Spain learns the lessons of Ulster
Not for the first time, the course of confrontation between the Spanish government and the Basque separatists of Eta has shown uncanny parallels with that of the IRA and the British government.
The parallels are not exact, of course. Bobby Sands was in many ways an ordinary man drawn into radical politics, convicted of possession of arms, not their use. De Juana Chaos is a terrorist convicted of killing 25 people, and has never shown any remorse for his actions. Having completed a 20-year sentence for those murders, he was serving an additional three-year sentence imposed last year for issuing threats to prison governors and continuing to glorify terrorism. The additional sentence may have appeared political to his supporters, but to the Spanish right it seemed the only proper response to a terrorist not only refusing to renounce violence, but actively espousing it. And yet all the opinion polls indicate that the public at large in Spain, and the citizens of the Basque country, want peace, even at the cost of accepting terrorists into the process.
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