Lorraine Williamson
Spain has long struggled with the ghosts of its past — none more haunting than those born from decades of ETA violence. Un fantasma en la batalla (She walks in darkness), now streaming on Netflix, reopens that wound with quiet intensity.
Written and directed by Agustín Díaz Yanes, the film doesn’t retell history through explosions or slogans, but through the eyes of a woman living a lie. Her name is Amaya. Her mission: infiltrate ETA—her punishment: to lose herself in the process.
The woman who walked in darkness
Amaya is not a hero, nor a victim — she is the embodiment of moral paralysis. Recruited by Spanish intelligence in the late years of the dictatorship’s aftermath, she enters the Basque separatist movement with patriotic conviction. But the longer she stays, the blurrier her purpose becomes. The line between her duty to the state and her affection for those she’s meant to betray dissolves.
Díaz Yanes turns her conflict into something more than a spy story. It becomes a study of divided identity — a mirror of Spain itself, torn between remembering and moving on. Through Amaya’s haunted gaze, the audience feels the suffocating loyalty demanded by ideology and the corrosive guilt of betrayal.
Memory, guilt, and the unhealed wound of ETA
ETA — Euskadi ta Askatasuna or “Basque Homeland and Freedom” — dominated Spain’s political and emotional landscape for half a century. Founded in 1959 as a student movement against Franco’s repression of Basque culture, it gradually transformed into a militant organisation demanding independence. Between 1968 and 2010, its bombs and bullets killed more than 800 people.
Among the darkest chapters was the 1987 Hipercor bombing in Barcelona, which left 21 dead and dozens injured. Years later, even ETA described it as “its greatest mistake”. The assassination of Miguel Ángel Blanco in 1997 marked another turning point — a moment when millions marched against violence, forcing a reckoning that would eventually lead to the group’s dissolution.
In 2011, ETA declared a permanent ceasefire; by 2018, it had disbanded entirely. But for those who lived through its reign of fear, silence has never meant peace.
A mirror of modern Spain
Even in 2025, echoes of the conflict remain. Public displays of sympathy for ETA have decreased, yet tension persists. According to victims’ association Covite, there were still more than 160 incidents of public support for the group in early 2025. The once-common ongi etorri ceremonies — celebrations for returning prisoners — have largely vanished, a quiet sign that Basque society is seeking distance from its violent past.
Still, politics keeps the memory alive. EH Bildu, the left-wing nationalist party rooted in the independence movement, now holds substantial influence in the Basque Country. The debate over ETA prisoners — how they should be treated, whether they deserve reintegration — continues to divide opinion. For families of victims, justice feels incomplete; for others, reconciliation feels overdue.
History through a human lens
Díaz Yanes refuses to sanitise the story. Mixing fiction with fragments of real archival footage, Un fantasma en la batalla blurs the boundaries between history and imagination. The effect is deeply unsettling — the past doesn’t sit quietly in the background; it intrudes into every frame.
Rather than condemn or glorify, the director exposes the impossibility of moral purity. In Amaya’s fractured conscience, we see a nation’s own unease — the desire to forgive colliding with the inability to forget. It’s a film not about heroes or villains, but about the devastating ordinariness of those caught between the two.
The filmmaker behind the ghosts
Agustín Díaz Yanes, born in Madrid in 1950, has long been fascinated by people who live on the moral edge. His debut, Nadie hablará de nosotras cuando hayamos muerto (1995), turned Victoria Abril into a cult icon and proved that Spanish cinema could blend grit with emotional intelligence. Later came Alatriste (2006), a sweeping historical epic about duty and disillusionment.
With Un fantasma en la batalla, Díaz Yanes returns to familiar territory — violence, conscience, and the shadows they leave behind. His lens is steady, his tone restrained. He doesn’t offer closure, only reflection.
Forgiveness without forgetting
The true power of Un fantasma en la batalla lies in what it doesn’t say. Beneath the silence, it asks the question Spain has never fully answered: how does a country forgive itself for what it allowed to happen?
In the flicker of Amaya’s eyes, between fear and understanding, Díaz Yanes gives us no redemption — only the faint hope that remembering might be its own kind of mercy.
Sources: eldiario.es, Cadena SER, LibertadDigital, EFE