Much has changed in Spain's Basque Country over the three and a half decades since dictator Francisco Franco died in November 1975. The huge, titanium-plated Guggenheim museum on the banks of the river Nervión in Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry, is perhaps the most obvious symbol of modernity in this industrialised northern region. But there are plenty of other developments that are important to the Basque people, not least the fact that their culture and language no longer face the senseless repression of the Franco years. 

Guy Hedgecoe is editor of the English-language edition of El Pais, and has reported on Spain for France 24 and Al-Jazeera. He previously covered the Andean region, and founded and edited the Ecuador Focus weekly bulletin

Also by Guy Hedgecoe in openDemocracy:

"Losing Ecuador" (26 April 2005)

"Ecuador's energy-fuelled politics" (28 June 2006)

"Ecuador's election surprise" (17 October 2006)

"Ecuador: protest and power" (28 November 2006)

"Ecuador's politics of expectation" (1 February 2006)

"Ecuador's hyper-political wave" (30 September 2008)

"Rafael Correa: an Ecuadorian journey" (29 April 2009)

When Patxi López was sworn in as the Basque lehendakari, or regional premier, in May 2009, change was more than one of his main pledges: it was an inevitability. As a Socialist, he had in the elections to the Basque parliament on 1 March 2009 broken twenty-nine years of uninterrupted rule by the centre-right Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), making him the region's first non-nationalist leader in the democratic era. 

"I feel I have the mandate to lead a change", López had said after the regional elections gave him enough votes to form a governing coalition with conservatives. 

But some things in the Basque Country never seem to change. Soon after López was instated, it emerged that the authorities had thwarted a plan by the separatist group ETA to plant a bomb at the regional assembly, which was to be detonated as politicians of all stripes debated prior to the investiture. 

Then on 19 June, ETA struck more effectively, killing police-inspector Eduardo Puelles with a car-bomb in the Basque city of Bilbao. This, it soon emerged, was merely the beginning of ETA's annual "summer campaign", usually a string of bomb-attacks, often in tourist resorts, which usually harm no one but raise the international profile of the organisation during the news-devoid holiday season. This year, however, there was a more ferocious tone to the attacks.

On 29 July a car parked opposite a Civil Guard barrack in Burgos in northern Spain detonated, blasting the façade of the building clean off. Inside, dozens of civil guards had been sleeping with their wives and children. Miraculously, no one was badly injured, although the government declared that "a massacre" had been planned. The next day, an ETA car bomb in Palmanova, Mallorca, killed two young civil guards just down the road from where the royal family were spending their holiday; a week later four small devices exploded in tourist areas of Mallorca's capital, Palma. On that occasion, nobody was hurt.  

It is probably no coincidence that the Burgos and Palmanova bombings were carried out during the week marking the fiftieth anniversary of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom), which was founded during the dark days of the Franco era. It was not until 1968 that the organisation started killing, but in the years since, ETA's list of victims has grown - sometimes steadily, sometimes in bloody spurts - to over 800. But after 2000, when it killed twenty-three, the death-toll dropped steeply.

The group remained active and perpetrated intermittent attacks, but (by design or inadvertence) carried out no killings at all between May 2003 and December 2006. It called a ceasefire with effect from 24 March 2006 and a stuttering peace process was bravely led by prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero; both were effectively ended by a massive bomb in a car-park at Madrid's Barajas airport on 30 December 2006, which killed two Ecuadorian workers sleeping in their car (see Diego Muro, "ETA's farewell to peace", 18 January 2007).

The end of illusion 

Those recent figures reflect the official line of the government and security forces: that ETA is on its knees. Indeed, police infiltration and increased cooperation with authorities in France -the southwest of that country has traditionally been a haven for ETA members - have led to a seemingly endless series of arrests and weapons seizures since 2004. Since early 2008 alone four successive senior leaders of the organisation have been arrested and imprisoned. 

These local gains by the authorities in Spain, where the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers Party / PSOE) government led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has been in power since March 2004, occurred in an international context that appeared certain to accelerate the end of ETA. The more hardline Basque nationalists closely followed the progress of Irish Republicans, making the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and its ensuing success in laying the ground for lasting peace in Northern Ireland look like a powerful omen for the conflict across the Bay of Biscay. 

