BASQUE COUNTRY: The Basque Nationalist Party faces a painful post-election choice, writes Paddy Woodworth
"A victory is a victory. We are still going to lead this country." When things do not go according to plan, election-night rhetoric is laced with large doses of self-deception, and Juan José Ibarretxe's speech to his supporters on Sunday night was a resounding but hollow effort to make a severe electoral reverse seem like an advance.
The results of last weekend's elections to the powerful Basque regional parliament are, in fact, a nightmare for Ibarretxe. He has twice been lehendakari (first minister) and it is true that he will almost certainly take that post again. His Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and its allies in Basque Solidarity (EA) won 29 seats, 11 more than any other party. But this is four fewer seats than PNV-EA held in the last parliament. Worse, it is nine short of the absolute majority which was Ibarretxe's target.
He needed to do exceptionally well if he was to have any chance of advancing the plan for Basque "sovereignty", to which he has given his name and attached his reputation. The "Plan Ibarretxe" envisaged a status of "free association" between the Basque Country and Spain, something well beyond the limits of the 1978 Spanish Constitution.
These elections had been prompted by the total rejection of the plan by the Spanish parliament earlier this year. Ibarretxe claimed that Basque society was clamouring for this new status. He hoped to use a surge in voter support to defy Madrid by holding a referendum on the issue, which the Spanish government had declared illegal in advance.
The election has given him no mandate to do so, and his plan is, as one of his staff told this reporter as the figures came in, "totally out the window".
This does not mean, however, that the question of the Basque relationship with Spain is closed. In fact, Basque voters have pointed, paradoxically, in two diametrically-opposed directions.
The Socialist Party (PSOE), currently in government in Madrid, clearly benefited from the fresh image of flexibility and dialogue offered by the young prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and took 18 seats, a gain of five. The PNV has governed with the PSOE in the Basque Country before, and quite successfully. But to do so now would mean a humiliating PNV retreat from the self-determination stance it has taken since 1998.
The really big surprise, however, was the strong performance by the pro-independence abertzale ("patriotic") left. Just two weeks ago, this sector looked unlikely to figure largely in this poll at all. Indeed, the ban by Madrid on participation by Batasuna, the party close to the thinking of the terrorist group ETA, seemed likely to channel its significant slice of the vote to the PNV-EA.
The sudden emergence of the hitherto unknown, but perfectly legal, Communist Party of the Basque Lands (EHAK) totally changed that picture. In what was clearly a carefully-prepared manoeuvre, EHAK offered to represent Batasuna voters and Batasuna told its supporters to vote for EHAK.
This strategy succeeded beyond even the radicals' expectations, with EHAK taking nine seats, two more than Batasuna held in the last parliament. It has also made the law banning Batasuna look very like an ass. Zapatero is unlikely to respond to angry demands from the conservative Partido Popular (PP), which slipped from 19 to 15 seats on Sunday, to ask the courts to ban this party also.
So Ibarretxe's choice is whether to take his party back into the mainstream of Spanish politics with the PSOE or plunge into uncharted and very risky waters towards total Basque independence with EHAK. The indications are that he will eventually take the former option, but Basque politics are notoriously unpredictable.