What price optimism?

In March of last year, I wrote a piece for Flakmag on the news of an announced ETA ceasefire in Spain. At that point, prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero had accepted the Basque terrorist group's declaration of an end to violence, and expressed a willingness to begin communications about formally disbanding the separatist group in the interest of political negotiations on the Basque region's call for autonomy. These political channels are what the Catalonia region has used of late to secure a measure of autonomy -- what critics decry as the destabilization of Spain and what supporters argue only more officially represents the cultural and linguistic differences between Catalonia and the rest of Spain. Support for autonomy remains high in the Basqueland, though support for ETA is abysmal.

On December 30th, ETA set off a car bomb in one of the parking garages of Barajas, Madrid's airport. Although they had forewarned the authorities of the attack -- which is ETA's usual M.O. -- two Ecuadorians who were sleeping in their cars and thus unaware of the evacuation, were killed in the attack. As it happens, on December 29th, Rodriquez Zapatero had given a speech to the Spanish Parliament in which he expressed optimism about the continuing peace negotiations with ETA, asking: “Are we better off now with a permanent cease-fire, or when we had bombs, car bombs and explosions? . . . This time next year, we will be better off than we are today.”

Earlier this week, as the Spanish Parliament met again, under much more somber circumstances, to discuss how to proceed on the topic of ETA terrorism, Rodriguez Zapatero apologized for his earlier remarks, saying “I want to recognize the clear mistake I made before all Spanish citizens,” for which the opposition party in the chamber applauded him, after jeering him throughout his speech. Rodriguez Zapatero, caught between a desire to find an end game with ETA -- to resolve the situation once and for all, in a manner that halts the group's 30 years of violence in Spain -- and the hardliner approach of refusing to negotiate with terrorists, has become something of a punching bag for the opposition party in Spain after this latest attack. Is it fair that he should have to apologize for his optimism? Is it fair that Mariano Rajoy, the main opposition party leader, has blamed Rodriguez Zapatero outright for the two deaths caused in ETA's latest attack? No, it is not fair. While I would not profess to know the answer to a question plaguing everyone at this post-9/11 point in civilization, in my opinion, given the two extremes of Bush and Rodriguez Zapatero -- one whose strict no-negotiation approach to terrorism has wrought 6 years of war and no assurance that we're any safer from terrorism than we were on September 10th, 2001; the other whose attempts to find a peaceful and diplomatic solution to terrorism backfired, yes, but not through the government's willful misconduct -- I'll take option B.

Spain -- or at least Spain's currently dominant Socialist party -- has to find a way to continue the peace process without bowing down to terrorism. And they have to do it before the PP (Rajoy's conservative Popular Party) gets their hands on the government, swapping 21st-century diplomacy for Bush's medieval tactics, and putting the process of disbanding an already deathbed-ridden ETA back 20 years, which they most certainly will do. Again, I wish Rodriguez Zapatero buena suerte.