Charlemagne

Jose Maria Aznar
Sep 13th 2001
From The Economist print edition

Spain's prime minister may damage his high reputation by mishandling
the Basques

ON THE whole, Jose Maria Aznar has been a striking success as Spain's
prime minister. When he and his conservative People's Party (PP) won
power in the 1996 general election, some Spaniards were suspicious.
The secular-minded suspected that they would see the stricter hand of
Catholic traditionalists in social legislation. Socialist-inclined
workers thought Mr Aznar might thump the trade unions. Liberals
thought he might be an intolerant authoritarian, a capitalist of the
crony-collecting kind. Many thought he would bear a Castilian
hostility to the regions, which had gradually been gathering a lot
more clout in a much less centralised Spain.

Few of these fears have been borne out. Mr Aznar has relentlessly
moved his PP to what he calls "the reformist centre", denying it even
the label "centre-right". He has kept a fair consensus between
unions, bosses and government. In Europe, sensing the predominance of
the moderate left, he has gone out of his way to befriend Britain's
Tony Blair, dutifully perusing the gospel of the "Third Way".

Dour he may be, and dull on television. But on the whole Mr Aznar has
been straight, efficient, clear-headed, honest. Building on
foundations laid by his modernising Socialist predecessor, Felipe
Gonzalez, he has steadily freed Spain's economy and overseen one of
the fastest growth rates in the EU. In Europe his Spain is taken
seriously; Mr Aznar makes much of its new ascendancy in Latin
America, where it has overtaken the United States as the biggest
investor. Mr Aznar says Spain deserves to join the G8 group of rich
countries. He has a case.

But he readily admits that on one front he has been utterly
stymied. "The Basque problem is the Spanish problem," he says
bluntly. "All the others are relatively minor." Yet he looks starkly
unlikely to solve it. One big reason is that even the non-violent
Basques are a tricky lot, while the terrorists of ETA are militarily
hard to beat because they have enough popular support to give them
water to swim in. In Spain's three mainly Basque provinces, a tenth
of the voters plumped for the pro-ETA party in the latest regional
election, in May.

But another big reason for the impasse is that Mr Aznar has himself
been obtuse, by unwisely alienating the majority of Basques who do
not back ETA. In May's election, nationalists—moderates and ETA-
lovers combined—won 53% of the vote. Before the poll, Mr Aznar
sounded confident that his PP would oust the non-violent Basque
National Party, the PNV, as the region's biggest. In the event, the
voters slapped Mr Aznar in the face and gave the PNV a resounding
boost of reassurance.

You might have thought that, seeing the strength of Basque
nationalism, Mr Aznar would have admitted his misjudgment, changed
tune and acknowledged that to defeat ETA he would have to come to
terms with the PNV. Not a bit of it. Because some people in the PNV
share roughly the same separatist aims as the terrorists behind ETA,
Mr Aznar damns them both equally, denouncing Basque nationalism, non-
violent as well as violent, as a "Nazi ideology". In particular, he
makes few bones about loathing Xabier Arzalluz, the PNV's long-
serving leader, as virtually a racist. He also belittles the much
younger Juan Jose Ibarretxe, head of the Basques' regional
government, as a mere cypher, instead of building him up—as many
advised Mr Aznar to do—as a more flexible figure with whom he might
profitably do business. The PNV, says Mr Aznar, "doesn't stand
against ETA, it hides behind it...it excuses terrorism."

Mr Aznar's bitter feelings are understandable. ETA regularly murders
politicians, especially from Mr Aznar's party, and people who just
happen to be in the wrong place. The Basques already have a lot of
autonomy; some of their nationalists have gone on spookily about
racial identity; the PNV's Mr Arzalluz is indeed a slippery fellow
whose condemnations of terrorism can carry a whiff of moral
ambiguity, accompanied as they often are by denunciations of "the
Spanish state". It is reasonable, too, to fear that handing still
more autonomy to the Basques might encourage other regions,
especially Catalonia, to demand more too. And Mr Aznar is right to
say that, if the PNV government co-operated more energetically with
Madrid on security, ETA might have a harder time of it. Recent
successes tend to bear that out.



Don't put all your Basques in one exit
But Mr Aznar's obduracy on the political front is playing into the
extremists' hands—by pointlessly antagonising the non-violent Basque
majority. Basques, he says, "can argue for anything— provided, first,
that they do not kill; and, second, that they respect the rules of
the game." It is, of course, precisely the game's rules that the non-
violent Basques want to change. In particular, they would probably
have to alter Spain's constitution to hold what they call "a
referendum on self-determination" that might, if most people in the
region wished it, lead to secession.

Never, says Mr Aznar. Spain's indivisibility is underwritten by the
constitution of 1978 endorsed by an overwhelming majority of
Spaniards—and that's that. No, say the Basques, only a minority of
Basques voted in favour. Mr Aznar is impervious to arguments that in
other European countries, including the United Kingdom, re-emergent
nations such as the Scots would be allowed to win independence by
voting for it if they so wished.

So long as Mr Aznar sets his face with such contempt against Basque
nationalism of all stripes, making it harder for moderates to co-
operate, he is unlikely to beat its vilest manifestation in the shape
of ETA. In due course, a wilier prime minister may give the Basques
their referendum. Basque terrorism might then be more easily
contained, if not necessarily extinguished. And the Basques would
probably vote to stay within Spain.

Mr Aznar says he will bow out when, by 2004, his current term ends.
If he is to depart as a statesman, he should be brave enough to let
the constitution be amended before he goes.

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