SPAIN: The hot debate in Spain is whether it should become a federal state, a forbidden subject in the past, writes Paddy Woodworth
August is officially the holiday month for Spanish politicians. This year, however, party leaders seem only to be using the beaches to flex their ideological muscles, as they get in training for a potentially momentous new parliamentary year, which could change the shape of Spain.
In more sinister fashion, the Basque terrorist group ETA has also been using the August beaches to communicate with the Spanish public. Five small bombs have exploded in northern seaside tourist towns in 10 days since August 7th, the most recent last Sunday in the Asturian resort of Llanes. Though the damage was slight, and only one person suffered minor injuries, the message could not be clearer: "We haven't gone away, you know".
The politicians, and most of the media, have been surprisingly low-key in response to this new threat, perhaps in the hope it is a last gasp rather than a new start for home-produced terrorism, after the terrible shock of the Islamist attacks in March.
Instead, the focus of attention has remained a heated debate about whether Spain, already divided into 17 autonomous regions, should become a federal state.
The new prime minister, Mr José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has thrown open the doors to this discussion of this highly sensitive subject, which was completely taboo in the eyes of his deeply conservative predecessor, Mr José María Aznar. The main argument is about the relationship of the Madrid government to powerful peripheral nationalities like the Catalans and Basques. But even smaller regions are now clamouring for a much greater say in national and European affairs.
Many Basques and Catalans, however, still want independence, or something very close to it. This is much more than Zapatero is willing or able to offer. His initiative may be forcing him between a rock and a very hard place.
His own Socialist Party (PSOE) is deeply divided on this issue. The PSOE first minister in the Catalan regional government, Pasqual Maragall, demanded earlier this month that "historical nationalities" such as Catalonia and the Basque Country should be explicitly recognised in the constitution (they are already implicitly recognised). He also got Zapatero's blessing for a greatly increased role for the Catalans in national institutions. His opposite number in Andalusia, fellow Socialist Manuel Chaves, bluntly accused him for seeking more privileges for a region that is already wealthier than most.
The centre-right Partido Popular (PP), smarting in opposition after its surprise electoral defeat following the March bombings in Madrid, had much harsher things to say about Maragall. The party spokesperson, Mr Jaime Ignacio del Burgo, denounced him as "the great dynamiter of the Spanish constitution".
Maragall's model was not British-style devolution, as he had claimed, del Burgo continued: "His model is Yugoslavia, a conglomeration of states that fell apart at the slightest pressure."
On August 6th, Ovidio Sánchez, the leader of the PP in Asturias, a northern province close to the Basque Country, went further. Maragall's arguments, he said, gave aid and comfort to "violent people who have the same goals as he does".
Coincidentally, it was in Asturias the next day that ETA recommenced its bombing campaign in pursuit of Basque independence.
This development surprised many observers, who had assumed that the March 11th attacks in Madrid had left ETA with no option but to call a ceasefire. The unprecedented condemnation of the Islamist train bombers on that day by Arnaldo Otegi, former leader of ETA's banned political wing, Batasuna, suggested that a watershed had been crossed.
Many former ETA supporters had already shifted their position on the use of violence well before the Madrid massacre. Batasuna's share of the Basque vote had collapsed by half, to 10 per cent, after ETA ended its 1998-99 truce. And the enormous wave of revulsion after March 11th should have strengthened the hands of those who, while still backing Batasuna, said it was long past time to hang up the guns.
However, no ceasefire has materialised. The ETA leadership is generally much more distant, physically and psychologically, from its political supporters than the IRA is from Sinn Féin. It appears it may not even have begun the delicate internal debate a permanent end to violence would require.
Until this month's bombs, however, it seemed that some sort of de facto truce might be in place. For the first time since the late 1960s, ETA had killed no-one for more than a year, though activists were still operating, as a number of arrests since March 11th indicated. Small-scale though these seaside bombs are, compared with ETA's bloody 'summer campaigns' of past years, the repeated attacks signal that the group still believes it can influence events through terrorism.
This reappearance of ETA comes at a particularly delicate moment for Basque nationalism. The Basque first minister, Juan José Ibarretxe, has proposed that the Basque Country should have a unique status of 'free association' with Spain. This proposal faces a final vote in the Basque parliament in October.
Even if Ibarretxe does get his bill through the Basque parliament, Zapatero has made it clear that he considers it unconstitutional, and is unlikely to agree even to discuss it. Instead, the new prime minister hopes to draw Ibarretxe into considering the new arrangements likely to be agreed with Catalonia, and has made a number of minor concessions to smooth the path in this direction.
Zapatero has certainly done much to improve the tone of relationships with Basque and Catalan nationalists, which had become execrably bad under Aznar's administration. But the real test of his much vaunted nuevo talante - 'new mood' - will be whether he can turn this change of style into substantial agreements in the difficult year ahead.