SPAIN: Nationalism could still jeopardise the peace process, writes Paddy Woodworth in Bilbao
The opening of direct talks between the Spanish government and the Basque terrorist group Eta has mostly been received with almost incredulous delight in the Basque country. Some things can still seem surprising despite being expected daily for weeks, precisely because they have been so deeply desired for such a long time.
For many people here, the announcement on Thursday by the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, confirms the hope that Eta's three-month old ceasefire really is permanent. Many Basque nationalists also believe that Mr Zapatero has cleared the path to a new political dispensation for one of Europe's oldest peoples.
For a significant minority in the Basque country, however, and a much bigger minority in the rest of the Spanish state, Mr Zapatero's announcement is a shocking surrender to terrorism, "a betrayal of the memory of Eta's victims".
The positive response runs all the way from former Eta supporters in its banned political wing, Batasuna, through the mainstream Basque nationalists of the PNV to members of Mr Zapatero's centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE). As in most peace processes, however, opposing sides are optimistic for different reasons, because they see the process going in different directions.
"There are doors open for all of us in Zapatero's statement," Karmelo Landa told The Irish Times in Bilbao yesterday, acknowledging this paradox, which is intimately familiar to observers of the Northern Irish peace process.
Mr Landa is a veteran member of Batasuna, and has served time in prison while on its central committee. He reads the Spanish prime minister's statement, made on Thursday, as an endorsement of the Basques' "right to decide our own future". He also believes that Mr Zapatero has agreed his party's almost immediate participation in political talks on the future of the Basque country. Batasuna has been banned since 2002 because it refused to condemn Eta's violence.
A couple of hours earlier, Nicolas Sartorius, a political analyst sympathetic to Mr Zapatero, explained in detail to Spanish TV that the prime minister's statement was based on the constitution, which has no provision for self-determination. He also pointed out that the declaration contained an explicit guarantee that the law banning Batasuna would not be repealed.
Landa and Sartorius are both right. Zapatero's formulation is a masterpiece of political ambiguity, in which every significant assertion is qualified.
Its language can give comfort to several - though not all - differing viewpoints.
The prime minister says that "the government will respect the freely taken decisions of the Basque citizens". That sounds very like an acceptance that the Basques may loosen ties with Spain. But then he adds that these decisions will be taken "respecting legal norms and procedures". He is clearly referring to the constitution, which makes the "indivisible unity" of the Spanish nation a central principle, though he does not specify this.
There are also ambiguities about the way in which Mr Zapatero made his statement. At one level, it was a tour de force, of which few modern politicians would be capable, and demonstrated his own rapidly growing stature. He delivered the 20-paragraph text, in which every comma had its own weight, without any script, and never stumbled. That looked good on television.
But he delivered his potentially historic message to the press, and not to parliament, though he had made a specific promise to make this announcement directly to MPs in the Cortes. This did not look so good. Even El País, a newspaper very supportive of the prime minister, took him to task for breaking his word on this issue.
He clearly calculated that an appearance in parliament would give too much space for comment to the Partido Popular (PP).
This deeply conservative opposition party regards these negotiations as something akin to treason.
There was also the possibility that some of Eta's surviving victims would heap abuse on him from the public gallery, and this would not have been an auspicious start to a peace process.
In any case, the PP leader, Mariano Rajoy, immediately reiterated his rejection of "negotiations with terrorists".
Mr Zapatero reminded Spaniards that the previous PP leader, José María Aznar, had himself authorised talks in Switzerland with Eta in 1998, and that his own predecessor in the PSOE, Felipe González, had done likewise in Algeria in the 1980s. On both occasions the talks collapsed.
The prime minister claims that the context now - three months' total ceasefire, preceded by three years without a killing - is much more promising. Indeed, the main obstacle to progress today may not be, as previously, Eta's intransigence but the Spanish nationalism mobilised against the talks by Mr Rajoy and the PP.
"Spanish public opinion will be the key to the outcome of this process," says Txema Montero, one of Bilbao's leading lawyers. He was a Batasuna participant in the Algeria talks, and shortly afterwards rejected violence.
He now edits a journal for a Basque nationalist think tank.
"The problem in Algeria was that neither side had a clear political agenda," he says. "Now the agenda is fairly clear. There will be technical talks with Eta on arms and prisoner issues. And there will be talks with all parties, including Batasuna, on our political future."
However, both sets of talks will require the squaring of circles by both the PSOE and Basque nationalists, with the PP apparently intent on blocking every advance towards a settlement.
Yesterday there was a grim reminder of what is at stake. A Madrid court sentenced two members of Eta to long sentences for the cold-blooded killing of the young Basque PP councillor Miguel Ángel Blanco 10 years ago.
This killing generated unprecedented demonstrations against Eta, and led ultimately to the banning of Batasuna. The defendants showed no remorse for the killing.
One can only hope that the heart-rending emotions which this trial evoked will be firmly relegated to the past by the peace process which took its first step this week.
But there is much difficult and painful terrain to cross before we can be sure that the Basque conflict has claimed its last victim.