ETA probably hasn’t been as prominent this year as it might have hoped. The political mainstream and many Spaniards received the armed Basque seperatist group's January announcement of a “permanent and general” ceasefire with suspicion and a shrug. What people wanted to hear from the Basque terrorist organisation was a clear decision to end its four-decade campaign of violence. Eventually that also came, in October, to a mostly warm welcome. But ETA itself has been a weak, clumsy figure in recent months and much of the credit for its shift away from violence must go to its traditional political support, the izquierda abertzale. These Basque radical nationalists understood that terror was a … [Read more...] about The Basque radical left