The return of ETA

It was with great sadness and regret that this blog read of ETA's plan to return to violence in search of it political goals. This is what used to be called terrorism, although of course the word has been given new meaning by the recent abundance of terrorist attacks that had few obvious or practical political goals.

The ceasefire officially ended on Wednesday morning. In reality it ended when ETA blew up part of a terminal at Barajas airport in Madrid, killing two men who were asleep in a car in the car-park. That was a grim and depressing day for the families of the dead and the whole of Spain.

Maybe in the past there was a certain romance to notions of Basque freedom, but amongst my Spanish friends, I don't see that now. One man I know, from Navarra, hates ETA. He hates that they 'sponsor' religious ceremonies. He hates that he can't talk freely about them in bars and restaurants. He hates that he is expected to toss spare change in jars to help their cause. More than anything, I suspect, he hates that he can't speak freely. There is an irony here, I think, as a people who were explicitly and brutally repressed by the repugnant Franco regime, are now silenced by the people who claimed to be their only hope.

Another Spaniard I know thinks that Zapatero, the PM, is an idiot. The Basques have enough freedom and autonomy, he says. They have their own parliament and set their own taxes. From a pragmatic rather than an idealistic point of view, he says that Zapatero is an idiot because there is no political capital in negotiating a peace settlement with ETA. Recent elections in Spain, which resulted in defeat for Zapatero's Socialist Democratic Party, bore this out.

The main reason for this is the staunch opposition of the party who grew from the embers of Franco, the Partido Popular. They call Zapatero weak and a traitor for trying to bring peace to the Basque Country. This is not a difficult point to argue, as Zapatero has made himself vulnerable to this by his public overtures to ETA. His whole handling of the thing has appeared uncertain, a little clumsy and lacking in coherence.

If Northern Ireland is the model for peace - and it is by no means perfect - then Zapatero will need to learn from Bertie Ahern's calmness, patience, persistence and most importantly, his cunning. It is in the failures of Zapatero that we see the merits of Ahern. All is not lost - but now Zapatero faces a choice ahead of next years' general election.

Risk his own political career by persisting with attempts to bring peace, or try to save his career by ploughing on with the status quo - where ETA are active, and a proven danger to the establishment and the general public. The former brings more good to more people; modern politics teaches us he will attempt the latter. Lets hope he's different.