SPAIN:Basque terrorism casts its shadow across the Spanish political landscape again, writes Paddy Woodworth.
Nobody emerges looking good from the collapse of the botched Spanish-Basque peace process. It expired after a long death agony with Eta's announcement on Tuesday that it was reopening its terrorist campaign "on all fronts".
You could be forgiven for thinking that the process had ended late last December, when Eta exploded a massive bomb in Barajas airport, Madrid, causing two deaths.
However, Eta insisted, with a truly Orwellian use of language, that this was not a violation of the ceasefire, since it had not intended to kill anyone on that occasion.
The prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, responded by breaking off talks between his envoys and Eta. But he managed to give the impression that this peace process, the flagship initiative of his government, was at least still on life support, albeit paralysed.
But Eta's new statement is the death certificate of an attempt at conflict resolution which initially looked quite promising. In retrospect, however, the arithmetic for peace did not add up, and none of the leaders involved measured up to the challenges they faced. From beginning to end, the two years of talks, rumours of talks, and hysterical denunciations have provided an object lesson in how to get things wrong.
Zapatero chose a state-of-the-nation address in May 2005 to offer talks to Eta, on the strict condition that the group called a permanent ceasefire. It was a courageous step, but it was also excessively risky. The prime minister had not done his homework. He lacked two key elements which had underpinned the Irish peace process - bipartisan support in parliament, and credible guarantees of a firm purpose of amendment from the terrorists he was going to talk to.
In parliament, the major opposition party, Mariano Rajoy's deeply conservative Partido Popular (PP), immediately rubbished his proposal.
Since then, the PP has beaten the strident drum of traditional Spanish nationalism. Its sound proved very popular with its supporters, and struck a chord with some sectors of Zapatero's own centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE).
This was no surprise - the dogs in the street could have told the prime minister that the PP in its current mood was never going to back a "soft" line on terrorism.
Zapatero is less culpable, perhaps, for accepting assurances that Eta really wanted to hang up its guns. Support for violence among its supporters has been leaking away since it ended a 1999 ceasefire, and its political wing, Batasuna, gave a very convincing impression of being seriously committed to an unarmed strategy.
In this context, Zapatero's critical failure was to lose the courage of his convictions in the face of the PP's grossly irresponsible allegations that he was "betraying the dead" and "surrendering to terrorism". He never made the reasonable concessions that might have copperfastened the ceasefire.
He failed even to bring Eta prisoners back to the Basque Country - they are currently held in distant Spanish prisons under a harsh policy of "dispersal". And he showed no real inclination to reverse the dubious legal moves which had made Batasuna illegal in 2002.
But Zapatero should not be made the sole whipping boy for the dismally familiar scenario which now returns to haunt the Basque Country and Spain.
The ethical responsibility for a return to violence lies solely with Eta and its cheerleaders in Batasuna. This political movement has shown that, unlike Sinn Féin, it lacks any authority, or even real influence, over its terrorist associates. A crucial 2004 declaration by its leader, Arnaldo Otegi, had promised that, in any future negotiations, Batasuna would take the lead on political questions, and Eta would confine itself to prisoner- and weapons-type issues.
Over the past 12 months, however, it became all too evident that Eta was imposing a maximalist political line on Batasuna, and indeed was insisting on discussing these questions directly with government representatives. And given the extent to which Eta has evidently re-armed during the ceasefire, any credibility the organisation had for good faith as a political actor has been shredded.
There is an old saying that, when there is a debate between the pistol and politics in Eta, the pistol always wins. Eta's leadership has clearly failed to take advantage of the only exit strategy its members are likely to be offered for a generation.
In November, an intermediary warned Eta that ceasefires are like antibiotics - they are less effective every time you use them. Though some surrogate parties close to Batasuna performed very well in the recent elections, much of that support is likely to drain away with a return to violence. Tragically, however, Eta still has the military capacity to inflict yet more futile suffering on Basques and Spaniards alike.
Meanwhile, the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) was curiously passive during the ceasefire, and totally failed to mobilise its supporters in favour of the peace process. In sharp contrast, the PP was able to flood the streets with demonstrators, and shamelessly played politics with the emotions of Eta's surviving victims and their relatives.
Zapatero has shown himself to be impetuous, ingenuous, and weak. But his good intentions cannot be faulted, and the Spanish electorate may still prefer him to Rajoy in the next general elections, due in March 2008.
However, the prospects of a peaceful resolution of western Europe's longest-running terrorist conflict now look much worse than when he took office.
• Paddy Woodworth's The Basque Countrywill be published by Signal and Oxford University Press in September.