Basque Government awards third-degree status to two ETA members with sentences exceeding one thousand years
The Pradales administration grants third-degree status to Juan Antonio Olarra Guridi and Xabier Zabalo, prisoners at Martutene. Covite demands the immediate resignation of the Justice Minister.
Two new grade progressions for ETA prisoners at Martutene
The Basque Government of lehendakari Imanol Pradales has granted third-degree penitentiary status to Juan Antonio Olarra Guridi and Xabier Zabalo Beitia, both inmates at Martutene prison in Guipúzcoa. According to information disclosed by the Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite) and confirmed by ABC through sources in the regional government, the decision comes less than a month after the same government granted the same measure to ETA members Juan Carlos Iglesias Chouzas 'Gadafi' and Eneko Gogeaskoetxea.
The two new progressions are pending approval from the Penitentiary Surveillance Court, which exercises these functions as the competent tribunal in terrorism offences and has not yet ruled.
Olarra Guridi: one thousand years in sentences and links to ETA leadership
Juan Antonio 'Jon' Olarra Guridi was arrested in France in 2002 alongside his partner, Ainhoa Mujika, head of ETA's military apparatus in the late nineteen-nineties. He was first part of the Donostia unit and later of the Levante unit.
In 2011, the National Court sentenced him to one thousand years in prison for a car bomb attack against the Under-Secretary for Scientific Policy Juan Junquera, carried out on 6 November 2001 on Calle del Corazón de María in Madrid and which caused 95 injured. In 2024, the same tribunal summoned him again to be tried for his role as a member of ETA's leadership in the 2002 attack on the barracks house in Santa Pola (Alicante), where Cecilio Gallego Alamino and Silvia Martínez Santiago, a six-year-old girl who was the daughter of a Civil Guard officer, died.
According to data provided by Covite, Olarra Guridi has the date for the extinction of his effective sentence—limited to 30 years—set for 2036. Since July 2025, he has already been granted the application of article 100.2 of the Penitentiary Regulations, which allows privileges typical of third-degree status—such as daily release—to be granted to inmates technically in second-degree status, as a mechanism to "flexibilise" sentence compliance.
Zabalo: third-degree status revoked and return to prison
Xabier Zabalo Beitia was sentenced to 25 years in prison for terrorist offences that include destruction of property, injuries, possession of weapons for terrorist purposes and storage of explosives. The Basque administration had already authorised him for a third-degree progression in December 2024, but the National Court's Public Prosecutor's Office revoked it in March 2025 and Zabalo had to return to prison.
Following that judicial decision, Sare, the prisoner support collective linked to EH Bildu, organised a demonstration in Villarreal de Urrechua, the inmate's hometown.
Covite: "concealed amnesty" and demand for resignation
The president of Covite, Consuelo Ordóñez, referred directly to that mobilisation: "That mobilisation is not a minor detail. It is proof that these prisoners remain embedded in a political and social network that claims them as heroes and which continues to present their sentences as a political problem, not as the consequence of accountability before the law for their most serious terrorist crimes."
The association characterises these new grants as "a new episode of the concealed amnesty" that the regional government has been applying to ETA prisoners. In Covite's view, the Basque Government uses third-degree status and article 100.2 of the Penitentiary Regulations as instruments to accelerate the semi-release of inmates without requiring from them sincere repentance or a public, clear and unequivocal break with the apparatus that "still today legitimises" ETA terrorism.
The collective has demanded the "immediate" resignation of the Minister for Justice and Human Rights, María Jesús San José, responsible for the Basque Penitentiary Administration since the transfer of powers in October 2021, for a policy which, according to Covite, "has been completely undermined by the National Court."
Adverse judicial context for Basque penitentiary policy
The two new grants come at a time of growing judicial rejection of the Basque Government's measures. In recent weeks, the Central Penitentiary Surveillance Court nullified article 100.2 applications granted to ETA members Soledad Iparraguirre 'Anboto' and Juan Ramón Carasatorre. Covite holds that those rulings "confirm exactly what the association has been denouncing for years: that the Basque administration is stretching penitentiary law to facilitate semi-release regimes for ETA prisoners without truly meeting the legal requirements."
The association is also calling on the National Court's Public Prosecutor's Office to appeal the two new third-degree grants and to act to end what it describes as a "fraudulent penitentiary policy."
Source: ABC