The killing of Lieut Col Pedro Antonio Blanco Garcia was a death foretold, if ever there was one. We did not know the name of the victim, or whether it would be a child or an army officer. But there has been a terrible sense of inevitability, over the last few weeks, that ETA would kill again.
There was still reasonable room for a more optimistic reading when ETA made its surprise announcement on November 28th that its ceasefire would be "interrupted" six days later. Ceasefires are usually broken by actions, not words, and such actions are rarely preceded by helpful warnings to the security forces. When the December 3rd deadline passed without a shooting or a bombing, it seemed that ETA was playing a political rather than a military game.
The whole thrust of its November statement gave good grounds for that analysis. While ETA attacked the Madrid government for not engaging seriously with the opportunity offered by the ceasefire, the group reserved its real ire for the two more moderate Basque nationalist parties it saw as its partners in a peace process. They had failed, ETA said, to pursue the mutually agreed goal of Basque self-determination.
Those parties, and especially the larger and more pragmatic Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), have moved rapidly to more radical positions over the last two months. They have been demonised by the Madrid-based parties and press for dancing like puppets to ETA's tune; the PNV has argued that it is simply explicitly expressing its historic aspiration to Basque sovereignty. Euskal Herritarrok (EH), the political party linked to ETA, cautiously welcomed the PNV's new direction.
Hopes that the PNV's virtual rupture with Madrid-based politics would be sufficient to restore ETA's ceasefire rose briefly. But they were shattered when an ETA unit was stopped by the police while transporting the biggest bomb ever constructed by the organisation. A "spectacular" in Madrid, similar to the huge bomb which ended the IRA's ceasefire at Canary Wharf, was clearly on ETA's agenda.
Once that unit had been apprehended, ETA's internal logic surely dictated that another attempt had to be made, and several more were, without success until yesterday. A terrorist organisation which ends a ceasefire, and then is shown publicly to be incapable of firing an effective shot, runs a real risk of ceasing to exist. So the script was written for yesterday's attack. The key question now is whether this bombing is a once-off, which will satisfy ETA's "honour" and be followed by a renewed ceasefire to capitalise on the political shift in the Basque country. Some people close to ETA think this is likely, though it is probable that no official cessation will be called before the elections.
If, on the other hand, the bombing heralds a return to a full-scale campaign, ETA faces isolation. The PNV would, almost certainly, rejoin the mainstream of Spanish politics rather than be associated with terrorism, leaving ETA in a bloody and hopeless cul-de-sac. The PNV's decision to suspend contact with EH as a result of yesterday's bombing is a move in this direction.
Some observers argue that ETA, whose links to active politics have always been less direct than the IRA's, has become isolated from Basque reality. They say the group is caught in a revolutionary time warp which can only find expression in violence. But the recent evolution of Euskal Herritarrok (which was formally known as Herri Batasuna), to more moderate positions, deeply influenced by Sinn Fein, makes this scenario unconvincing.
The effect of the bombing on the Spanish elections, as campaigning is getting under way, is another conundrum. Many Spanish people believe the conservative minority government of Mr Jose Maria Aznar was culpably inflexible in its response to the ceasefire, particularly on the prisoners issue, and might want to punish him for this. But the return of terror to the streets of the capital might well persuade the same people to give his PP an absolute majority this time around. They will want to confront ETA with a strong government which is not dependent, as this one has been, on the support of regional nationalists.
The prospect of a PP majority in Madrid, rigidly committed to the unity of the Spanish nation state, confronted by a pan-nationalist front in the Basque country committed to some form of independence, would offer Spain the Chinese curse of experiencing "interesting times" over the next few years. That could well be the ETA's real aim.