If the EU ran a magazine with a personal contacts column for its member-states, the Spanish prime minister's advertisement for Spain would probably read something like this: "Large, stable democracy with many handsome physical and cultural features seeks four equal partners to share power, profit, and occasional consensual fun and games. Industries, both high-tech and conventional, are booming. Agriculture diverse and prolific. Workforce well-educated and productive. Internal communications excellent. Exotic enterprises not ruled out; proven ability to adventurously penetrate Latin American markets while still satisfying conservative investors. Modernising armed forces eager to share burden of defending Europe's global interests. Modest, scandal-free monarchy available for ceremonial occasions. Only Germany, France, Britain and Italy need apply, in that order." Like all advertisements, Jose Maria Aznar's sales pitch conceals as much as it reveals. However, his desire to join the EU's "Big Four" on a basis of parity is taken very seriously in other capitals.
Spain is one of the great European success stories of the late 20th century, and not just because it managed to dismantle a sordid little dictatorship with an exemplary minimum of unpleasantness. The successes are impressive, but each one has its downside. The Spanish economy continues to boom, but inflation is rising again and unemployment still stands at more than 13 per cent. The whole-hearted embrace of new agricultural technologies has filled domestic and international markets with first-class Spanish produce. It has also created a labour shortage on the land, drawing a surge of illegal immigration from Africa. The explosion of anti-Arab violence in El Ejido early last year briefly exposed the inflammable tensions that underlie the new rural prosperity. Spain is the EU's closest and longest frontier with the developing world. Whether the inevitable crises this generates are seized as opportunities for mutual growth or degenerate into racial conflicts will be a key test of Spanish statesmanship. Spain's relationship with the EU is complex. The carefully cultivated image of a front-rank player contrasts with the less trumpeted fact that Madrid is still a recipient of net subsidy from Brussels, to the tune of well over £7 billion. And the burgeoning Spanish presence in Latin economies has provoked half-serious accusations that the Old Country has not lost the Francoist ambition to revive its empire.
Politically, Madrid can be proud of a parliamentary system that has seen power shift from centre-right to centre-left and back again after centuries of intolerant absolutism. The fact that such shifts no longer imply any significant changes in keystone policies has a debit side, however: the bland convergence of right and left has produced an unhealthy degree of apathy towards politics.
It must be said, however, that Mr Aznar's centre-right Partido Popular (PP) has not yet displayed the rampant corruption that tarnished Felipe Gonzalez's Socialist Party in the 1980s and 1990s. It remains to be seen whether that will change, now that Mr Aznar enjoys, since last March, the kind of absolute majority that makes such corruption a much less resistible temptation. Meanwhile, the very politically apolitical monarchy of Juan Carlos I is regarded by Spaniards as their most popular and solid institution. It was at once the symbol and the price of the country's relatively painless transition from dictatorship to democracy. On the 25th anniversary of his coronation last month, hardly any public figure could find a less than obsequious word to say about his majesty. As one foreign observer pointed out, this may in fact indicate the monarchy's fragility and not its strength. It would be grossly unjust to say Spanish democracy is a house of cards, but there is an almost superstitious fear that, if you pulled the king out of the pack, the whole structure might suddenly become very shaky.
The EU partners to whom Mr Aznar pays suit could be indulgent about most of the failings outlined above; to a greater or lesser degree, they all share some of them. But the biggest crack in the shining facade of Spain 2000 is of a different order, and this year it has again been etched in blood. The renewed terrorist campaign by the Basque separatist group ETA claimed its first victim in January and has managed to dictate much of Spain's internal political agenda since then. The human cost of ETA's offensive has been very high. It is most obvious in the number of deaths - more than 20 at the time of writing - making 2000 the worst year for losses to terrorism for nearly a decade. The geographic spread of the attacks, extending far beyond the Basque provinces to Catalonia, Castile, Aragon and Andalusia, also indicates an organisation with a formidable infrastructure. A series of allegedly significant arrests has failed to halt, or even stall, this wave of violence.
The most sinister aspect of the new campaign is the steady lengthening of ETA's list of "legitimate" targets. It now includes both Socialist and PP politicians, academics, judges, business people and journalists. And there is a less obvious but nonetheless corrosive human cost of ETA's campaign: the grim intimidation that shrouds many day-to-day activities in the Basque Country.
The political cost of the conflict is reflected in the gulf, which has become glaringly apparent, between the Madrid-based parties and the moderate Basque nationalists. Arguably, this gulf emerged more than two decades ago, when the nationalists withheld their consent from the post-Franco democratic constitution. But it had been masked in the intervening years, during which the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) accepted and administered an autonomy statute within the limits to self-government which that constitution laid down.
In 1998 the PNV embarked on a new strategy, signing a pact with ETA and its political supporters in pursuit of Basque self-determination. ETA then called a unilateral ceasefire. For the first time, the PNV accepted the support of ETA's political wing in the Basque parliament.
ETA renewed its terrorist campaign 14 months later, alleging lack of serious commitment to full Basque sovereignty on the PNV's part and the lack of any political response to the ceasefire on Madrid's. The PNV severed ties with ETA and its political front, but refused to renounce the common aim of self-determination. This incurred increasingly furious condemnation from the Aznar government and, to a slightly lesser extent, from the socialist opposition. Earlier this month, Mr Aznar said the PNV's "secessionism" would lead to an "historical catastrophe" for the Basque Country. The nationalists, however, claim to be taking a risk for peace, similar to the leap John Hume made with Gerry Adams, on which their pan-nationalist strategy is explicitly based. It is now clear Mr Aznar's strategy is equally audacious - and at least as risky. Buoyed up by his unexpected absolute majority in March's general elections, he intends the PP to overtake the PNV as the leading party in the Basque Country and see his toughminded Interior Minister, Jaime Mayor Oreja, installed as the first non-nationalist premier in the region. His critics see this strategy as playing straight into ETA's hands, as it could polarise Basque society to the point of fullscale civil conflict.
If there is one issue to watch in Spain next year, this is certainly going to be it.
woodworth@ireland.com