Bildu's choice

The failure of the Socialist Party to reach an agreement with the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) has allowed the pro-independence coalition to take control of the provincial government of Guipúzcoa. Bildu, formed out of a coalition of left-leaning nationalist parties, and widely seen as a successor to Batasuna, which was banned because of its direct links to ETA, already enjoyed a majority in the provincial assembly, with 22 seats, compared to the PNV's 14, the PSE Basque Socialist Party's 10, and the Popular Party's four.

For the first time, a pro-independence grouping that includes a nationalist abertzale left until now associated with terrorism, will run one of the Basque Country's three provinces. Having been allowed to run by the Constitutional Court, Bildu performed well in the May municipal elections, taking around 100 town halls across the Basque region.

Non-nationalist parties and some groups in Basque society, notably business leaders (some of whom have been victims of ETA's longstanding practice of extortion) are worried at the turn of events. Their fears are not prompted solely by suspicions about the coalition's former links to ETA, but by some of the first decisions taken by Bildu in town halls it now runs.

The refusal to allow elected officials' bodyguards to enter public buildings shows that Bildu is clearly putting its own interests ahead of the personal safety of non-nationalist politicians and councilors. It remains to be seen if Bildu town councils are able to guarantee the safety of officials who until now have been under threat from ETA.

The new provincial administrator of Guipúzcoa province, Martín Garitano, has said that the emergence of Bildu as a major force on the political scene should encourage the government to open new talks with ETA. By doing so, Bildu is putting the cart before the horse: implicit in the legalization of the coalition was a supposed unequivocal commitment to pursue its goals peacefully and within the law; not a remit to continue with the longstanding abertzale goal of forcing talks between the terrorists and the state that would result in a change to the law. Garitano's words suggest that for the moment at least, Bildu is not interested in helping to dismantle ETA, but that rather it sees the terrorist organization as a way to exercise leverage as part of its project for an independent Basque Country.

The courts did not agree on the legalization of Bildu as part of a process aimed at ending ETA's decades-long campaign of violence, but because the law required it to do so. This is an opportunity for Bildu to distance itself from ETA's modus operandi of extortion and murder.

The first indications suggest that it doesn't see things quite that way. Several of its decisions, and much of what it has said over recent weeks have reestablished the kind of political climate that in the worst case could see the party looking the other way when non-nationalist politicians are threatened or worse. If winning an election does not exempt corrupt politicians from their responsibilities, as some Popular Party leaders have asserted over recent years, then much less does it free those who choose the terrorists over their victims.