Basque struggles expose Spain's "democracy"

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The Basque question has of ETA (militar) which have lain become the dominant been to focus all terrorist The Basque question has again become the dominant political issue in Spain. ›litical issue in Spain.

This is not only because of the insistent demands almost unanimously raised by the masses of Euskadi (the Basque provinces) for autonomy or even independence.

It is aiso because the Basque question daily shows up the superficiality of Spain's "democratisation" since the death of It stimulates demands throughout the country against the Madrid-dominated Spanish state so treasured by Francoists.

The astoundingly successful assassination campaign by ETA (militar)-the most active and militant wing of the Basque national liberation movementhas exposed the popular hatred for the Francoist police and armed forces.

This hatred has been revealed by the electoral advances of Herri Batasuna (the electoral front supported by ETA (militar) in the recent elections-a clear statement of mass support for ETA's pinpoint terrorism which has despatched over 30 officers of the repressive state apparatus this year.

Militant mass demonstrations in Euskadi against the central government have in the last few months become almost a daily event.

Murder

And after the police murder of an anti-nuclear demonstrator in Navarra a few weeks ago a brief but almost universally followed general strike showed the strength of working class loathing of the Francoist authorities and intensified demands for the withdrawal of all central government forces from Euskadi.

Last week the issue dominated the front pages of Europe's capitalist newspapers as a series of bombs exploded in Spain's main tourist centres-actions which were attributed to ETA.

On the face of it this was a surprising change of tactics compared with the recent traditions of ETA (militar) been to focus actions ' actions onto individual onto • personnel of the police and personnel of the army.

It appears, however, that the new bombings were most likely the work of another organisation, ETA (politico-militar) which has in recent years virtually declared a truce with the authorities.

The spectacular new campaign may be partly designed to restore some of the popular support which ETA (politicomilitar) has lost to ETA (militar).

The bombings were apparently directed firstly against French tourists in protest against persecution of Basque exiles in France by the government of Giscard d'Estaing la close frined of Juan Carlos l, the man Franco made King).

Limited

Later, however, the focus shifted to the Suarez government in Madrid as ETA (politico-militar) demanded the transfer of 100 Basque political prisoners from the jail in Soria to a prison in the Basque region.

This very limited nationalist demand is supposedly meant to be a prelude to a campaign for their release.

ETA's campaigns of political violence are, of course, not new.

What makes them so threatening at present to Spain's ruling class is not so much their increasing practical success as the way in which they are increasingly linked to mass mobilisations in demonstrations or strikes.

Probably only a minority of the mobilisations are initiated by the ETA leaders themselves who, despite their talk of "socialism", tend to be rooted in the methods of petty-bourgeois political elitism.

Many of the mass mobilisations are relatively spontaneous.

Virtually all of them are opposed by the local leaders of the main Spanish workers' parties, the CP and the PSOE, as well as by the powerful bourgeois nationalists of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). for Catalan) autonomy.

Suarez' latest delaying manoeuvre is to place the matter in the hands of a parliamentary committee which will come up with a diluted scheme for autonomy in the autumn at the earliest.

These are the bitter fruits of the PNV's abject willingness to compromise with the Francoists in Madrid.

They were encouraged to see this as a feasible route towards some convincing mask of autonomy by the presence in Suarez' party (the Democratic Centre Union) and government of self-styled "social democrats" and "christian democrats" who favoured liberal treatment of the national minorities.

Now, however, there is an open and public rift in the UCD government itself.

Those with the purer Francoist pedigrees, like Suarez himself, are coming out more and more openly against national rights and are moving into an ever closer political alliance with the even more openly reactionary Democratic Coalition led by Areilza and Fraga.

This hardening of the face of the smooth and smiling "democrat' Suarez is an expression of the extreme brittleness of the political compromise which has allowed the Spanish ruling class to appear to pass from dictatorship to democracy.

Right wing leader Areilza