WHITE HANDS, black balaclavas: these two images dominated this week's campaign in Spain's general election which takes place on March 3rd. ETA, the Basque terrorist organisation which has been fighting for independence from Spain for more than 35 years, was imposing its agenda with a vengeance.
The whitened hands, upraised with open palms and spread fingers by hundreds of thousands of anti ETA demonstrators in Madrid on Monday, symbolised rejection of terrorist violence. The black balaclavas were worn by both police and pro ETA demonstrators in the Basque country. They indicated the climate of fear which has dominated that region for some time, and which now overshadows the election debate.
After 13 years of Mr Felipe Gonzalez's Socialist (PSOE) government, the issues should have been about renewal. Battered by a series of increasingly outrageous scandals, the PSOE looked like a soft target.
The only question seemed to be whether the reconstructed Spanish right, in the form of Mr Jose Maria Aznar's Partido Popular (PP), could finally shake off the legacy of Francoism, and persuade a majority of the Spanish electorate to give it a democratic mandate. The opinion polls give the PP a strong lead of up to 10 points, but there have been last minute reversals before.
The PP's "electibility" is probably still the key question, but two recent shootings by ETA, part of a fresh onslaught which started in December, brought the whole campaign to a halt. In particular, the killing of Mr Francisco Tomas y Valiente, a constitutional lawyer who epitomised, in the view of most Spaniards, the best aspects of the country's return to democracy, was seen as a blow to the heart of the State.
Last Monday, the major parties, trade unions and civic associations took to the streets, in the biggest display of democratic unity since the attempted military coup brought a million people out in protest in 1981. Heading the whole demonstration, Mr Gonzalez suddenly looked like a statesman again, while Mr Aznar looked junior and marginal beside him.
The next day, the gloves were off again, with Mr Aznar declaring that "the demonstration went very well because things have been going so badly under the Socialists." He had previously made a reference, probably deliberately ambiguous, to the GAL scandal, which has implicated several leading Socialists. The Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacion were illegal death squads, set up by policemen and senior Socialist officials, which killed 27 people in the 1980s.
"If GAL had been successful," Mr Aznar told the media, "we would not be in the situation we are in today." He quickly added that he did not think that GAL was politically or morally justifiable, but he did seem to be sending out a signal that the PP would take a harder line on ETA than the PSOE has.
Not to be outdone, members of the PSOE leadership argued for the banning of ETA's political front, Herri Batasona (HB), though the Interior Minister later clarified that they only contemplated charging individual members with particular crimes "in support of terrorism".