SPAIN: Relations between government and opposition in the Spanish parliament reached a new low this week, reports Paddy Woodworth in Bilbao
The atmosphere in the Spanish parliament was acrid with the smell of burning bridges this week, as government and opposition leaders debated the state of the nation and often seemed to be talking about two completely different countries.
The leader of the conservative Partido Popular (PP), Mariano Rajoy, launched a ferocious and vituperative attack on the Socialist Party (PSOE) prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The gravity of his accusations has no precedents since parliamentary democracy was restored to Spain in 1977.
"In one year you have turned the whole country belly up . . . You have filled the streets with sectarianism . . . You have given new life to a moribund Eta . . . You have betrayed the dead," he said.
The fact that Rajoy repeatedly chose terrorism as the main ground for his assault is particularly significant. Bipartisanship on this issue has been a sacred rule of engagement between the major Spanish parties for many years.
Zapatero was relatively restrained in his response and even offered to assume that Rajoy had accepted his request that these remarks be withdrawn, though the opposition leader pointedly refused to do so. Nevertheless, Rajoy's charge that Zapatero's policies betrayed Eta's victims, many of whom were PSOE members, clearly opened a deep wound.
Striking a tone more sorrowful than angry, Zapatero finally concluded on Thursday: "The only thing we have in common is the pain we feel for our dead".
The tone of Rajoy's speech was widely described as "apocalyptic" and "catastrophist" in the Spanish press. It had clear echoes of the violent divisions of the 1930s, when the irreconcilable differences between the "two Spains" led to a disastrous civil war and 40 years of dictatorship.
The context is very different now, and there is no sign of sabres rattling offstage. It may indeed be a sign of the stability of Spanish democracy today that such profound differences can at last come fully into the open.
The much-lauded "consensus" which cemented the transition to democracy in the late 1970s required that conflicting views on certain key debates - republic v monarchy, federalism v centralism, church v state - had to be put on indefinite hold.
Under Zapatero's premiership, many of these buried topics have returned to haunt Spanish politics. His recent decision to permit gay marriage, for example, has sent the PP and its mentors in the Catholic hierarchy into apoplexy.
There have even been suggestions that King Juan Carlos should put his Catholicism before his constitutional duties and avoid signing the Bill into law. Happily, the king has a keener nose for changing winds than his most fervent supporters. He quickly indicated that he would follow the will of the parliament.
The greatest divide, however, remains the thorny question of the shape of the Spanish state, which is almost inextricably linked with the painful issue of Eta's terrorism.
While in opposition, Zapatero proposed and agreed a hardline anti-terrorist pact with Rajoy's predecessor, José María Aznar. He also supported a draconian law which banned Batasuna, the party widely believed to be Eta's political wing.
Both measures were based on the premise that there is no political conflict underlying Basque terrorism, and that police methods alone are sufficient to end Eta.
It is, therefore, understandable that the PP should cry "Foul!" when Zapatero now speaks the deliberately ambiguous language of conflict resolution.
"No political price should be paid for an end to violence," Zapatero told parliament on Wednesday and then added: "But politics can contribute to the end of violence."
The PP claims that such statements mean that the prime minister is already negotiating with Eta, and that it is the PSOE which is responsible for the collapse of bipartisanship.
The prime minister denies this and promises to bring any discussions with Eta to the immediate attention of the parliament.
Matters are complicated further by developments in Catalonia, where the PSOE's regional leader is in government with pro-independence radical nationalists. This regional government proposes recognition of Catalonia as a nation, and the right to raise all taxes in the region.
Is Zapatero a visionary statesman leading Spain into a federal future which reflects the democratic wishes of the majority? Or is he a weak opportunist, bowing to pressures from regional nationalist minorities and opening the Pandora's box of a Balkanised Iberia in the process?
This remains an open question, but there is no doubt that, at the moment, his refreshingly open style enjoys a lot more support than the angry, finger-wagging rhetoric of Rajoy.