The fragile unity of the Spanish political class facing ETA

Several thousands of Spanish demonstrators paid a brief tribute on December 4th to the civil guard killed in France last weekend by the Basque separatist organisation ETA. This was the first anti-ETA demonstration called by the entire political class and Spanish trade unions since 2004. The daily salutes this initiative, but regrets how precarious this unity is. "The wounds in relations between the two major parties [the Socialist Party and Popular Party] over anti-terrorism policy are still very fresh and the gap is still too wide. ... Terrorism has settled in the very heart of partisan rivalries and it is going to be difficult to extract it from there. ... The parties are indeed continuing to talk about unity to conquer ETA but this unity is so fragile that it barely survived a five minute demonstration."

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