He Day of the Useless, which the Navarrese municipality of Etxarri Aranatz held on August 9, had been announced as an “exhibition of the Armed Forces”, a “performance” with which, once again, the Basque left sought to ridicule the Security Forces and Corps that they consider “repressive” in order to intimidate them and achieve their expulsion from the territory once and for all.
The performance, in the end, was a kind of costume parade through the town where they made fun of everything they consider Spanish. To do so, Otegi’s cubs dressed up as nuns, police officers, soldiers, “Cayetanos”, right-wing voters and even supporters of the Spanish national team.. And it is that, To his derision, some of them wrapped themselves in the Spanish flag. which they used as a cape and which looked like they were celebrating Spain’s triumph, which that same afternoon won the gold medal in men’s soccer at the Paris Olympic Games, a match they played against France.
The call did not have a large mobilization of the people, something that they had already anticipated in a statement with which they tried to encourage the young people of the municipality to participate in the celebration and mock the “useless ones.”
The poster they had spread through social media also scheduled a “rally of politicians in the Congress of Deputies” to be held at the Gaztetxe – the youth centre of the Navarrese municipality.
Three days earlier they had launched a call on social media announcing the limit on tickets to attend the meal before the parody, where the menu cost 15 euros, and with which they would try to measure participation in the Day of the Useless.
In a statement, the young people close to Sortu justified the mobilization because they are losing followers for their fight to free the “oppressed people.” In this circular they tried to give meaning and relevance to the “Day of the Useless” going back to the time of military service, to the festival of the fifths – a typical festival in the region in which young people who turn 18 have a big celebration. They consider that the young people who “went to the military, the useless ones, did not have their deserved party.” In their story, the abertzales assure that it is for this reason that the young people of the town got together and organized “the first Day of the Useless” for which, now, They are following a “tradition”. “This was the first time that young people organised themselves, creating the first assembly and laying a solid political foundation,” they say.
The youth of Gaztetxe, close to Sortu, claim this celebration as “a day to fight against the Spanish State, to celebrate the pride that the so-called useless were not worthy of serving the State, given that this, together with the French, oppresses Euskal Herria,” they say.
The pro-ETA youth consider that “the repression continues” today, “although in a different form,” and they call the State Security Forces and Corps “repressive police” and “enemies of Euskal Herría.”
Other years they have celebrated the Day of the Useless with the “burning” of civil guards, they have simulated torture by the Security Forces and Corps or they have put up targets with the image of different political leaders.