"This is a revolution in Spanish thinking not seen for centuries." This is how Arnaldo Otegi, leader of the banned Basque party Batasuna - in an interview with this newspaper yesterday - described initiatives by the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Hyperbole aside, Zapatero's approach to the challenges raised by Spain's multiple national questions, as well as the issue of terrorism, is fresh and open-minded.
This is especially evident when contrasted with the increasingly dogmatic expressions of traditional Spanish nationalism from the main opposition party, the conservative Partido Popular (PP), and from some powerful sectors of Zapatero's own centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE). Zapatero has cleared the way for Catalonia (and by extension presumably the Basque Country) to redefine itself as a "nation". And he has offered "dialogue" to the Basque terrorist group ETA, on the strict condition that it first abandons violence definitively.
Those who accuse the prime minister of "dismembering Spain" and "capitulating to terrorism" are scare-mongering for their own political ends. But it is also true that managing a process which could see Spain reconstituted as a "nation of nations" will be extremely difficult, even dangerous.
Meanwhile, many victims of terrorism view with horror the possibility that ETA prisoners, some of them responsible for massacres as heinous as the Omagh bombing, could be granted early release. We are well acquainted here with such dilemmas. The arguments are oddly familiar. Injustices perpetrated by the Franco dictatorship, compounded by dirty wars and other abuses under democracy, mean that ETA prisoners are not "ordinary criminals", in the view of many Basques. Yet if the PSOE government is to gain the understanding of a sceptical Spanish public, and introduce an amnesty for former terrorists, then ETA, and Otegi's Batasuna party, should make Zapatero's task easier by ending all violence without further delay.
The choreography is undoubtedly complex. The banning of Batasuna, and the dispersal of ETA prisoners far from their homes, continue to feed resentment in the radical Basque nationalist camp. That is simply no excuse, however, for bombing businesses which refuse to yield to ETA's extortion. Nor for petrol-bombing the homes of political rivals. Nor should academics and journalists critical of ETA continue to live in fear of assassination.
If Batasuna really wants to support Zapatero's "revolution", Otegi and his colleagues should call for an end to terror in the Basque Country at once.