“ETA was defeated as it should have been, by the security forces and by society.”

On one side of the table, Agustín Díaz Yanes (Madrid, 74 years old), prestigious director and screenwriter, with titles such as Nobody Will Speak of Us When We Are Dead (1995) or Alatriste (2006), which he hadn't directed since Oro (2016). On the other side, Luis R. Aizpeolea (San Sebastián, 77 years old), a journalist at EL PAÍS and one of the greatest experts on ETA, a terrorist organization about which he has written books and even documentaries. In the middle, A Ghost in the Battle, by Díaz Yanes, a film that will be released on October 3 in Spanish theaters, after its festival release, and on October 17, globally, on Netflix. The thriller follows a Civil Guard infiltrated into ETA, a character embedded in many stories, from before the assassination of PP politician Gregorio Ordóñez in January 1995, to Operation Sanctuary, which, in October 2004, marked the greatest blow against the terrorist group's logistical structure.

Amaia, the young agent who begins to rise through the ranks within the ETA apparatus in Gipuzkoa, is played by Susana Abaitua. “I was impressed by everything she did, how she approached the film,” explains the director, who recalls the story’s origins. “In mid-2018, producer Belén Atienza asked me what I was working on, and I told her about Operation Sanctuary. Months later, I handed her a first draft of a script about an undercover Civil Guard agent, a character based on the experiences of several moles, both men and women.” The story evolved to become something more than a thriller or a history lesson, one that emanates from, according to the filmmaker, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the great noir titles of Jean-Pierre Melville: “I asked Susana to drive like Alain Delon does in Melville’s films.” And so begins the hour-long conversation between two people who didn't know each other personally, although they share many friends.

Luis R. Aizpeolea. For me, your film is several things: a political thriller , a fiction based on real events, the story of a Civil Guard member of ETA in a very well-defined historical context... And it harbors the ambition of telling the end of terrorism in an educational way.

Agustín Díaz Yanes. At first, we wanted to make a political thriller set in the Basque Country and within ETA. With ETA. And I think that period was the one that best suited this story. You know better than I do: even though they arrested one leader, another would follow. And another. Operation Sanctuary, which dismantled ETA's hideouts, hurt them deeply. It was the end of them, even if they continued for years. For this film, I thought of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The character of Susana is a bit of a Western character. Javier Marías wrote a fantastic article in Babelia about this John Ford film, titled The Hero's Frightful Future, in which he explained that the real killer of Liberty Valance and other Western heroes have no future. And of course, whoever infiltrated ETA had no future. In reality, we're not interested in their future; we're only interested in what they do. When you write a script, that's really motivating: I don't have to explain the past or plan for the future. Being undercover in a terrorist group during those tough, brutal years, always thinking you might be killed while living alone... That's a Western. He sacrifices 12 years of his life for a mission. And that seemed to me to be one of the most cinematic things that can happen. At first, I didn't think much about the pedagogy, but now, when many people who didn't know about that era or didn't remember the images we show have seen it, I've realized that we're showing a very difficult time.

ETA has marked Spain over the last half-century, and we still have many themes and characters to make films and series about.

LRA Operation Sanctuary is impressive.

ADY deserves a movie in itself. Nearly 400 members were deployed between Spain and France to find the caches. And it was achieved by infiltrators. By the way, we were told that since they couldn't take the exams, the infiltrators never got promoted: if they started as corporals, they ended up as corporals. Nor did they receive any extra pay.

LRA It caught my attention that, although it is fiction, your film is very well documented.

ADY: I did a lot of research because I was a little terrified of making a mistake. It seemed foolish to me, especially considering the victims. I studied history, although I'm not a historian, and I compiled a rather large library of books on ETA. And then, through my production companies, we got in touch with the Civil Guard, and they're... strict. They tell you the story well, but they don't tell you much. Luckily, the colonel who received us had been a captain at the time, and I believe he played a very important role in the discovery of the hiding place where Ortega Lara was kidnapped. I gave them the script, and they told me that, although there are indeed invented things in the film, it rang true. Some of their infiltrators went further than others; some were there for four years, others for up to 12. There's only one thing I knowingly changed, and that is that I merged the dismantling of the Chernobyl hiding place with Operation Sanctuary, when there was a year's difference.

LRA And there is no idealization of anything that happened.

ADY You and I come from the anti-Franco left, and we knew ETA members from that era, who have nothing to do with the generation of terrorists depicted in this film. I didn't want to make caricatures. I had a hard time because it's a very sensitive subject. When I made Alatriste, I also did a lot of research. But I always thought that if something went wrong, not many people would protest. This is something else. And that's why we also showed the film to families of the victims. I was worried, for example, about how we were going to portray the attacks.

LRA You've used archival footage of moments we've forgotten, like the demonstration in Bilbao calling for the release of Miguel Ángel Blanco, which I believe was the largest in that city's history. I remember that day at the newspaper, and we thought they wouldn't dare kill him.

ADY and I.

LRA: With your film and Arantxa Echevarría's The Undercover , Spanish cinema opens up to these previously untold characters. What's more, both are brave women. And for me, the difference is that The Undercover is very intense, even though it focuses on a single episode, and you cover the entire infiltration process with that Western touch.

