Spain on edge as ETA perpetrates more terror

By Axel Veiel

MADRID (DPA): "Not everyone was so lucky," a shaken Jose Asenjo told reporters. The deputy general-secretary of the Socialist Party in Andalusia appeared in front of the microphones with his wife and daughter to tell his fellow Spaniards of his thoughts and above all his feelings after having narrowly escaped a car-bomb attack by the Basque separatist group ETA in the southern Spanish city of Malaga. He can thank his lucky stars he is still alive.

Asenjo, 51, was very lucky. The detonator on the bomb fixed to the underside of his car failed to set the bomb off.

After starting his car, the Socialist heard a clunk and something produced some smoke, that was all: the dynamite had failed to go off. Other Spaniards have been less fortunate in recent days.

Asenjo's main political rival, councillor for the ruling conservative People's Party (PP) in Andalusia, was shot by an ETA man on the streets of Malaga on Saturday. Three days before that, a homeless man was seriously injured when a car laden with dynamite exploded between two Madrid shopping centers. A police barracks near Soria and a shopping center in the Basque capital of Vitoria were also the scenes of explosions.

Five attacks within eight days: Spaniards have seen nothing like this for years.

Insecurity has spread like wildfire over Spain, especially since the police have only been able to identify the Malaga murderer but are at a loss as to his whereabouts. The Spanish interior minister, Jaime Mayor Oreja, is frank when he says that there can be no adequate protection against determined terrorists and that it would be impossible to supply a bodyguard for each of the PP's 24,700 local councillors in Madrid alone.

But even if there were enough police officers to guard the ruling party's officials, what sort of protection could the Socialists' more than 23,000 councillors expect? And what about other groups in society who have become the target for ETA's murderous intentions?

Only 3,000 people turned up in the center of Madrid for a demonstration against the wave of terror as on Wednesday evening, and this can only be a sign that most no longer believe that a street march will do anything to help. The public's growing insecurity seems to fit ETA's plans perfectly.

"It can happen to anyone," seems to be ETA's slogan: conservatives and Socialists, passers-by and beggars, police officer and journalists -- like Jose Luis Lopez de Lacalle, the murdered El Mundo writer.

Politically, the separatists stand to gain much from the current situation. On the one hand, they profit from the hardening of fronts which comes in the wake of every attack. Political debate is stalled by bomb explosions. Furthermore, the attacks have rendered obsolete the impression garnered after ETA's temporary ceasefire that clever politics would bring the conflict-beset Basque Country nearer to independence than terrorist campaigns.

In view of the growing insecurity among Spaniards, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has no option but to resort to harsh words. "We will never bow down to ETA," he has said. The word from Vitora, where the Basque Nationalist Party leads a minority government, is that the attacks have prompted people to ask whether Madrid is not to blame for its omissions. Xabier Arzalluz' PNV is generally considered moderate, but in recent days, its speech has assumed harsher tones.

The terrorists, who appear to be trying to suggest that their Basque Country is still under the Franco yoke, ought to be pleased. In addition, ETA's latest bloody offensive opens the way for them to demand a huge price for declaring a second "ceasefire".

Every attacks makes peace that bit more costly. As previously during the negotiations in the run-up to the first ceasefire, the PNV will be first in line to talk to the terrorists. "For the sake of peace" they have already formulated several radical aims their own while their calls for Basque independence have become more strident.

Whether the population approves of this change of direction is questionable. Half of Basques vote for the PP or the Socialists -- for parties who hold the autonomous region's inclusion as part of Spain as inviolable. The other regions may regularly vote for nationalist parties, but that is not the same as a vote for independence.