AS THEY OFTEN DO in the days immediately before elections, ETA terrorists have killed again:

A former councillor from Spain's ruling Socialist Party was shot dead outside his house in the Basque Country town of Mondragon on Friday two days before a national election, police said.Isaias Carrasco, 42, was shot in the back of the neck in a style typical of Basque separatist rebels ETA, newspaper El Pais said on its Web site.

(emphasis mine: Reuters apparently can't call them terrorists even when they kill)

It will be interesting to see how it affects the last day of campaigning, and whether it'll have any impact in the elections themselves: although the kind of attack is totally different, let's not forget what happened exactly 4 years ago --three days before the previous general election. It was the fact that ETA usually kills right before elections what made everybody think (yes, even Zapatero and the Socialist party officials) that ETA was the author of the Madrid train massacre.

For the moment, both Socialists and the conservative Popular Party have cancelled all rallies for the last day of the campaign; tomorrow it what we call "day of reflection," when all political propaganda is forbidden the day before the actual vote.

I only hope no one is a jerk and starts using this to their advantage, saying a dumb thing about how this proves whatever. Don't have much hope, though.

UPDATE. John of Iberian Notes says this will hurt Zapatero and benefit the PP. I'm not so sure, though. Don't want to sound callous, but the fact that the poor guy who was murdered was a Socialist could be used by Zapatero to prove that he didn't give anything to the ETA during the negotiation, as he had been saying without much success because what people generally thought was that he didn't give them enough. Let's see what the Interior minister says when he appears before the press in a short while.