ADY And in this case, it's also a biopic, with an impressive actress [Carolina Yuste]. I didn't know Arantxa personally, and during this process, we met for lunch, and I think she's a great woman. I think these coincidences drive us a little crazy in Spain. On the other hand, in the US, they don't care. How many movies are there about the Vietnam War? Dozens and dozens, and a handful of extraordinary films stand out. ETA has marked Spain over the last half-century, and we still have many themes and characters to make movies and series about.

LRA And keeps marking.

ADY: There's one thing... You and I were both anti-Franco activists, and when democracy arrived, we thought one of the best things that would happen was the banning of the death penalty, as stipulated in the Constitution. And suddenly, we found ourselves with the death penalty still being carried out by others. We took very strong positions in favor of a peaceful country, and even part of ETA laid down its weapons. But others didn't, and so the death penalty remained. I'll get back to the audiovisual work on ETA: Arantxa is younger than me, Aitor Gabilondo [the producer of the series Patria] even younger... I like that young people approach this topic with different perspectives.

LRA: It's interesting how you use posters to explain the history of ETA, so the public understands the whole process. For example, ETA, during the Franco regime, murdered around 50 people. The hardest years were the 1980s.

ADY: I hesitated a lot about the posters, and the editor made the right decision. Plus, we covered Carrero Blanco's death, which led to a dysfunction in the perception of that band...

LRA Like the Burgos trial, which was a trial without guarantees...

A DY I was arrested during the Burgos trial. I know it by heart [laughs] and I ended up in Carabanchel prison. And the ETA members there were very nationalist. By the way, during the Carrero Blanco incident, I was doing my military service at the Alcázar of Toledo, and my sergeant was Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba [both laugh]. I was getting discharged, they kept us for another week, and I thought the worst... What I wanted to get at is that for those of us who came from the Communist Party, it was very important that the leadership of the CP was always against ETA.

Remembering the past

The first civil demonstration against ETA was called by the Workers' Commissions in the summer of 1978 in protest of the murder of journalist José María Portell. The PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) followed quickly, but they were the first.

ADY That's why I enjoyed making the film so much, because it made me think, read, and remember the things we had to live through, that weren't... There were times when ETA killed every other day.

LRA : The Transition wasn't peaceful. All in all, there were around five hundred deaths. That perception of those years as peaceful is under review. The Transition was exemplary politically, but not peaceful.

ADY That's why this film is so complex... I owe a lot to Susana Abaitua, because she's on screen the whole time. I'm used to actresses with experience, like Victoria Abril or Penélope Cruz, and I'd never worked with Susana before. However, I had a hunch... and she surpassed expectations; she took A Ghost in the Battle to extremes... The final sequence, which we can't reveal, was an idea conceived by her, the producers, and me. By the way, in addition to established actors like Raúl Arévalo and Ariadna Gil, I met some tremendous Basque actors.

The Transition was exemplary politically, but not peaceful.

LRA And how did Ariadna get in?

ADY I was having coffee with Viggo [Mortensen, star of Alatriste] and he told me Ari was coming down. I'd worked with her before and was delighted. She sat down and I immediately thought about how much she resembled Anboto [ María Soledad Iparraguirre, alias Anboto , a historic leader of ETA]. I wanted her. Because, as they say in bullfighting, she's got a place. Let me explain: she comes into the shoot and you know something's going to happen. I really like the way the actors move and sit. Ari shows up and there's no need to explain that she's one of the leaders of ETA. It shows. Well, films are very much born out of luck. You sometimes make important decisions up to a year before filming. And then you hope they fall into place. Clint Eastwood said that when you choose an actor, you've already chosen 90% of the character. And if you make a mistake...

LRA And that parallel story of the protagonist with the ETA member Begoña [played by Iraia Elías] is very good: both of them are moving towards that non-future, their lives are moving forward.

ADY : Classic westerns are like that. You never know where the protagonists end up. And in this case, there's an added element: they're two women; it's a whole other universe.

LRA has not avoided torture by the security forces either.

ADY They did exist, and I gave the script to the Civil Guard with those lines included. They know it was a huge human and professional error.

The end of the film has a clear political component, when you talk about the end of ETA thanks to the efforts of the security forces and society. Now, some politicians and the media claim that ETA won and democracy lost. For me, A Ghost in the Battle delegitimizes terrorism without needing to caricature the terrorists.

ADY: I think so because I've spoken with people from the Civil Guard itself to interior ministers who have told me so. The modern idea of ​​victory is a bit absurd in that silly concept of total annihilation. In post-World War II Germany itself, there were leaders who came from Nazism because you have to make agreements to advance. And in Spain, especially, I feel that victories and defeats are drawn out over time. ETA was defeated as it should have been, by the security forces and by society. And it was done well, despite some setbacks, true. The Civil Guard confirmed to me that ETA was difficult to combat because it was a very organized organization, with a sanctuary in France and an entire army of reservists in the Basque Country. With age, one knows that life is more complex than it seems. I have my opinion as a citizen and as a filmmaker; movies are movies. If someone wants to use it as a political element, that's their problem. That's why I like it, Luis, that you see it just as what it is: a movie. We tell stories, and this time we've got one set in this era of ETA... and whatever comes, comes.