The anti-ETA demonstrations in Barcelona and San Sebastian at the weekend are a reminder that terrorism is, once again, the central issue in Spanish politics and in the Spanish public mind. The pain and frustration caused by ETA's renewed terrorist campaign, since the group ended its 14-month ceasefire late last year, are palpable throughout Spanish society. Twenty-two years after the restoration of democracy, and 20 years after the Basque region was granted a degree of self-government - probably unequalled within any other European state - most citizens simply cannot understand why the killing goes on. "(roughly translatable as Stop it now") finds an echo across the Iberian peninsula, and beyond.
However, the demonstrations also engender a depressing sense of deja vu. Spain has seen mass peace movements several times in the last decade, but they have had no lasting impact on ETA's violent campaign for Basque independence, or on its significant level of support among ordinary Basques. Nor can there be any great confidence that the Madrid government's tough security approach will have the desired result. The arrest of numerous senior ETA suspects in both France and Spain earlier this month is to be welcomed, but there is every reason to believe that replacements will quickly be found.
The great recruiting tool for ETA in recent years has been the "street struggle", a form of youth intifada, which has made vandalism and intimidation part of Basque daily life. The centre-right government is proposing draconian new legislation to rein in these aspirant terrorists, who often seem to act with impunity. Apart from the human rights questions which have been raised about the new laws, they may well be counter-productive, creating youthful martyrs for ETA's cause. Even more disturbing than the persistence of support for ETA, however, is the ever-deepening fracture between democrats in the Basque country. The moderate nationalist parties reject ETA's violence but share, at least partially, its programme for Basque self-determination. They refused to support Saturday's demonstration in San Sebastian because it was not only anti-ETA, but explicitly in favour of the Spanish Constitution and the Basque Statute of Autonomy.
This refusal outrages both the Madrid government and the opposition Socialists. They accuse the moderate nationalists of ambiguity towards terrorism. And they point out that these same parties voted for the statute in 1979, and have run a regional administration based on it since 1980. The nationalists reply that they never voted for the constitution, and that they have every right to move, peacefully, beyond autonomy towards some form of independence.
Both the big Madrid-based parties now seem determined to force early elections in the Basque country, and, voters permitting, form the first non-nationalist administration in the region. This strategy only seems likely to sharpen the bitter polarisation in Basque society. No less a figure than the former Socialist prime minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, warned at the weekend that "demonisation" of moderate Basque nationalism would be an "historic error".