BASQUE RADICALS associated with the banned Batasuna party have announced that they will form a new party whose statutes explicitly reject the use of violence in pursuit of its goals of independence and socialism. This news confirms a welcome shift by Batasuna away from the shadow of the terrorist group Eta which has dominated the party since its foundation in 1978.
The shift has become evident since Eta declared a cessation of “offensive operations” on September 5th. Senior Batasuna figures have repeatedly called on the group to confirm categorically that this ceasefire is “permanent and internationally verifiable”. In the absence of any such confirmation, they have made it clear that the peace train will leave the station with or without Eta, which is said to be deeply divided over the prospect of its own dissolution.
This new scenario presents a rare opportunity for the politically and economically beleaguered Socialist Party, currently in government both in Madrid and in the Basque Autonomous Region. Prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero took a risk for peace when he offered talks to Eta in exchange for a previous ceasefire in 2006. He was badly burned both by Eta’s fundamentalist negotiating strategy and by the irresponsible campaign mounted by Spain’s conservative opposition to any peace process.
Since Eta ended that truce with a lethal bombing, Madrid has relied exclusively on police methods to counter Basque terrorism. This strategy, coupled with evaporating popular support, has crippled Eta’s operational capacity.
The Batasuna leaders have been very slow to learn that violence is an obstacle to independence but they do deserve some credit for maintaining their new peace strategy in the face of Zapatero’s very tough response to the Eta ceasefire. He has made no concessions whatsoever. Indeed recent months have seen waves of arrests of radicals, tainted by persistent allegations of torture. These claims are lent some credibility by democratic Spain’s poor human rights record.
It would be a gross mistake if the Spanish judiciary, often dangerously politicised, were now to put artificial hurdles on the radicals’ path to full participation in democratic politics. The legalisation of a new party that rejects violence would not be an encouragement to Eta. It would be a clear signal that all but a tiny minority of its erstwhile supporters at last understand that the group is utterly redundant.