"The struggle against ETA is a very long battle, which began more than 30 years ago. It cannot be resolved in months, or even in years. That should be perfectly understandable here in Ireland."
The Spanish Foreign Minister, Mr Josep Pique, on his recent visit to Dublin, insisted that the Madrid government's anti-terrorist policy was working. Yet a resurgence of violence in October had produced six deaths in three attacks over 21 days. That figure now has to be adjusted to seven: a bus driver injured in the last attack died this week.
It was to be expected that Mr Pique would defend his government's strategy, but his words are at variance with those expressed by his Prime Minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, only last September. In the euphoria following multiple arrests of ETA suspects, Mr Aznar assured Spaniards that the battle against ETA would be won "before too long". The Interior Minister, Mr Jaime Mayor Oreja, took a more cautious approach, but said that the terrorist group's command structure had been dismantled.
If that was the case, ETA clearly has the capacity to restructure almost overnight. Within six weeks of those arrests it had carried out killings in Barcelona, Seville, and Madrid - all hundreds of kilometres from its Basque strongholds - and another in the Basque capital, Vitoria.
A recent opinion poll shows that ETA's terrorist campaign is now the top political issue for Spaniards, rated above unemployment, drugs, and ordinary crime. Not even in the tense period of Spain's transition to democracy two decades ago, when ETA's killing machine was in even higher gear, did terrorism so exercise the minds of ordinary citizens.
Over the last two months, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards - and Basques - have repeatedly demonstrated against ETA. There have been calls for tougher sentencing policy, even for the return of the death penalty. Mr Aznar's government had already prepared new anti-terrorist legislation. Some of its provisions have raised serious concerns among human rights groups with no sympathy for ETA.
Such measures are sweet music to the ears of ETA's supporters. ETA's strategy is based on a "spiral of action-repression-action". It sounds abstruse, but translated into practice, this theory is terrifyingly simple.
It goes like this: an armed action by ETA produces repression from the security forces. This repression falls not just on the perpetrators, but on the broader population, pushing them into sympathy with ETA. This support then enables the group to carry out bigger actions, which in turn produces more repression. This spiral continues until it either produces a "revolutionary people's war", or capitulation by the state to the group's demands.
This theory was developed under the dictatorship of Gen Franco, who died 25 years ago this month. Franco's response to ETA had been brutally clumsy, and produced precisely the effect of extending the group's support throughout the Basque population. Indeed, many democrats outside the Basque Country also had more than a sneaking regard for the young Davids of ETA, who pitched themselves against the monstrous Goliath of Franco's regime.
That sympathetic regard quickly turned to revulsion when ETA pursued the same strategy under democracy. Everywhere, that is, except in the Basque Country, where the group continued, and continues, to enjoy the backing of some 15 per cent of the population. The use of torture by the police, and a "dirty war" under the Socialist administration in the 1980s, helped ETA retain this support. Mr Aznar has governed with much cleaner hands, but it would only serve ETA's interests if he were to go down the road of repression now.
ETA's current campaign, initiated after a 15-month ceasefire broke down a year ago, is now the bloodiest since 1992. There have been 20 killings since January, plus four ETA members killed by their own bomb. The assumption that ETA had called that ceasefire because it was on its last legs has proved to be radically false. Its capacity to strike all over Spain is undiminished. Its resilience in the face of large numbers of arrests suggests that the sea in which the organisation swims is sufficiently deep to offer it a constant supply of new recruits.
The tactic of kale borroka ("street struggle"), which initiates large numbers of teenage Basques into a lifestyle of daily political vandalism, has had a dual benefit to ETA. It keeps the political and social tensions in the Basque Country at boiling point. And it also provides a training ground where the most committed "puppy terrorists" can be spotted, and groomed into members of ETA's "commandos".
A particularly disturbing feature of the current campaign has been the range of selected targets. Victims have included both Socialist and centre-right politicians. Soldiers, members of three different police forces, judges and a prison officer have died. The extent of the group's intolerance, however, is best indicated by the killing of a Basque nationalist businessman who resisted extortion, and of a left-wing journalist who excoriated ETA in his columns.
"ETA gives its opponents only three choices: to surrender, to leave the Basque Country, or to die," Mr Pique said in Dublin. "This is a fight for liberty."
No democrat could disagree. One has to wonder, however, whether Mr Aznar's policy of isolating moderate Basque nationalism, which shares ETA's aspiration to Basque independence but rejects its terrorist strategy, is really the way forward. Madrid's a priori rejection of any proposal for Basque self-determination makes it very difficult for democratic Basque nationalists to expand their influence among ETA supporters.
It was also striking that Mr Pique made a reference to Ireland's experience of terrorism, but categorically ruled out any political negotiation on ETA's demands. However different the circumstances may be, our experience does seem to indicate that, where terrorists enjoy prolonged and consistent popular support, there is an underlying political conflict which has to be seriously addressed.