If you were a Martian, or simply an innocent foreigner, you might expect that all Spanish democrats would be delighted with the results of last Sunday week's elections to the Basque autonomous parliament.
Support for the political wing of ETA, the terrorist pro-independence group, collapsed from 18 per cent to 10 per cent. This was the worst showing ever for Euskal Herritarrok (EH), formerly known as Herri Batasuna. It lost seven of the 14 seats it had previously held in the 75-seat parliament. All these seats transferred to parties which pursue greater powers for the Basque region by exclusively democratic and peaceful means.
What's more, this shift occurred in the context of the highest electoral participation on record (80 per cent) in Basque elections. No one could argue that fear had stopped anyone from voting, though ETA continued to carry out attacks on politicians, journalists and ordinary citizens during - and after - the campaign.
The response from Madrid to this victory for democratic forces, however, has been less than ecstatic. "I do not change my convictions because of election results" was the first public response of the Prime Minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, after three days' silence.
Mr Aznar, leader of the centreright Partido Popular (PP), had good reason to sound truculent. The election result was a severe blow to ETA supporters but it was simultaneously a humiliating defeat for his own much-trumpeted anti-terrorist strategy in the Basque Country.
Mr Aznar's strategy was based on displacing from power the Basque parties which had led every Basque government since the region was granted extensive self-government in 1980. In his view, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and a smaller coalition partner had betrayed democracy by entering into a common programme with ETA for Basque self-determination in 1998. These parties argued that they had done this to secure a ceasefire from ETA, based on the model of the Hume-Adams talks in Northern Ireland.
However, much Spanish public opinion was scandalised by the prospect of a broad front for Basque sovereignty, perhaps reflecting a Spanish nationalism which, tarnished by its association with Francoism, still exists but dares not speak its name. In any case, when ETA returned to terrorism in late 1999, for its own obscure reasons, there was a broad consensus in the Madrid media that the PNV had to be punished.
The savagery of ETA's new bombing campaign, and its targeting of highly respected academics, journalists and peace activists, garnered support for this consensus even among left-wing intellectuals. The problem in the Basque Country, according to this new orthodoxy, was no longer terrorism but nationalism itself. In a crude and bitter election campaign, the PNV were often portrayed as little better than ETA's armchair generals.
Mr Aznar had bet a lot on dispatching the PNV to the Basque opposition benches. He encouraged one of his heavyweight colleagues, Mr Jaime Mayor Oreja, to resign as Interior Minister and run as candidate for Basque first minister. Success would have demanded a big leap in the PP vote, but it had grown rapidly in recent years and Mr Aznar has never lacked self-confidence.
His strategy also appeared to have the support of the main Spanish opposition grouping, the centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE). Both parties have suffered terribly at the hands of ETA in recent years and both accused the PNV administration of failing to protect their members from assassination.
LAST Sunday, however, the Basque voters left egg all over the faces of the PP and Spanish opinionformers generally. Mr Aznar's party and a right-wing regional ally together gained only a single seat, while the PNV and its coalition partner gained six. The PSOE, once the second party in the region, actually lost a seat.
It is now evident the PP campaign boomeranged spectacularly. Its demonisation of nationalism, and lack of sensitivity towards Basque cultural concerns, brought out every last nationalist vote and persuaded many former ETA supporters to vote PNV against the prospect of a PP administration.
However, the results also reveal a Basque society divided almost exactly in two between parties supporting and opposing greater Basque sovereignty. The moderate nationalists have 43 per cent of the vote and 33 seats. The PP and the PSOE have 41 per cent and 32 seats. The radical nationalists of EH have 10 per cent and seven seats. The communist-dominated United Left (IU), which is Madrid-based but shares some nationalist positions, has 6 per cent and three seats.
This painfully-fine balance between fiercely opposed ideologies will make it difficult to form a stable government but no one doubts that the new administration will be led, once again, by Mr Juan Jose Ibarretxe of the PNV. He could find the numbers to govern with IU because EH will certainly abstain rather than support the only other candidate for first minister, Mr Oreja.
But Mr Ibarretxe is also seeking support from the PSOE, with whom the PNV shared portfolios in several Basque governments. While the Socialists were associated with Mr Aznar's strategy, the sound of anti-nationalist words being eaten can now be clearly heard in the PSOE camp. A rapprochement between these two parties would not only end the unhealthy isolation of the PNV in Spanish politics, it would also offer the prospect of imaginative new initiatives to resolve the Basque conflict should the PSOE return to government in Madrid.
To woo the PSOE successfully, however, the PNV would presumably have to make some shift away from its post-1998 commitment to Basque sovereignty, regarded as a codeword for independence. The problem here is that it is precisely that commitment which helped the PNV draw in many votes from former ETA supporters. Mr Ibarretxe faces a very difficult balancing act to stop those votes flowing back towards terrorism if he appears to abandon the high ground of self-determination on which the PNV campaigned.
In the meantime, there is little sign that Mr Aznar is open to any new initiatives on the Basque question as he once again rejected proposals from the PNV to even consider an Irish-style peace process on Thursday.
Just two days after the election, ETA delivered its own bloody and contemptuous response to the Basque voters' verdict - a letter bomb which mangled the hands of senior Basque journalist Gorka Landaburu. This was a depressing reminder of the heavy responsibilities which lie on both the new Basque government and on Mr Aznar's administration to find some path towards resolving what is now the longest-running terrorist war in the EU.
Paddy Woodworth is an Irish Times journalist and the author of a recent book on the Basque conflict, Dirty War, Clean Hands, published by Cork University Press
woodworth@ireland.com