Also on the ETA movement and Spain's politics in openDemocracy:

Richard Torné, "Spain's 3/11: democracy after atrocity" (12 March 2003)

Diego Muro, "ETA after Madrid: the beginning of the end?" (16 March 2004)

Ivan Briscoe, "A victory for Spain, not al-Qaida" (18 March 2004)

Nelcya Delanoe, "Morocco and Spain: united by tragedy?" (25 March 2004)

Mariano Aguirre, "Spain's 11-M and the right's revenge" (10 March 2006)

Diego Muro, "A Basque peace opportunity" (23 March 2006)

Diego Muro, "ETA's farewell to peace" (18 January 2007)

Fred Halliday, "Eternal Euskadi, enduring ETA" (3 August 2007)

Fred Halliday, "Justice in Madrid: the '11-M' verdict" (5 November 2007)

Ivan Briscoe, "From the shadows: Spain's election lessons" (11 March 2008)

Sebastian Balfour, "The governance of Spain: between rock and hard place" (2 April 2008)

A more destructive sign that Basque separatist violence was obsolete came on 11 March 2004. When bombs ripped through commuter-trains in Madrid that morning, killing 191 people and injuring over 1,800, some initial suspicion fell on ETA itself; and though the atrocities were quickly revealed to have been the work of an al-Qaida-inspired cell, it was apparent that the actions of terrorists who were part of a global movement exposed both the catastrophic logic of ETA's methods and the mismatch between its cause and the methods of its pursuit (see Diego Muro, "ETA after Madrid: the beginning of the end?", 16 March 2004).

Many within ETA appear to have digested these developments and understood the hopelessness of seeking independence for the four Spanish and three French provinces that nationalists see as part of the historic Basque homeland. Txema Matanzas, a senior figure among the more than 700 ETA members languishing in prison, illustrated the deep division within the organisation recently by making an explicit plea to its active members to give up the armed struggle. "The time has come to pull down the blinds", he wrote in a document intercepted by police. 

Many in the movement are deaf to such pleas. ETA continues to kill. The Guardia Civil  (Civil Guard) remains a favourite target, just as it was during the Franco era, when it was a genuine force of repression. The militant group's rhetoric seems barely to have changed either. "We meet Spain's imposition through weapons with weapons", it said in a recent statement in which it justified the continued use of violence. 

Spain's interior minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, part of the Zapatero government that was first elected three days after the 11-M bombs and re-elected (albeit with a smaller majority) in March 2008, has cast ETA's current generation of activists as a crazed band of criminals; and indeed their zeal is reminiscent of Sabino Arana, the father of modern Basque nationalism whose extremism (and indeed racism) mainstream nationalists now distance themselves from. But the more recent killings have undermined somewhat the notion that the terrorist group is about to collapse altogether. 

The political trigger  

Most polls carried out in the last several years suggest that around 30% of Basques want independence. But while support for achieving that aim through violence has dwindled overall, a recent poll showed that 15% of young teenagers in the Basque Country identify with ETA. Whenever the group's top leaders are arrested, another, younger militant steps up to fill the void. Posters on the walls of official buildings across Spain and the south of France have photographs of a seemingly endless supply of men and women - many of them in their 20s - wanted for terrorist offences (see Fred Halliday, "Eternal Euskadi, enduring ETA", 3 August 2007).  

Most Spaniards regard the behaviour of ETA and its supporters as utterly irrational for citizens of such a wealthy region, one moreover which was granted extensive autonomy in 1980, as the country's much trumpeted transition to democracy was being completed. The Spanish Basque region has more than its unique language to distinguish it: it has its own education system, police force and parliament, as well as taxation powers. Surely ETA, which was born in great part in response to the aggressive anti-nationalism of the Franco regime, under which speaking the Basque language was a punishable offence, can see the benefits? 

Unfortunately, ETA and its allies see a darker side to Spain's new democracy. They point to police brutality and the torture of suspects. Most damningly, they recall the dirty war of the 1980s, when senior members of Felipe González's Socialist government oversaw a death-squad (the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación / GAL) which pursued ETA suspects and in the process extra-judicially killed both terrorists and innocent people (twenty-eight in total between 1983-87). 

