The women who slaughter tourists

Vivacious and sharply dressed in a black-and-white slashed T-shirt, with matching peep-toe sandals, Jone Goirizelaia could be any smart female lawyer sipping a coffee before hurrying off to her next case. She drives a BMW, has two children at home and is a staunch defender of women's rights.

If you were to meet her casually, you might think of her as a Spanish Cherie Blair, competently juggling her work and domestic life. But her clients belong to one of the world's most feared terror groups - the Basque separatist organisation, Eta.

The group has renewed its campaign of violence this summer, deliberately targeting tourists with attacks such as a car bombing that killed a man and a six-year-old girl in the Costa Blanca tourist resort of Santa Pola on 4 August. Another device was defused yesterday in the same resort, while a third exploded in a fast-food restaurant in nearby Torrevieja at the weekend.

Mrs Goirizelaia is one of the most prominent defenders of the new generation of women prepared to turn to violence in pursuit of their cause of independence for the Basque country.

"I have been defending Eta members since 1982 and, in the early trials, the men were in the military commandos and the women had co-ordinating tasks, like organising safe houses and getaway vehicles," says the Bilbao lawyer. "But now there are one or two women in all the military units. More and more women are calling on us to defend them."

She's a staunch sympathiser: the regional MP and executive committee member for the Batasuna party, considered to be Eta's political wing.

"The young Eta women I have met know what they are doing, they've weighed up the risks. Often they have served prison terms for acts of street violence, and that experience hardens them, strengthens their resolve," she says with no hint of disapproval.

"A lot of women join Eta because the sentences handed down for such acts are so out of proportion to the offence. Once they've made their decision it's very difficult to change their mind. They become determined.

"At the moment," she continues, "I'm defending three people, including a woman of 22, who face 15 years jail for throwing a Molotov cocktail. Many will think that they may as well join a military commando - they have little to lose."

Goirizelaia, 45, is from a prosperous nationalist family from the town of Munguia, near Bilbao, and is married. Her two sons are aged 20 and 18.

"They're the same age as a lot of the people I defend," she says. Among the tightly knit group of Batasuna lawyers, she is a rare woman.

Her stylish presentation and articulate speech command attention, and she is more open and sociable than her grey comrades who prefer anonymity.

The terrorists' fight for an independent Basque homeland has claimed some 800 lives to date. More worrying still for the authorities, the organisation is renewing itself by recruiting younger militants - and many more women.

Female membership of the pro-Eta youth movement is up from a third to just under half.

This rising generation of young Basque separatists is producing scores of women ruthless and coldblooded enough to murder civilians to further their cause.

The women act in pairs with a man, slipping over the French border where they have their hideaways in a car or on motorbikes to plant explosives.

Police admit that young women may lend an air of normality to a flat-share, or pass unnoticed where a man would arouse suspicion.

The decision to target tourists - and the holiday costas, to where 14 million Britons now travel every year - is a deliberate change of strategy from the former concentration on military installations and political figures.

The new terrorists want to strike at the economic heart of Spain - the tourist industry - and damage its image abroad.

What makes bright and often well educated teenagers join a terror commando to target holidaymakers and spend their life in hiding, facing death or jail at every turn?

The home of the terror that stalks the costas lies in the misty wooded valleys and grim industrial suburbs of the Basque country.

Curious to learn how sympathisers justified Eta hitwomen's brutal methods, I headed north to seek out those women fighting for what they call Euskal Herria - a free Basque homeland.

None admitted belonging to Eta, which is a banned organisation. But their accounts all charted the road that leads from political commitmentto pistols and bombs. To sound out the new radical female generation, I meet Araiz Zubimendi, 25, who is leader of Batasuna's youth movement Segi. I wait in the dim wood-panelled Garagar tavern off the main boulevard near the seafront at San Sebastian.

This is a city so refined that the French come here to eat. But it is surrounded by industrial suburbs that are the bedrock of Basque radicalism.

Today is chilly and raining and the damp creeps indoors. A slender young woman with bubbly brown curls enters with a copy of Batasuna's newspaper Gara under her arm. Ms Zubimendi says she became active at 16, campaigning for the wider use of Euskera, the Basque language.

"For us it's normal to start so young. I started in my village in Hernani, where there was a strong campaign to promote Euskera, to raise awareness of our Basque identity. Then we faced police aggression, detentions, and we have to resist.

