SPAIN: Election day was peaceful in the Basque Country yesterday, but the ETA threat remains, Paddy Woodworth writes from Vitoria.
The persistent drizzle which makes the Spanish Basque Country one of the greenest regions south of the Pyrenees was constant in many places here yesterday, raising expectations that participation in elections to the Basque parliament would dip significantly from a record 79 per cent in 2001.
Those elections were marked by unprecedented tension. The conservative Partido Popular (PP), then in government in Madrid, and the centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE) joined forces in a vain attempt to displace the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) from its dominant position here.
This month's campaign has been more relaxed in some ways, but Basque politics remain far from normal by Spanish or EU standards. At lunchtime yesterday, I had a good-humoured conversation about the possible permutations in the new parliament with a PSOE election official on a street corner.
All the time, however, his armed bodyguard hovered less than 10 metres away, pacing constantly, systematically covering every angle of attack.
The assassination of local politicians has been the Basque terrorist group ETA's grim and novel contribution to Basque democracy since the early 1990s.
ETA has not carried out any attacks in these elections, however, and indeed has not killed anyone for well over two years, the longest such period since 1968. But it is not on ceasefire, as attested to by the arms and explosives regularly seized by the Spanish and French police.
"A ceasefire will come, I don't know when, but come it will," Arnaldo Otegi, leader of ETA's alleged political wing, Batasuna, told The Irish Times on Friday night in Durango, a town near Bilbao which was bombed by the Nazi Condor Legion in 1937.
Otegi, often billed as the "Basque Gerry Adams", was about to address some 400 people at an open-air meeting.
Despite the fact that Batasuna was declared illegal in a controversial move by the Spanish parliament three years ago, there was not a policeman in sight.
The banning of political parties, as well as Batasuna's continuing public prominence, is another anomaly of Basque politics.
Otegi read at length from a statement from Gerry Adams, expressing "deep concern at the continued exclusion of political parties" from the elections.
If Adams was really his role model, I asked him, why did he not make a public statement calling for ETA to abandon violence? "There is no need to," he said with a characteristically charming and evasive smile. "Everyone knows this is the direction in which our movement is going."
However, a very senior police official, who happened to be in Vitoria yesterday, said he had "no indications whatsoever" that a ceasefire was imminent.