This repression, they argue, continues to the present day through the muzzling of ETA's political voice. Controversial legislation approved by the main parties in Madrid in 2003 illegalised Batasuna, the political wing of the terrorist group, which had regularly held a 15% share of the vote in the region. Then in 2009, for the first time ever, all Basque parties which were deemed to have any links with ETA were banned by the courts from running in the regional elections. This laid the foundations for the Socialists' unseating of the PNV nationalists, who had always relied on the support of smaller, more radical parties to form a government. 

For establishment politicians in the Basque Country and elsewhere in Spain, the banning from the ballot of radical separatists (known collectively as the izquierda abertzale, literally the "patriotic left") and the unseating of the moderate nationalists from power are groundbreaking and welcome developments that bolster the country's democracy. However, they are also loaded with risks. 

A bumpy ride 

For one thing, the new lehendakari Patxi López faces an extremely bumpy ride. The PNV, furious that it was unable to form a governing coalition after the March election despite having won more votes than the Socialists, has sourly claimed that the central administration in Madrid will in fact govern the Basque Country "by remote control". Aside from inevitable resistance from political rivals, even López's allies could be problematic. The conservative Partido Popular - with which he has embarked on a governing partnership - may have backed his instatement, but on a national level it is almost permanently at loggerheads with the Socialists over a range of issues, ranging from abortion to the historical memory of the civil-war period. Their regional marriage of convenience is certain to be tense (see Sebastian Balfour, "The governance of Spain: between rock and hard place", 2 April 2008). 

López has opened his term in strident fashion, having pro-ETA banners and posters torn down in towns, and marches and gatherings supporting the organisation broken up. "I'll be a leader who will face up to ETA day after day", he has said. "I will work tirelessly to ensure the freedom of Basques." 

It's true that the vast majority of Basques abhor the use of violence. But the izquierda abertzale - a sizeable minority - believes that López represents anything but freedom, in a region where its supporters are prohibited from expressing themselves politically. This logic would dictate that violence is the only language now available to the radicals. The arrests may continue, but so will ETA's recruitment of students, artists, teachers and office-workers to carry out further bombings. 

The government and the Partido Popular insist that the only way to bring about the end of ETA now is through continued police and judicial pressure. ETA's breaking of the 2006 peace process badly burned Zapatero, who was labelled as "weak on terror" by the political right; any further attempts at negotiation in the foreseeable future by either a Socialist or a Partido Popular administration are seen as politically too risky and probably doomed, given the apparent lack of unity and clear leadership within the terrorist group. ETA, meanwhile, finds itself in the dead-end of its own violence, its only realistic aim now being to remind Spaniards that it still exists.   

The result of the referendum held on 28 September 2008 on a new Ecuadorian constitution is the latest in a series of major victories at the ballot for Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa. This most recent win may have been both divisive and controversial, yet it could ensure the leftist president enjoys an uninterrupted decade in power.

Guy Hedgecoe is editor of the English-language edition of El Pais. He founded and edited the Ecuador Focus weekly bulletin, and has reported the Andean region from Ecuador for CNN, National Public Radio, the Miami Herald, the Financial Times and France 24

"Losing Ecuador" (26 April 2005)

"Ecuador's energy-fuelled politics" (28 June 2006)

"Ecuador's election surprise" (17 October 2006)

"Ecuador: protest and power" (28 November 2006)

"Ecuador's politics of expectation" (1 February 2008)The decisive victory - of the 90% of votes counted at the time of writing, 64% supported the "yes" vote, 28% voted "no", while the votes of 8% were void or blank - means this Andean country will see the twentieth constitution of its history. Aside from enabling the president to serve two terms in a row, Ecuador's new charter increases civic participation in the running of the country as well as restructuring state institutions. The president and his party will have much greater control over the legislature, the judiciary and supervisory bodies, as well as over the economy.

"Today Ecuador has decided on a new nation, the old structures are defeated", a jubilant Correa told supporters as the results of the vote emerged. He described the victory as "so convincing and so crushing, beyond all our expectations."

Since winning the 2006 presidential run-off, the 45-year-old Correa had already won two further elections - a landslide victory in a vote on his proposal to establish a constituent assembly charged with writing the new constitution, and the election to fill that new body's seats. The former economy minister sees the constitutional-referendum result as another major advance for his "civic revolution", which he believes will rid the country of corruption, introduce economic and political stability and ensure social equality.

