The Basque Country faces tomorrow's Spanish general election more bitterly divided than it has been for many years. High hopes of a peaceful resolution to the 30-year-old conflict here have been shattered by ETA's relaunched terror campaign. Party supporters are going to the polls - or abstaining - in a mood of angry recrimination. There are fears that the abstention campaign by supporters of ETA could lead to violent confrontations tomorrow.
ETA marked the opening of the campaign by killing a Basque Socialist Party leader. An ETA car bomb injured seven people, including two civil guards, in San Sebastian last Monday.
Attacks by ETA during election campaigns are nothing new. What is different on this occasion is the way in which its return to violence, after 14 months' relative tranquillity, has turned almost all the political parties against each other.
The infant Basque peace process had itself divided parties which had previously been united against terrorism. But it also brought about a new unity between moderate and radical nationalists.
That, too, is now shattered, without any obvious possibility of rapprochement between the Madrid-based parties and moderate Basque nationalists. The Madrid-based parties themselves are also at each other's throats on the Basque issue, something they have always previously tried to avoid because of the implications for state security.
The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which has led autonomous Basque governments since 1980, feels it took a big risk for peace when it negotiated the Estella pact with ETA's political wing, Euskal Herritarrok (EH), in September 1998. This pact, which committed all nationalist parties to work together for Basque self-determination, was followed weeks later by ETA's unilateral ceasefire.
EH then participated fully in the Basque parliament for the first time and supported a PNV minority government.
The government party in Madrid, the centre-right Partido Popular (PP), led by Mr Jose Maria Aznar, said from the outset the ceasefire was a "trick truce", and made relatively few concessions on issues like prisoners.
Mr Aznar has claimed on the hustings that ETA's new campaign vindicates the PP's response. The PP was also fundamentally opposed to the Estella pact's strategy, which it saw as a precursor of the break-up of Spain. The opposition Socialists (PSOE) were almost equally critical of the pact.
By last November ETA, frustrated by a perceived lack of the energy in the PNV's pursuit of self-determination, announced its return to arms. The PNV's parliamentary alliance with EH began to unravel. However, even when ETA started killing again, the PNV refused to withdraw from the Estella pact, earning unprecedented odium from the Madrid parties.
Mr Aznar began his election campaign by accusing the PNV of being "complicit" in ETA's terrorism. This week ETA issued an extraordinarily hard-line communique, in which it accused the PNV of "allowing the peace process to rot" and, rather menacingly, described the Basque first minister, Mr Juan Mari Ibarretxe, as "an obstruction" to peace. The PNV responded with uncharacteristic directness by telling ETA to "do Basque society a favour and disappear".
Meanwhile, the PP has intensified attacks against the Socialist Party on the Basque issue. The PSOE is furious that its role as a loyal opposition has been "betrayed". Nevertheless, it promises to give priority to convening all democratic forces in the relatively unlikely event that it displaces the PP tomorrow.
However, the moderate nationalists are likely to gain votes from EH supporters who do not abstain, and could hold a pivotal role in the new Madrid parliament. Alienated though the PNV is from ETA, it is unlikely to agree to the tough "anti-terrorist" line which both PP and PSOE will now demand. The Basque conflict looks more intractable than ever.