María Dolores González Katarain (14 May 1954 – 10 September 1986), also known as Yoyes, was an iconic woman leader of Basque terrorist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), who became a symbol because of the tragic circumstances of her life.
Yoyes was the first woman to enter the senior ETA leadership, but she decided to leave the organization to start a new life. Her former comrades regarded her as a traitor and she was killed by ETA in 1986 in her hometown of Ordizia, during a local festival, in front of her three-year-old son. The killing led to unprecedented criticism of ETA in the Basque Country.
Early life
Dolores González Katarain was born in Ordizia, Gipuzkoa, on 14 May 1954. Her parents were Luis González and Angelita Katarain; she was the second of nine children. Her paternal grandfather, who came to Ordizia from León, a Castillian province, owned the grocery store in the town, where Yoyes would sometimes help out on breaks from school. Her family lived on the outskirts of Ordizia in a house called Goitine.
According to her school friend, Elixabete Garmendia, Yoyes always had a sense of responsibility. "She was pretty reserved but she had a way of making deep connections with people. She wanted to talk about books and ideas - she was very curious about the world around her."
ETA
Yoyes grew up in Francoist Spain, a dictatorship in which basic freedoms were restricted and there was no right to protest. ETA was regarded by the Franco regime as a terrorist organization, but to many young people in the Basque Country, it seemed like a noble revolutionary movement prepared to fight to topple a dictator and achieve socialism.
Yoyes joined ETA in the early 1970s, probably in 1971, at the age of 17. At first, she operated in a support role, becoming a full member in 1973. In that year, her boyfriend and fellow member, Jose Etxeberria, was killed in Getxo when a bomb he was carrying accidentally went off. A few months later, she fled into exile in the south of France, where she became a full ETA member and participated in armed terrorist actions.
Yoyes had to overcome sexism within ETA, which, according to Elixabete Garmendia, was very much a "man's world" even though it was supposed to be a revolutionary movement. She was expected to play a subordinate role but was determined to take part in the same activities as men. Eventually, Yoyes rose to become the first woman in the ETA leadership and was considered an iconic figure in ETA circles because of her toughness and intelligence. In 1979, she was one of two ETA members who gave an interview to the BBC.
During the last years of the Franco regime, ETA was killing dozens of people every year as part of their campaign for Basque independence - mostly members of the Spanish security forces, but also numerous Basque business owners and other civilians. In 1974 ETA bombed a café in Madrid in which thirteen civilians were killed. There was also violence committed by death squads linked to the Spanish state. The unrest continued after the death of General Franco in 1975 and throughout Spain's subsequent transition to democracy, during which the organization vastly increased the number of people it killed every year as a way to put pressure on Basque nationalist parties not to participate in the democratization process.
In the late 1970s, Yoyes went through a crisis, which included bouts of depression. Her mentor within ETA, José Miguel Beñaran Ordeñana, was killed by a death squad and hardliners took over the ETA leadership. Based on the theory that they needed to elicit a more repressive response from the state to attain their goals, these leaders carried out a number of bloody attacks on civilian targets, whereas Yoyes argued there was a place for political negotiation with the Spanish government and Basque political parties and social movements. She felt ETA was only interested in killing and had lost its original revolutionary ideals. In addition, Yoyes had found love and wanted a new life outside a clandestine organisation.
After many arguments and threats, ETA secretly allowed Yoyes to leave the organization. She went into exile in Mexico in 1980, where she studied sociology and worked for the United Nations. While she was away, Yoyes had a son called Arkaitz.