The future direction of Spain's deeply-divided Basque Autonomous Community remains troubled and unclear after last Sunday's elections. The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which has been campaigning for "sovereignty" from Spain, remains the dominant force in the region, with the support of a smaller party. It is almost certain to lead the next Basque government. Far from gaining the absolute majority it aimed for, however, it has slipped from 33 to 29 seats.
This probably puts an end to the plan by the PNV leader, Juan José Ibarretxe, to hold a referendum on the sovereignty issue, in defiance of Madrid. Ibarretxe originally billed these elections as a kind of plebiscite to legitimise such a referendum. Even some of his own supporters, however, clearly believe that this was a divisive move, deeply threatening to those Basques whose first loyalty is to Spain. Ibarretxe must now seek a coalition partner. The likely candidates, however, will make demands that the PNV will find hard to accommodate.
The Socialist Party (PSOE), which has been enjoying a long honeymoon in power in Madrid, did well on Sunday, gaining five seats. It pushed the other state-wide party, the deeply conservative Partido Popular (PP) into third place, and its 18 seats would, theoretically, enable Ibarretxe to form a very stable government.
The PSOE prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, is more flexible on the Basque question than his PP predecessor, the dogmatically Spanish nationalist José María Aznar. He has offered to negotiate an entirely new statute of autonomy with the PNV.
Ibarretxe's other potential partner is even more problematic. The irruption on to the political scene of the Communist Party of the Basque Lands (EHAK), unheard of until two weeks ago, has upset all political calculations.
EHAK's overnight success - it won nine seats on its first outing - is due to its having offered to represent the views of Batasuna, the pro-independence Basque party banned for its alleged links to the terrorist group Eta.
Eta has been greatly weakened by effective police action and kept a very low profile during the election campaign. But the 150,000 votes cast for EHAK show that radical and leftist Basque nationalism has not gone away just because a Madrid court declared Batasuna - and other associated groups - illegal.
The challenge now facing the democratic parties in the Basque country is how to accommodate legitimate aspirations to a separate Basque identity, without making concessions to a terrorist group which has repeatedly demonstrated that it holds democratic politics in contempt.