RunningWithBulls.com - The curse of Sanfermin

Los Vascos
After poor outcome for the Basque National Party (PNV) lead by Juan José Ibarretxe, the creator of the Ibarretxe Plan, is looks like his plan may be dead.

From the beginning it did not look in for shape, as the official line from Madrid is that “any vote on independence, by any region, is unconstitutional and cannot be allowed”.

José Bono, Spanish Minister for Defence said ““no territory may engage in projects which violate the sovereign will of all Spaniards”, so echoing the official government line.

While it may not have been legal, Ibarretxe continued with promoting it. He need to get 1) full backing from the people of the region, and also 2) a majority in the elections, that *he* called for in early January.

This was due to his plan being passed, by a narrow majority, in the Basque parliment (in the end coming down to the Batasuna party, which Ibarretxe had said earlier he would not have to rely on).

Now that PNV and Ibarretxe have not returned their necessary majority, they will have to go looking for possible suitors as partners for their new government.
Here Ibarretxe has a number of possibilities, some more far fetched than others. They include:

1) the United Left and Aralar. The United Left are the PNV’s current political party, while Aralar are a splinter party, originally from Batasuna. Aralar renounce ETA’s campaign of violence.
With these partners he still only has 33 seats out of the 75 seat parliment.

2) He could also create a partnership with the Communist party, but since Batasuna’s earlier call for supports to vote for the relatively unknown Communist party, this maybe a hard one to pass by the Madrid government. This would give him a majority, but if he wants to further his plan, in what ever form it may take, he would want to think wisely on this.

3) His other possibility would be the Socialist party. After the suicidal bodyblow that the PP gave themselves in the last general election, when they wrongly accused ETA of carrying out the horrific Madrid bombings, the Socialist leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, made sounds that he would be willing to talk to the Basques about a new constitutional deal that would be acceptable to a wide majority of Basques.
This would require a 2/3 majority backing of the Basque parliment.

From these noises from Zapatero, people are sensing a new optimism.

Madrid may have changed its dogmatic approach to the Baque question. Maybe not its belief, but its approach. Many observers in Spain are saying this is because of the “Zapatero effect” (to quote at least the Economist), They say “the prime minister’s almost tiresome willingness to negotiate, plus the fact that Batasuna and ETA have a new desire for peace.”
(How many times have we heard that from a group like them. But if it means that an end is in sight, maybe we should give it another chance.)