As power changed hands in Spain’s troubled Basque region yesterday, the confirmation of Patxi Lopez as the new regional prime minister was overshadowed by the threat of violence from the militant separatist group ETA.
Security was stepped up ahead of the parliamentary session that is due to elect Lopez prime minister after ETA announced it would make it a “priority” to target the region’s first government clearly defending its unity with Spain.
The recent arrest of ETA’s military leader foiled a car bombing planned for yesterday.
Graffiti threatening Lopez’s Socialist Party has appeared in Basque villages, and the names of some of Lopez’s future Cabinet members were not revealed early on for fear of attacks before they were supplied with bodyguards.
Yet even if ETA’s violence is expected to increase in the short run, there are also growing signs that its strategy of an armed struggle could be coming to the end of the road.
CHANGE OF POWER
Lopez will end the political domination of the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which has currents favorable to independence and had governed the region of 2.2 million residents since it was given a wide autonomy three decades ago.
The PNV won the regional elections in March, but the Socialists’ unofficial alliance with the conservative People’s Party (PP) will allow Lopez to form a minority government that is seen as heralding a new era.
On the national level, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialists and the PP are at odds, but they joined forces to fight separatist potential in the Basque region.
During the 1939 to 1975 dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, many Basques saw ETA as defending Basque culture against Spanish oppression.
After Franco’s death, however, the self-government granted to the region made ETA’s shootings and bombings look increasingly unnecessary.
DISAPPROVAL
Even in radical separatist circles, 66 percent of the Basques disapprove of ETA’s violence, while only 2 percent back it unconditionally, according to a poll last year.
ETA’s shrinking support has run parallel with its military decline, with Spanish and French police constantly arresting members of the group.
ETA killed four people last year, down from dozens annually in its heyday in the 1980s.
ETA is listed as a terrorist organization by the EU and the US.
Political parties linked to ETA have been barred from elections, a factor which has led many radical separatists to question the group’s violent strategy.
Arnaldo Otegi, leader of ETA’s outlawed political wing Batasuna, is seeking to unite a part of the separatist parties, trade unions and organizations in an attempt to switch from military to political methods in the campaign for independence, the daily El Pais said.
Otegi, however, described such reports as seeking to divide the separatist left.
Even ETA itself is now thought to be divided between those seeing armed struggle as hopeless and hardliners hoping to violently pressure the government into negotiations.
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