1980s 1990s 2000s The Monbar Hotel attack was carried out by the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL), a Spanish state-sponsored death squad,[1][2] on 25 September 1985 in Bayonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France.

Spanish Interior Minister José Barrionuevo and his security chief, Rafael Vera, were jailed for ten years for sanctioning a kidnapping and misappropriation of public funds to finance the group,[3] and the GAL scandal is seen as a key factor in the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) losing the election,[3][4] though more senior figures in the PSOE, such as Felipe Gonzalez, denied knowledge and involvement.

[7] This led to complaints in Spain that French authorities were not doing enough to tackle ETA activity, preferring to leave the Basque conflict to the Spanish to deal with.

[10] On 25 June 1979, Enrique Gómez Álvarez, an alleged ETA member, was killed by the Batallón Vasco Español (BVE),[11] a right-wing paramilitary group active since 1975.

The BVE vanished after 1981 but, from 1983 onwards, the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL) began carrying out similar attacks and abductions.

The first in Bayonne occurred on 17 October 1983, when alleged ETA members Joxe Lasa Arostegi and José Ignacio Zabala disappeared.

Pursued by a group of people who had witnessed the attack, two of them were caught and handed over to the French police, after having thrown their weapons into the river near the hotel.

[18] Those apprehended were Pierre Frugoli (12 April 1963 – 18 February 2023) and Lucien Mattei, both believed to be members of the Marseilles underworld by French police.

[22] Their chairman in the Basque Country, Juan Manuel Eguiagaray, stated that he did not believe that the solution to ETA violence was to have similar terrorists trying to even the score.

Frugoli stated that he had been recruited by two members of the Spanish secret services, codenamed "Francis" and "Miguel", at a bar in Marseilles port.

[25] With Mattei, Frugoli made several trips to San Sebastián to receive instructions for the attack, the last at the Orly Hotel three days prior.

[27] Lawyers for the prosecution suspected that "Miguel" was Michel Dominguez, a Spanish police officer of French origin who worked with Amedo.

[25] In April 1990, a waiter at Londres Hotel and a security employee at the Kursaal casino in San Sebastián both stated that they had seen Amedo and Dominguez on various occasions in the company of Mattei and other GAL mercenaries.

[36] As the Monbar case and others came to light, the GAL issue became increasingly controversial in the 1990s, with questions over whether members of the Spanish government and security services had known about the group's operations in places like Bayonne and, if so, to what extent they had supported and funded the attacks.