SpainThe terrorists show signs of having taken a crucial lesson on board, observes Paddy Woodworth
"You are going to live in peace, in the Basque Country, and within Spain," the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, told a capacity crowd at a Basque election rally in Bilbao on Thursday night.
It seems an innocuous message, but it was received with rapture. Supporters of Zapatero's Socialist Party (PSOE) have good reason to long for peace in this region. Their local councillors have been ruthlessly targeted by the pro-independence group Eta in recent years, as have politicians from the other big Spanish party, the conservative Partido Popular (PP).
These Basque citizens, along with like-minded academics and journalists, have been living under a death sentence since the mid-1990s because they adhere to the principle that moves towards an independent Basque Country are undemocratic and violate the fundamentals of the Spanish constitution.
Most constitutionalists live within the shadow of 24-hour bodyguards. When Patxi López, the party's candidate for Basque first minister, read a list of fallen comrades, he received the biggest ovation of the night.
Meanwhile, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and its allies, who condemn Eta's terrorism but share its view that the Basque people have the right to decide their own future, are able to go about their business with no protection whatsoever.
Despite some genuine sympathy for Eta's victims, the nationalists generally talk and behave as though this poisoned political atmosphere was perfectly normal, or at least invisible to them.
It often seems as if these two groups of democratic parties live in parallel universes and are incapable of communication with each other. The PSOE and PP claim that the PNV, which has ruled the Basque Autonomous Community since 1980, is indifferent to their suffering. The PNV holds that the constitutionalist parties have set an unacceptable limit to the march of the Basque nation towards sovereignty.
In this context, Zapatero's reference to living within Spain is far from innocuous. Such a phrase is as taboo in Basque nationalist circles as a reference to Britishness would be on the Falls Road. Meanwhile, the mere mention of Basque sovereignty is enough to cause apoplexy among PSOE and PP supporters.
Despite this great divide, however, something fundamental seems to be shifting in the Basque political landscape during this campaign.
The most important factor is the near-disappearance of terrorist attacks and street violence by pro-Eta radicals and a more relaxed atmosphere generally. While Eta refuses to call a long-predicted ceasefire, it has been crippled by effective police action. Many of its erstwhile supporters now believe that armed struggle has become a political albatross which the pro-independence movement must cast off.
But the change of government in Madrid last year, from the traditionally Spanish nationalist PP to the PSOE, under the new and much more pragmatic leadership of Zapatero, has also been an important factor in lowering the political temperature.
During the 2001 Basque elections, the PSOE and PP formed a common front against Basque nationalism, which backfired badly, provoking even the most disenchanted PNV supporters to go to the polls in defence of their identity.
Now the PSOE seeks a more intermediate position and is making overtures to the nationalists. The Basque language, Basque flags and images of traditional Basque sports all featured more strongly than usual at Zapatero's rally. And he made a point of offering to negotiate a reformed statute of autonomy with the PNV as long as that party steps back from demanding self-determination.
While the PNV sticks to its plan for a referendum on sovereignty, its leader, Juan José Ibarretxe, has also proffered some olive branches to the PSOE and presented himself as a man of dialogue.