Important News From Spain

Barcepundit has posted on an important development in Spanish politics in his article dated 12/31/04. Mr. Aleman quotes:

The Basque Parliament approved a measure on Thursday that says the Basque region has the right to secede from Spain, a move analysts described as the most serious threat to national unity since the establishment of democracy here nearly 30 years ago.

"This is the clearest push for independence that the Basque country has made," said Antonio Caño, a senior editor at the newspaper El País. "It is a very clear challenge to the unity of Spain. I'd say it places the country in its biggest crisis of unity since democracy began here."

This shows the weakness of the Socialist government in the eyes of the Basque Seperatists. Mr. Aleman gives historical, political and social context in his commentary. He also provides links for background information on the Basque Seperatists:

Oh, and just as and end note: don't buy the crap about 'moderate nationalist' as several of the linked items define Ibarretxe and his party. True, they don't use guns or kill people, but they masterfully play a good cop, bad cop routine; while Ibarretxe and his ilk talk relatively nice, the radicals and ETA do the dirty job. And both sides profess an extreme nationalism based in ethnicist principles, celebrating the 'father' of the Basque Homeland, Sabino Arana. If you want to learn about the ideology, just read this post by John Chappell at Europundits, commenting some texts by English journalist John Hooper about the philosophical basis of Basque nationalism ("It's closer to Fascism than you might think"), and with some 'unvaluable' translations of Arana's doctrine. Be sure you don't miss it.

This is a significant development and I am convinced that this could have an impact outside of Spain. France is not exactly a disinterested party in this dispute. It will be interesting to see how "European Unity" works out in this situation. It is also quite likely to increase the terrorist activities of ETA. (It worked for the Islamo-Fascists, so why not for ETA?) We will see if the Socialists can muster the will and competence to deal with this. Go read this article!