The presidential present

The campaign leading up to the poll failed to generate much serious debate. The blame for this lies in part with the government (led by Correa's Alianza País movement) and the flimsy opposition, but in part too with the constitutional text itself. The document's 440 articles is a labyrinth of idealistic generalisation, nebulous ambiguity and outright contradiction. The constituent assembly which drew up the document agonised over it in the early stages, then got sidetracked by frivolous proposals such as enshrining a woman's "right to sexual pleasure" (which in the end was not included). The final weeks leading up to the deadline for its completion in July were therefore a frenzy of rubber- stamping, and much of the resulting constitution is open to interpretation.

This semantic vagueness threatened to capsize Correa's campaign. A lack of clarity in the text allowed devout Catholics to claim - mistakenly - that the new constitution sought to legalise abortion and homosexual marriage. "I vote no because I love God", read one campaign sticker; another asked, more relevantly: "Would you sign a contract containing over 400 articles without having even read it?"

Among openDemocracy's many articles on Latin America's new politics:

Ivan Briscoe, "Venezuela: is Hugo Chávez in control?" (9 August 2007)

Stephanie Blankenburg, "Venezuela: a complicated referendum" (4 December 2008)

Adam Isacson, "The Colombia - Venezuela - Ecuador tangle" (17 March 2008)

Ana Carrigan, "Colombia's guerrillas: between past and future" (16 June 2008)

Gaby Oré Aguilar, "Peru vs Fujimori: justice in the time of reason" (10 July 2008)

John Crabtree, "Bolivia's political ferment: revolution and recall" (13 August 2008)

Ivan Briscoe, "Argentina: a crisis of riches" (17 July 2008)

Justin Vogler, "Bolivia nears the precipice" (17 September 2008)

Julia Buxton, "Hugo Chávez and Venezuela: questions of leadership" (25 September 2008)The "yes" campaign, for its part, bombarded Ecuadorians with propaganda - via television, radio and print - yet failed to explain to them exactly what they were voting on.

On both sides, simplistic rhetoric and hysteria left the big issues relatively untouched. The spectre of abortion and gay marriage dented Correa's support among church-going Catholics, but this was countered by a deluge of government handouts to farmers, students and residents of poor rural areas. Both helped to make the actual content of the constitutional text to a great extent irrelevant. "We don't know much about the constitution around here, but at least we're seeing public works," said one man from Caimito, near the Pacific port of Guayaquil, before he voted "yes".

The main changes in the new constitution have their staunch defenders and fierce critics. But the so-called "transition regime", which will bridge the political hiatus between the current political framework and the new state structure, is particularly controversial.

Under the new system a national assembly will replace the old congress (itself rendered defunct in 2007 when the constituent assembly was temporarily established). Until the new assembly's members are elected, a transitional body will legislate, its representation being based on that of the current constituent body, which is dominated by the ruling Alianza País. During this period of political limbo, the transitional legislative body will make a series of long-term judicial and supervisory appointments; and by the time general elections take place - possibly in spring 2009 - Alianza País will have a firm grip on the courts and state-supervisory entities, as well as (in all likelihood) the new legislature.

An end to "partidocracy"?

For many, this will be a welcome break with a turbulent political decade in which seven presidents have ruled Ecuador. Moreover, the new allowance for a president to run for a second consecutive four-year term (the term which Correa began in January 2007 will be effectively wiped off the slate) also offers the novelty of an Ecuadorian leader implementing a far-sighted political vision.

Rafael Correa's opponents see this as facilitating a one-way ticket to a totalitarian state. But at the moment that opposition is conspicuous by its absence. Correa's rise as a political outsider has marginalised, and in some cases destroyed, most of the parties which had controlled the country since the end of military rule in the late 1970s. The only figure of note left from what Correa disdainfully calls "the partidocracy" is Jaime Nebot, the mayor of Guayaquil. The president is himself a native of the coastal city, but his increasingly heated exchanges with Nebot and accusations that the city - like Bolivia's department of Santa Cruz - wants to break away from the rest of the country have made Guayaquil a hub of anti-Correa sentiment.

