`Some bishops will have to do a lot of penance to get to heaven. And others will burn in hell."
That's the kind of rhetoric Spain has not heard since the black decades of Francoism. But these words were spoken only this week by Mr Javier Rojo. He is a leading Socialist Party (PSOE) candidate for the elections to the Basque autonomous parliament, which take place tomorrow week. He was referring to Basque nationalist bishops who, in his view, have been ambiguous about the terrorism of the Basque separatist group, ETA.
There was a deliberate irony in his use of the language of old-style Redemptorists. But there was also real anger, even rage, in the interview Mr Rojo gave to the Madrid newspaper, El Mundo. His tone is typical in this bitter election campaign. The Basque philosopher, Fernando Savater, has warned of "civil war" if the (non-violent) Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) remains in power.
Mr Savater and Mr Rojo have both lost friends and comrades to ETA in the past 18 months. ETA's latest victims include judges, journalists, business people, academics and local councillors of both the centreright Partido Popular (PP), which governs in Madrid, and the centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE), the PP's main opposition at state level. Thousands of public figures, major and minor, cannot drop into their local bars without bodyguards. Rage against ETA, then, is understandable, but why does it now extend to the moderate nationalists of the PNV? Mr Rojo accuses the outgoing PNV government of being "politically responsible" for the 29 killings carried out by ETA since its ceasefire ended in December 1999. He calls on the electorate to vote the PNV out of power for the first time since the Basque autonomous government was established in 1980.
For much of this period, Mr Rojo's party held ministerial portfolios in Basque governments led by the PNV. They shared a commitment to Basque autonomy. They also stood against ETA's campaign of violence in pursuit of Basque independence. All that changed utterly over the past three years.
In 1998 the PNV set up an "Irish forum", modelled on the Hume-Adams talks, to enter into dialogue with ETA's political supporters in Herri Batasuna (now Euskal Herritarrok) and ultimately with ETA itself. These discussions led to the Lizarra Pact, which asserted the right of the Basque people to decide their own future independently of Madrid.
In supporting this declaration, the PNV stepped outside the consensus about the nature of the Spanish state. The constitution proclaims as a basic principle "the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation". This principle has held Spanish democracy together since the transition from Franco's dictatorship. The PNV did not back the 1978 constitution. However, it has supported and operated the extensive autonomy powers offered by that constitution. Twenty years later, many Spanish democrats will not forgive the PNV for reopening this Pandora's box, even though the first creature to emerge from it, almost instantly, was ETA's ceasefire.
The PNV saw that ceasefire as a justification for its "taking a risk for peace". However, the then PP interior minister, Mr Jaime Mayor Oreja, described the ceasefire as a "truce-trap". Mr Mayor Oreja, himself a Basque, argued that the Lizarra Pact had lured the moderate nationalists away from constitutional politics, but failed to persuade ETA to accept the rules of democracy.
"ETA's ceasefire was like a bomb placed in the Spanish constitutional system", one of the Prime Minister's senior anti-terrorist advisers told me earlier this year. "Its intended consequence was the catastrophic social division in the Basque Country we see today." ETA did return to terrorism. The moderate nationalists found themselves twisting in the wind, accused by ETA of being lukewarm on independence, and by the PP and PSOE of being criminally soft on terrorism. Last March, Mr Mayor Oreja stepped down as interior minister to fight to replace the PNV's Mr Juan Jose Ibarretxe as lehendakari, or first minister. Mr Mayor Oreja argues that it is unhealthy for any government to be dominated by the same party for 20 years.
Under normal circumstances, that would be true. But moderate nationalists warn that these are not normal circumstances. They add that Mr Mayor Oreja's alleged lack of empathy with the Basque culture make him unfit to lead their country. They fear that a PP-led Basque government could drive many of their supporters into ETA's camp, pitching the Basque Country into full-scale civil conflict. The PP says the Basque Country is already in a state of conflict because the PNV's "ambiguity" encourages ETA.
The Basque voters, then, are faced with an unenviable dilemma on May 13th, damned to hellfire by one side for voting nationalist, and equally damned by the other if they don't.
woodworth@ireland.com