"In my village there have always been women Eta members, and they are deeply respected."

Among Spain's "most wanted terrorists" sought in connection with the recent costa bombings are two women - Ainhoa Adin Jauregui, 29, and Leire Etxebarria Simarro, 25.

They are thought by the authorities to be spearheading the strategy of attacking tourist destinations.

Despite their youth, they are accused of clocking up years of armed activity, and have recently eluded police round-ups to resume a life on the run. Ainhoa Adin Jauregui is from San Sebastian. Police say she is a member of Eta's Irbala commando that was formed in 1994 and has since 1997 operated out of southern France.

Her husband, Javier Irastorza Dorronsoro, is said to be in the same cell, which is accused of planting 20 bombs between 1994 and 1997 in the Basque country and on the Costa Brava.

Leire Etxebarria Simarro is from Basauri, an industrial suburb of Bilbao, where she was convicted in 1996 for burning a bus, causing severe injury to the driver.

Sentenced to eight years, she was freed on bail in 1998 and fled into hiding, narrowly escaping a police shoot-out last December. She is thought to be operating on the Costa Blanca around Alicante in an Eta section dedicated to hitting tourist targets.

These are tightly co-ordinated groups - Etxebarria is an associate of Nerea Bengoa Ciarsola, who was detained in August last year when police raided her flat in Barcelona and seized a vast cache of 275kg of dynamite and arms, thought to have been intended for terror attacks along the Mediterranean coast.

Adin and Etxebarria are unusual in remaining at large after years of militancy. Young recruits often fall more quickly because training is less rigorous than it was.

"In the Seventies and Eighties, Eta members used to receive two or three weeks' training in handling weapons, making explosives and living clandestinely," says Florencio Dominguez, who has written books on Eta's internal workings based on letters and documents seized by police. "Now it's only a few hours of basic instructions, so new recruits have minimal technical skills. Before 1992 a commando operated for three years on average before being captured. Today the average is just a few months.

"In the past, most women joined up because their husband or boyfriend joined, or because a family member was imprisoned. Now the women have much more autonomy, and engage in acts of violence on their own account."

The baton is often handed on from mother to daughter. "I learned my political awareness from my parents and grandparents," says Ms Zubimendi, with a flashing smile and bright eyes.

"My mother is a Left-wing feminist who was imprisoned for working for Egin newspaper. My grandparents suffered during the Civil War. I think Fascism is returning.

"Only a few years ago one third of the members of Jarrai [the youth movement] were female. Now it's more than 45 per cent."

The movement is banned, accused of orchestrating pro-Eta street violence. "Street violence arises spontaneously, it's always there, no one organises it," she insists.

As a Batasuna MP she, like Jone Goirizelaia, enjoys parliamentary immunity from prosecution. But they are watched closely by the police and intelligence services.

"What will happen to me when my term ends I don't know. Maybe I'll be arrested. Fifteen of my comrades are already in jail."

Female Eta commanders have achieved prominence before - such as Idoia Lopez Ria"o, 36, jailed in March for 29 years for killing a Frenchman said to have worked for government-sponsored Gal - the anti-Eta hit squads.

There is a strong disincentive to turning away from violence: Dolores Gonzalez - known as Yoyes, and one of Eta's first women commanders - was shot dead by her comrades in 1986 when she tried to quit the movement.

Weary of years on the run, Yoyes accepted a government offer of immunity and returned home to San Sebastian, only to be killed while out walking with her infant son.

Supporters say these women are demonised by authorities as brainless fanatics and sexual predators in a subhuman stereotype that conflates Lara Croft with Rosa Klebb.

But this is a world with its own heroines and myths. Today's militant women identify with the kindergarten teacher Olaia Castresana, 22, who blew herself to pieces a year ago while handling explosives at her flat Alicante.

Young women admire Olaia because she was prepared to sacrifice her life for the struggle. She is revered as a fighting hero by both men and women.

All the women I spoke to were fiercely proud of their cause. They join up younger than their predecessors did, often when still at school. They have clearer political ideas and they are striving to be braver and smarter than the men. They are, in other words, shaping up as even deadlier foes.

? Elizabeth Nash is Madrid Correspondent for The Independent.