Correa's comparison of Guayaquil with the separatists of Santa Cruz is echoed by the claim of Hugo Chávez - who rarely hesitates before declaiming on his neighbours' internal affairs - that powerful groups in the city are seeking independence from Ecuador. Nebot hit back, and the ensuing verbal fracas saw the Venezuelan embassy in Quito denounce "a separatist, violent and fascist sentiment among sectors of the extreme right in various countries of the region." Correa's silence throughout this short furore was deafening.

The fact that Ecuador's constitutional referendum boosts the president's power and state control over the economy inevitably carries echoes of Bolivia and Venezuela; and Venezuela's leader has said the rewriting of his own country's constitution was similar to the process which has now been completed by Correa. When preliminary results of the referendum were released, Hugo Chávez immediately sent "a greeting to the Ecuador which is freeing itself, and to its leader, President Rafael Correa. Long live a free, Bolivarian Ecuador!" he added. But while the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan leaders clearly share a personal affinity, Correa has not signed up to Chávez's radical alliance, the Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas.

True, Correa's critics have plenty of evidence for their claim that his hatred of the United States is deep and principled: his refusal to renew the US military's contract for use of the air-base in Manta for anti-narcotics surveillance; his rocky relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF); his voicing of support (albeit vague) for Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez's expulsions of American ambassadors from their respective countries, and his advocacy of the "21st-century socialism" the Venezuelan president has proclaimed; even his father's period in jail in the US for trafficking drugs.

However, Correa - who studied for a post-graduate degree in the United States - has maintained an amiable relationship with the US embassy in Quito. The Ecuadorian president, it seems, is pragmatic enough to keep his more radical instincts in check - at least when it comes to foreign policy.

In domestic terms, his instincts are more unbridled. The referendum campaign brought them to the fore. In July 2008, he ordered the seizure of two television channels and dozens of other companies owned by the Isaías brothers, who fled Ecuador (and fraud charges) during the banking crisis of the late 1990s. Ecuadorians still angry at the impunity of the country's corrupt oligarchs applauded the measure; though others saw it both as a cheap vote-winning exercise and a gauche violation of media freedom (the seized TV channels, which were previously virulently anti-Correa, are now meekly in step with government policy). Meanwhile, the president's relationship with the press has become unhealthily tense and his language when addressing rivals increasingly colourful. But while the authoritarian tendencies are clear to see, it is still premature to describe Rafael Correa's government as actively repressive.

A "hyper-political" future

In the area of social policy, the president's supporters cite a range of initiatives aimed at making life better for poor Ecuadorians (though they have yet to have a real impact): an increase in the minimum wage, a "poverty-bond" handout, more credit for farmers and efforts to improve the nation's woeful health and education systems.

These are all being implemented within the context of an economy whose currency is the US dollar - the result of a panic-driven decision in January 2000 by the government of Jamil Mahuad. The government's high-spending style of politics is fuelling speculation that if Correa remains in power for a long period, de-dollarisation is a distinct possibility.

Correa has since his days as a university professor voiced doubts about the 2000 decision, which violated a clause in the previous constitution maintaining that Ecuador's currency was the sucre. The new document, perhaps tellingly, makes no such reference to the dollar.

The potential problems of the new charter include the massive state outlay its many noble intentions imply. If its promise to give every Ecuadorian full social-security coverage is anything other than an empty one, the cost will be massive. Ecuador's oil revenues make up 70% of exports, and are currently sustaining Correa's already lavish spending. But a drop in crude prices coupled with (say) a return of the El Niño floods or a major earthquake, would leave a country which is unable to print its own money in severe difficulties. The new constitution may give the president control over policies which were previously the remit of the central bank, but that may not be enough in the long-term for a hands-on economist like Correa, who has made no secret of his hankering for a truly national currency.

Ecuador's obsession with producing new constitutions is proof that these documents do not stand up to the test of time. Yet while many of those who backed this new charter had reservations or simply hadn't read it, their vote shows that their desire for change is more powerful than any qualms. Rafael Correa can answer accusations that he has carved himself a custom-made "hyper-presidential" system by pointing to the series of free and fair national votes he has already overseen.

But democracy also demands rigorous checks and balances, which are now worryingly absent in Ecuador. Another round of general elections approaches; already they appear only the next stage in Correa's never-ending campaign to win votes - one which could distract him from actually achieving many of the laudable goals he set out when he came into power.