A place for the Basques
Stephen Aris
Bilbao It should have been a routine patrol but the atmosphere inside the police van taking us to inspect a road block just outside Bilbao was tense. As we drove out of the barracks and on to the motorway, the captain in the front seat was on the radio, giving a running commentary on our progress. Stacked in a rack was a formidable array of weaponry: a highpowered rifle, a machine gun, rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. On the jump-seat facing backwards sat another policeman, watching the road behind us.
Peace may be at hand in the Basque country but plainly the police are taking no chances. They cannot forget that since the beginning of this year 36 of their number have been gunned down — the majority at the hands of the military wing of ETA , the Basque 'freedom fighters'. And with their attitude to the Madrid agreement, signed 10 days ago, still undefined, it is, as far as the police are concerned, very much business as usual.
It would be foolish and naive to expect an immediate change. Hostility and suspicion on both sides are too deep-rooted for old attitudes to fade away overnight. Too much blood and too much emotion has been expended. But at the same time the agreement reached in Madrid can only be described as historic. It marks the final stage in Spain's remarkably swift transition from dictatorship to democracy and it underlines, yet again, that in Adolfo Suarez the Spanish have a Prime Minister who possesses a Houdini-like ability to wriggle out of impossible situations The Basques have had every reason to be suspicious of Suarez. As a Castilian and as a former apparatchik of the Franco regime he was thought to have little feeling for or understanding of Basque aspirations. To Madrid the Basque country, guarded by its mountain ring, with its peculiar customs and strange, guttural language, represents hostile and alien territory. The Basques will remind you that during last spring's election campaign Suarez spent the grand total of three hours in the region. And yet last week it was possible to find Basques with kind words for the Prime Minister. 'You have to hand it to him', one militant told me. 'He is a very clever politician. He knows how to manoeuvre, to duck and weave. He reminds me of your Disraeli.'
Like Disraeli, Suarez has ushered in a profound political reform inimical both to his natural constituents, the Castilian middle classes of the government party, the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) and, most important, to the army which stands behind it. With great skill Suarez and the king have apparently convinced the army that to deny the Basques their autonomist demands would be a greater threat to the cherished unity of Spain.
What does the agreement mean in practice? On paper at least the principle of Spain's unity has been preserved. Suarez has succeeded in extracting from the Basque negotiators a recognition of the primacy of the constitution and an acknowledgement that the transitional phase towards the setting up of a Basque parliament will be subject to the approval and control of the Spanish Parliament (the Cortes) in Madrid. But that is about as far as it goes. In almost every other respect the Basques will be masters in their own house.
In effect the document is a charter for Basque state rights, as the Basque politicians, almost to a man, have been quick to acknowledge. 'It is even better than what we had in 1936', said one leftwinger. Thus the way is now open for the fulfilment of the Basques' greatest ambitions: their own directly elected parliament; their own schools; their own judiciary and their own system of taxation. After decades of paying tribute to Madrid, they will now be allowed to keep the bulk of their tax revenue to plough back into the Basque country, now under the shadow of a severe economic crisis. For the businessmen of Bilbao this is an essential concession. But what gladdens the hearts of ordinary Basques is the thought that the police will shortly be moving out, to be replaced by a native force.
One of the most remarkable features of the last ten days is the extent to which all shades of Basque opinion, from right to extreme left, have closed ranks in support of the agreement. But if the pact has united the political forces of the Basque country, it has left ETA itself even more divided than before. A day or so before the deal was done I visited ETA's political-military wing at one of their clandestine headquarters. On a previous visit last September there was much business with blindfolds (for me) and red hoods (for them). This time the atmosphere was more relaxed. Only a couple of weeks before these same men had been organising the much-publicised bombing campaign in the resorts of the Costa del Sol. But they now sounded much more like politicians than terrorists.They had not ,.they said, abandoned their fight for independence but they thought that the new agreement deserved some support. It could, they said, be an important step along the road. For this reason they had stopped bombing and were awaiting developments.
So too are ETA Militar, the rival and more bloodthirsty branch. Their political party, Herri Batasuna, which gained a striking success in last spring's elections, has already positioned itself firmly astride the fence. It has all but promised not to campaign against the pact in the forthcoming referendum on 15 September. But whether the same will go for the commandos themselves is less certain.
One of the difficulties of analysing Basque politics has been that rampant nationalism has tended to obscure genuine political differences. This has led to some distinctly odd political alliances and has provided an umbrella under which ETA could work safely. One effect of the Madrid pact has been to remove this protective covering. It will be a revealing process for all concerned and the chances are that ETA Militar will not survive the light of common day.
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