Things change. In the 1960s Mario Onaindia was a "red", a "separatist" and a "terrorist", a leader of the Basque revolutionary group ETA, sentenced to death by a military court in the notorious Burgos trial in 1970. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he did a lot of reading.
Things changed, Franco died, and Onaindia was given amnesty. He became the ideologue of a long march from radical Basque nationalism to the social democracy of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE).
He persuaded a large minority of ETA members to abandon the gun for the ballot box. Others, however, remained implacably committed to achieving total Basque independence by terrorist means, as they are today.
Last March, during the Spanish general election campaign, I spotted Onaindia, whom I have known for many years, at a Socialist rally in Bilbao. He had recently suffered a heart attack, but seemed in good form. I was puzzled, however, by the fact that he did not introduce me to a man who tagged along with us, observing everyone we passed on the street.
Abruptly, the penny dropped. Mario Onaindia had been assigned a police bodyguard, in case ETA took a shot at him. The idea that such a man needed protection from his former comrades on the streets of Bilbao, 20 years after a Basque autonomous region was established within a Spanish democracy, was both shocking and banal. It was banal because ETA has so often targeted politicians in the past.
It was shocking because of the hopes raised by ETA's 14-month ceasefire, which had been ended last November. Only days earlier I had spoken to Arnaldo Otegi, the man tipped to be the Basque Gerry Adams, and he had seemed to give an indication that peace might be restored.
I had asked Otegi about an ETA operation earlier the same week, when a car-bomb almost caused a small massacre. Surely, even by ETA's own standards, this was an unusually callous and irresponsible act?
Otegi smiled enigmatically. "You know," he said, "there are many in our movement who would agree with you." It was a very small clue, but movement in peace processes is, as we know so well in Ireland, measured in millimetres.
Two months later ETA killed Jose Luis Lopez de Lacalle, a Basque journalist and veteran of the struggle against the dictatorship, who had spent five years in Franco's jails. Lacalle had taken a tough anti-terrorist position in recent times. He was shot several times, at point-blank range. He was killed, quite simply, for his ideas.
ETA's ceasefire was based on a pan-nationalist accord with two moderate nationalist parties. This found its public expression in the Lizarra Pact, signed by the moderates and the radical coalition which supports ETA, Herri Batasuna. Their common strategy was supposed to create alternative political institutions which would lead to self-determination for the Basque Country. In return, the radical nationalists associated with ETA agreed to support the moderate parties in the Basque parliament after the 1998 elections.
The fact that the moderate parties were willing to deal with ETA put them outside the pale of democracy, in the eyes of the centre-right Partido Popular (PP) government in Madrid, and of the opposition Socialists (PSOE). The moderates argued that they were going an extra mile for peace.
There is no doubt, however, that a broad consensus about the nature of the Spanish state, which had been shared by all democratic parties since the autonomy referendum in 1979, was ruptured by this new alliance of radical and moderate nationalists.
Elections to the Basque autonomous parliament, shortly after the Lizarra Pact was announced and the ceasefire came into operation, did not clarify matters. The radical nationalists gained seats, but the moderate nationalists gained little from the new strategy, and were now dependent on the radicals' support to govern in the Basque region.
The situation was not helped by conflicting signals from the Madrid administration. Sometimes the Prime Minister, Jose Maria a Aznar, seemed to be swayed by advisers who thought he should seriously engage with ETA, and make rapid concessions on prisoner issues. Generally, however, the harder line espoused by the Interior Minister, Jaime Mayor Oreja, prevailed.
Oreja, himself a Basque, asserted that the ceasefire was a "truce-trap", and that concessions should be minimal. Movement on prisoners was painfully slow. In any case, ETA was angry that the moderate nationalist parties were not pushing harder towards new institutions, and ended the ceasefire in November.
The situation since then has grown more and more confused, with mutual recriminations between all the parties concerned reaching a deafening climax. As well as ETA's periodic attacks, their younger supporters engage in a "street struggle" aimed at terrorising opponents in their daily lives.
The moderate nationalist parties castigate ETA for returning to violence, but the minority Basque government can only survive with radical nationalist support, which is much less forthcoming than during the ceasefire. Spain's general elections in March, in which the radicals called for abstention, muddied the Basque waters still further.
The PP almost overtook the PNV in the Basque region, something unthinkable five years ago. The PP, with some support from the PSOE, is now calling for new elections to the Basque parliament, which could well produce a PP first minister, the first time an opponent of Basque nationalism would head the Basque administration. While this is a perfectly democratic option, many Basque nationalists would see it as a "provocation".
There are indications that many radicals are weary of violence and would welcome an imaginative compromise that would give them a way out. A statement from Madrid, along the lines of the Downing Street Declaration, that Spain would not obstruct a democratic Basque decision to secede from the Spanish nation, might provide such an escape route.
However, even though it is extremely unlikely that a majority of Basques would ever exercise such an option, Mr Aznar's conservative Partido Popular is equally unlikely to offer it.
Squaring the Basque circle has never looked more difficult. But, in the week in which a former IRA leader takes his seat alongside unionists in a Stormont cabinet, it is never too late to hope it can be done.