More than 650 elected mayors and councillors from 302 towns and villages in the Basque Country, Navarre and even France called at the weekend for an independent Basque state.
They pledged themselves "to promote internationally its existence as a separate nation and their wish to act within the framework and institutions of Europe." They elected a committee to work towards this aim and agreed to continue with their separatist goal.
The meeting in Pamplona was attended by representatives of the regional government party, PNV, its political allies, including EH, the political wing of ETA, and two French nationalist parties.
Although a total of 2,000 local politicians had been invited to attend, it was boycotted by the major centrist political parties which condemned the meeting and warned of possible dangers.
Mr Odon Elorza, the Socialist mayor of San Sebastian, was one of those who refused to attend. "Such meetings only serve to divide rather than unite the Basque people," he said yesterday.
Many were critical of the decision to hold the meeting in the region of Navarre, not part of the Basque Country, where Basque nationalist parties enjoy only 12 per cent of the votes.
Mr Javier Arenas, the new secretary-general of the government Popular Party, described the meeting as excessive and "a pantomime and a provocation."
At the same time, the Basque Socialist Party leader, Mr Nicolas Redondo Terreros, said that it was a "black day" for the Basque country. "It shows no respect for the state or reality and is a political, cultural and ideological colonisation of the nationalism of a land in which they have minimal political representation."
It is now almost five months since ETA declared its ceasefire and four months since regional elections in which PNV failed to win an overall majority. Unable to persuade the Socialists to join them in government, they were forced to call on other nationalist parties which included ETA's political front, EH. Some believe that EH's - and thus ETA's - price has been an increasingly proseparatist stance by PNV.
Others are less convinced. In their opinion, PNV has always been pro-separatist, but was reluctant to align itself with an organisation involved in terrorism, and that once ETA had renounced violence it was able to show its true colours.
This viewpoint gained ground in the Pamplona meeting when Mr Borja Jauregi, the PNV mayor of Hondarribia, told the delegates that "violence detracts from, perverts and impedes political debate."
While there have been no ETA killings since the summer, there has been little halt in almost daily incidents of street violence from pro-ETA youths such as burning of banks and public buildings, the smashing of windows and other damage. But ETA complains that the government has made no reciprocal gesture, in particular the return of all Basque prisoners to jails near their homes, in exchange for their renunciation of violence.
Only a few of the 500-odd prisoners are now in jails in or near the Basque Country and others have been released on provisional liberty, but the majority still remain hundreds of miles away, some as distant as the Canary Islands or the south of Spain.
A report leaked to a Madrid newspaper at the weekend suggests that their frustration has reached a limit and that ETA is preparing, with the backing of PNV leadership, a tough and uncompromising ultimatum to the government. The planned communique is expected to reiterate the demand that prisoners be returned and that the government show good will.
Although at the end of last year the Prime Minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, said he had authorised "contacts" with ETA, there has been little progress. ETA is expected to demand that these negotiations be speeded up, and that senior ETA members be released to take part. It is hard to see how the government could give in to such a tough demand in the short term.
