In Basque cities such as Bilbao and San Sebastian, ETA-sponsored youths often spend their nights hurling Molotov cocktails at the offices of political parties, libraries, phone boxes, and at the police who try to stop them. The general rejection of terror was proved in July when, police estimate, nearly six million Spaniards took to the nation's streets after ETA executed a young Basque town councillor, Miguel Angel Blanco. But this enormous gesture of solidaridad against ETA and its political wing, Herri Batasuna, has not stopped the killings. That view has the backing of the main political parties, but it leaves the solution to terrorism in the hands of the security forces. Security forces alone, however, appear no more likely to defeat terror in Spain than in Israel or Algeria.
Corruption is another plague.
The most spectacular examples have been the near-collapse of one of the country's biggest banks, Banco Espanol de Credito, because of alleged misdeeds of its former president, Mario Conde Conde, and the bizarre tale of the former head of the Guardia Civil, ,Luis Roldan Ibanez. Now being tried on charges involving huge sums in Swiss bank accounts, Roldan was on the run for 11 months before he was finally tracked down to Laos and brought back to Spain. The Spanish judiciary, as happened in Italy, has become tarred by politics. Cervantes had Don Quixote say to his sidekick Sancho Panza that laws should be pragmatic, few, and obeyed, but the advice is not always followed in Spain. Manuel Lozano-Higuero, professor of procedural law at the University of Cantabria, in the northern city of Santander, highlights abuse of accion popular, which allows people to be party to a court case whether or not they have a clear connection to it.