IF YOU THINK YOU'RE A NATION YOU ARE ONE:

ETA: ready to talk?: Despite last week’s car bomb and subsequent arrests, there are signs Basque radicals are secretly moving towards a deal with Spain. (Elizabeth Nash, 2/13/05, Sunday Herald)

Movement could occur over Eta prisoners. More than 700 Eta prisoners are held in Spanish jails. The organisation wants them moved nearer home, as one condition for a possible ceasefire. This demand was strengthened by revelations last year of massive discontent among Eta prisoners, many of whom are ready to abandon armed struggle.

The political climate has transformed since José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s Socialists took office following elections last March 14. The former Conservative prime minister, José María Aznar, froze contacts even with his Basque counterpart, Juan José Ibarretxe. From this emerged Ibarretxe’s plan to turn the autonomous Basque region into a “free nation in association with Spain” with its own courts and foreign representation. The plan, narrowly approved by the Basque regional parliament in December, was defeated on February 1 by MPs in Madrid who ruled it unconstitutional.

Zapatero promises to negotiate proposals for wider Basque home rule if all Basque parties, not just Ibarretxe’s nationalists and their radical allies, approved. “Your aspirations for greater areas of self-government are possible,” he says.

Radical nationalists in the French Basque country look on in envy.

“We don’t have any Basque regional self- government, and France doesn’t even accept Basque as a co-official language,” says Mertxe Colina, spokeswoman for France’s left-wing Basque nationalist Abertzaleen Batasuna grouping, speaking from the French Basque town of Saint Jean de Luz. “What Basques have achieved with their autonomy in Spain we can only dream of.”

The organisation no longer supports armed struggle. “We favour strong civil disobedience, such as occupying local government offices or empty second homes, as a way of promoting our aims,” Colina says.

She welcomes Ibarretxe’s plan to develop political links between Basques in Spain and France. Cross-frontier talks would boost French Basques’ confidence that they belong to a bigger, stronger Basque homeland, but frightens centralists in Madrid who fear the germ of an independent state whose breakaway could signal the dismemberment of Spain.