NO, TODAY'S DEMONSTRATION in Madrid -taking place as I type this- doesn't mean that people have finally grown a spine (I found no link in English yet, probably because it's still ongoing).

After Zapatero's controversial initiative to negotiate with the Basque terrorist group, done in a pure partisan manner with no attempt to reach bipartisan consensus with the opposition;

After ignoring ETA's re-arming while that negotiation was taking place, and paying no attention to any critic who was saying that ETA's cease-fire was more a hudna than a real truce;

After December 30th car bomb in Barajas, the answer is this demonstration taking place right now in Madrid:


Does that look like a firm position against a group who has been killing hundreds of people over the last 40 years? Demonstrators are calling for peace and against terror; of course, one way to achieve peace and end terror is to fight the terrorists and win. Another way is to surrender.

Guess what the crowd is choosing, considering all those white doves printed in the signs people are carrying. And considering the chants of "Dialogue! Dialogue!" that they are singing.

UPDATE. There a first report from Reuters which includes a blatant lie:

[T]he main opposition Popular Party was absent from the Madrid march, the first time a major party has not attended an anti-ETA demonstration since democracy returned to Spain in the 1970s.

This is absolutely false: there's been several million-man demonstrations in the last months, against Zapatero's negotiation with ETA. Zapatero's Socialist party -PSOE, did not attend any of those.

UPDATE II (Sunday, Jan. 14). I'm glad that the demonstration, seen from the ground, was not as surrender-ish as it looked from TV and news report; Robert Mayer @ Publius Pundit, who writes from Madrid, says things were a bit different. But I still suspect the political lesson for the Zapatero administration won't be that any further negotiation is out of the question but the opposite: it will be seen, I'm afraid, as a vindication that, in spite of the bomb in Barajas and the two dead, negotiation is still worthwhile because people have been calling for peace and dialogue (much more explicitely in the other demonstration in Bilbao, where the official slogan said so: see the picture).


We'll have to see what happens in the next weeks. I'll be happy if I'm wrong but, alas, I think I won't.

Meanwhile, Joe Gandelman writes:

The bottom line is that to many Spaniards of many political persuasions ETA — and the Zapatero government — have a long way to go before many of them will accept that the ceasefire is more than yet another hiccup in the wave of violence and sea of blood that has marked ETA’s history in Spain. During the Franco era, even though many repudiated its tactics and violence, some privately considered it a kind of folk hero organization, battling the dictatorship.

But now Spain is most assuredly a democracy. Some Spaniards have lived all their lives being given assurances that some day a ceasefire would be put in place with ETA that would endure.

They’ve heard it all before.

UPDATE III. The New York Times' Elaine Sciolino repeats the same lie that Reuters did:

Ultimately, the Popular Party chose not to take part, the first time a major party has avoided an anti-ETA demonstration since democracy returned to Spain in the 1970s.

This is false, unless the NY Times doesn't consider Zapatero's PSOE a major party. For the record, I think the PP should have gone to the demonstration, particularly after the slogan was modified to include the word "Liberty" that they were asking as a condition to attend. They thought the organizers wouldn't include it, but they did. If you ask for something as a condition and the others comply, you can't bail out afterwards. Even if you don't like it, and even though you were expecting the others not to comply, you simply swallow your 'pride' and go. Period.