Five years after ETA's killing of Miguel Angel Blanco brought millions of Spaniards on to the streets against terrorism, the Basque conflict has become more bitter and intractable than ever, writes Paddy Woodworth
Five years ago last weekend, a stream of unforgettable images from Spain were wired around the world. Millions of citizens were marching, whitened palms raised in mute but eloquent rejection of ETA's terrorism.
Most significantly, some of the biggest demonstrations took place in the Basque Country itself, in the heartland of the organisation that had been fighting for Basque independence for nearly 40 years.
This outpouring of popular revulsion against ETA had been sparked off by the killing of Miguel Angel Blanco, a young Basque town councillor and amateur rock musician.
His only crime was to belong to the centre-right Partido Popular, which governed (and governs) in Madrid, and is hostile to Basque nationalism.
On July 10th 1996, ETA had kidnapped Blanco as he returned to work after lunch.
The group immediately informed the government that, unless their 500-odd prisoners, dispersed in jails throughout Spain, were returned to the Basque Country in 48 hours, Blanco would be shot.
The huge demonstrations began almost as soon as the news of Blanco's kidnapping broke, in a vain attempt to persuade ETA to spare his life.
Two days later, his captors took him into a wood near a busy road and fired two bullets into the back of his neck.
The demonstrations continued for days afterwards, growing bigger and bigger. It seemed that ETA had made a crass political error.
That view was shared even within its political support group, then called Herri Batasuna.
According to recent Spanish court documents, one of its local politicians, who had himself allegedly assisted Blanco's killers, subsequently expressed just such an opinion to the man accused of pulling the trigger, Javer García Gaztelu.
The ETA militant's response was enigmatic: "You will have to wait a year to see the outcome."
García Gaztelu may well have simply been trying to put a good spin on a very bad situation for ETA. But his remark turned out to be uncannily prescient.
Despite a continuing terror campaign, which cost the lives of five more centre-right Basque local councillors, within that year ETA had persuaded the democratic nationalists of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) to join in a broad movement for Basque self-determination.
Hitherto, the PNV had seemed, at least in public, willing enough to settle for the extensive autonomy granted to three Basque provinces by the 1978 constitution.
Indeed, they had dominated regional politics and culture for 20 years under these arrangements.
It seems that moderate nationalists feared that the backlash after Blanco's killing was directed at them as well, and threatened their political hegemony.
It is also true that the PNV had always felt that the constitution sold the Basques short, and that, after 20 years, it was time to renegotiate it.
In return for the PNV's switch to active support for Basque sovereignty, ETA called a ceasefire in September 1998.
This was one of a series of carefully- choreographed moves, explicitly based on a rather selective reading of the Northern Irish peace process.
The PNV received little thanks for bringing about a cessation of violence.
Instead, the ceasefire was described by the Spanish government as a "truce-trap", and Madrid moved at a snail's pace on prisoner issues.
Basque nationalism was denounced repeatedly, often in demagogic terms, in the media for undermining the consensus on which the post-Franco Spanish state was based.
It became clear that Madrid would not repeat the magic formula of the Downing Street Declaration.
Unlike London's 1990s detachment from Belfast, Spain has very strong strategic, economic and ideological interests in keeping the Basque Country Spanish. Frustrated with this impasse, and having shown none of the negotiating skills learned by Sinn Féin and the IRA, ETA ended its ceasefire in late 1999.
Expanding its targets to include Basque journalists and academics who opposed its violence, the group contemptuously disregarded the massive support the ceasefire enjoyed among ordinary Basques.
Voters deserted its political wing in droves in last year's Basque elections, which saw the PNV returned to regional power. Since then, however, politics in the Basque Country has become more bitterly polarised than ever.
The Madrid government, and the judiciary, have moved steadily towards banning all the political groups associated with ETA.
The PNV argues that these moves can only further radicalise ETA supporters and give the group "the oxygen of repression".
Meanwhile, the PNV has remained committed to self-determination.
Last week the Basque government embarked on a collision course with Madrid through a declaration that it will unilaterally adopt powers which Spain refuses to give it.
The leader of the Partido Popular in the Basque parliament immediately accused the PNV of negotiating the declaration with ETA, while a Madrid minister said that "threat of terrorism has now shifted into the Basque institutions themselves".
In this poisoned atmosphere of confrontation among democrats, perhaps only the killers of Miguel Angel Blanco have much cause for self-congratulation.
Paddy Woodworth is an Irish Times journalist, and author of a book on the Basque conflict, Dirty War, Clean Hands (CUP), which will be published in paperback by Yale University Press in the autumn.