THIS IS the season when Spanish politicians like to be photographed on the beach, softening the disaffection in which they are held by many voters through a display of common humanity.
The Spanish playa, however, has also long been a favoured space for the Basque terrorist group Eta which has targeted the country's huge tourist industry every summer for the last three decades. Five small bombs over the last two weeks are a reminder that this organisation, while greatly debilitated, still poses a lethal security threat.
Eta's "summer campaign" aims not to kill tourists, but to damage the economy. The current bombings have caused no significant injuries. However, bombs are dangerous by definition: 34 tourists, including several Irish citizens, were injured by a bomb in 1996. This year, there are fears that Eta may be planning something much worse. Security sources in the Basque Country and Madrid claim that evidence emerging after several significant recent arrests suggests that a so-called "spectacular" is on the terrorists' agenda.
However, neither the recent bombs nor these security forecasts should obscure the fact that Eta is at its weakest level in terms of logistics and popular support. Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, often caricatured as "soft" on terrorism, deserves some credit for this. Indeed, if Eta were his only problem, Zapatero could probably indulge in just a little seaside relaxation himself, having been fairly comfortably re-elected for a second term last March. Instead, he faces a series of other crises that is likely to keep him indoors for most of this month.
Firstly, after months of wilful denial, he has had to admit that the Spanish economy is facing recession, with unemployment at a 10-year high. The wheels of Spain's administrative finances, greatly complicated by the country's devolution of powers to 17 autonomous governments, are screeching under this pressure. Zapatero's problem is that his minority government needs support from smaller parties to approve his annual budget, but regional rivalries make this support extremely elusive.
In Catalonia, he finds himself in confrontation with the Catalan section of even his own Socialist Party, which governs the region. The first minister there is demanding implementation of a new financial deal which poorer regions regard as selfish. In the Basque Country, meanwhile, the autonomous government is pressing ahead with a "consultation" (read referendum) on "sovereignty" (read independence) which Zapatero regards as a threat to the constitution.
The prime minister may take a little consolation from his achievement last month of a detente with the main opposition party, the conservative Partido Popular. The PP has abandoned the far-right rhetoric it espoused during his first administration and is co-operating with the government on critical areas like terrorism and the justice system. The opposition will offer him no quarter, however, on the battlefield of the economy. And that is the issue which will cast most shadows for Spaniards as they make their August exodus to the beach this year.