an ETA friend of his sentenced to more than 30 years in prison for the murder of an Ertzaina: «Your seeds have blossomed. Keep the spirit. We love you and we want to have you home! Those words are difficult to digest for all those who were victims of terrorism.
Years later, She was one of the promoters of the event to support Arnaldo Otegi at the Anoeta velodrome just four days after serving time for the crime of rebuilding Herri Batasuna. Otegi is now preparing to take a backseat. He will not stand in the next Basque elections. The Batasuno leader has shown himself this week to be very satisfied with the decision of the Constitutional Court to rule against the repetition of the trial of the caso Bateragune for which he was convicted in 2009 and has once again denounced “the violence of the State against the nationalist left.”
The decision of BMW and Iberia to suspend their advertising contracts with the actress has been highly criticized by the Basque actors union, the San Sebastián Film Festival, as well as by the Government of Euskadi itself. The union’s position gives rise to some controversy. “The threats, insults and attacks received by Itziar are unacceptable,” say the actors. “No one should be criminalized as a citizen for the attitude he adopts in the face of injustices, illegalities or exceptions to the law,” they maintain. Words that chime with the good understanding of democracy, freedoms, law and justice. It cannot be ignored that Itziar Ituño defends, evidently in his legitimate right to do so, individuals who were arrested, tried and convicted for blood crimes within the rules of coexistence of a democratic country.
The actress has always maintained that it is not fair to persecute anyone for their political ideas: “I have the right to express myself as long as I do so without doing harm,” she said a year and a half ago at the premiere of the film Privacy. She believes that there continues to be a witch hunt in Spain against those who think differently and charges against the media, which he accuses of lack of objectivity.
The attitude of BMW and Iberia is paradoxical. When Ituño signed a collaboration contract with the airline in 2023 through an advertisement in which other artists participated, the airline knew perfectly well what his political opinions were. Iberia made the decision after a BMW dealer did so earlier. «We are not linked to any political ideology, so we regret that our image has been linked to any type of act with ideological content,” the German automotive company said in a statement. Without a doubt, prudence must have influenced his actions.
All this happens when the Basque Country approaches regional elections in which for the first time the PNV may lose the majority at the hands of Bildu. There is suspicion in the environment that Sánchez offers the Bildutarras some formula that will facilitate the release of ETA prisoners. It will be the most difficult yet, but when it comes to the President of the Government, anything is possible.
2024-01-20 14:30:09
#Itziar #Ituño #actress #committed #radical #nationalism
