SPAIN: Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero brought his first full parliamentary season in office to a close last week with several major initiatives completed or in train, but big questions about the future of the country remain wide open.
The view of the right-wing opposition, expressed with a passion and militancy that approach hysteria at times, is that this inexperienced Socialist Party (PSOE) leader is letting the whole of Spain go down the tubes.
Mariano Rajoy, the leader of the conservative Partido Popular (PP), claims that Zapatero has gone soft on terrorism by offering "dialogue" to the Basque pro-independence group ETA, and accepting that the autonomy of the Basque Country needs to be amplified.
Rajoy further alleges that the PSOE, in alliance with leftist nationalist groups in Catalonia and Galicia, is opening floodgates to federalism which could lead to the disintegration of the Spanish state.
Along with the Catholic Church (or at least most of its hierarchy), the PP leader regards last week's landmark law, legalising not only gay marriage but gay adoption, as a threat to the Spanish family, a stance which permitted expressions of homophobia not usually heard in public here.
The view from the centre and the left is different. There is a sense of exuberance that decisions are being taken which have the support of a majority of the population, without nervous backward glances as to how the right might react.
Since the transition to democracy in the 1970s, in the shadow of a deeply reactionary officer corps trained under the Franco dictatorship, Spanish politics has been conditioned by a rather one-sided idea of "consensus".
In practice, this meant that few major initiatives could be taken, especially on questions like terrorism and the shape of the state, without the approval of the right, regardless of the balance of actual political power.
Zapatero's reforms seem like a breath of badly needed fresh air in this atmosphere. But even among his admirers there is an underlying anxiety as to whether he is enough of a statesman - and whether he has enough support - to break the mould of Spanish politics without shaking the foundations of the state.
There is no doubt that Zapatero has antagonised the right to an unprecedented extent. Not since the death of Gen Franco have right-wingers taken to the streets in hundreds of thousands against the government, as they have recently in protest against dialogue with ETA, and against gay marriage.
Yet the PP's political star has continued to wane. The PSOE pushed it firmly back into third place in Basque elections in April. Last month in Galicia, a PP stronghold, the right retained the biggest share of the vote, but lost its long-standing absolute majority, despite a strong campaign in the region by Rajoy himself.
Instead, Zapatero's party is in the process of forming a Galician government, in coalition with a left nationalist party, the BNG.
The PP's problem is that it has never "digested" the results of the March 2004 general election. This was the moment when Zapatero unexpectedly overtook the PP. His victory was largely due to the outrage of much of the electorate at what they perceived as the PP's irresponsible and manipulative handling of the Islamist bombing massacre in the capital three days before the poll.
The PP rejected most of a report on the bombings approved by parliament last week. The party refuses to relinquish its insistence that ETA may have been involved, in the teeth of most of the evidence, and against the votes of all the other parties.
A number of senior PP figures would clearly like to put all this behind them, but it seems to be a bone of contention which Rajoy and his closest associates will not, or cannot, let go of.
The increasing shrill right-wing tone of the party's pronouncements reminds many of an authoritarian period they would prefer to forget. For the moment, the conservatives have lost all appeal to the centre, the pivot of Spanish politics.
Of course, the fact that the PP is in such disarray does not necessarily mean that Zapatero is moving in a positive direction, or at a speed which his country can tolerate. He is certainly taking very big risks.
ETA has responded to his offer of talks - which is totally conditional on a final and absolute abandonment of "armed struggle" on the terrorists' part - with ambiguous gestures. The group has not killed anyone for more than two years, but this reflects its current weakness rather than any de-facto truce.
Last month it took politicians off its death list, but it continues to bomb symbolic targets, with the inevitable risk of casualties which would derail this very delicate peace process.
There is considerable optimism in well-informed Basque circles, and in Zapatero's cabinet, that a total ceasefire is around the corner. But no one outside those circles knows whether this is based on hard information or wishful thinking.
If ETA were to return to full-scale terrorism, Zapatero's credibility would be very severely damaged.
Meanwhile, the mainstream Basque nationalist parties are pushing for a radical "status of free association" with Madrid, and the Catalans, with PSOE support at regional level, want full recognition as a nation, a stage well beyond the compromise "nationality" status granted them by the 1978 constitution.
The true test of Zapatero's mettle will come in managing the volatile processes he has had the courage to set in motion.