After a 14-month ceasefire which ended in December, and merely sporadic attacks up to this summer, it has suddenly sprung in to life 'You tell lies' For the moment the official response in Madrid is to match real fire with its rhetorical equivalent. I had no contact with ETA except through its political apologists. I was struck, more than anything, by their otherworldliness. After our previous experience it was with some trepidation that I approached a group of ETA supporters as they sat in the centre of town alongside floral tributes to their dead - the four killed by their own bomb. Don't tell anyone anything.
Honest people know the truth.
In a world dominated by slick soundbites his refusal to have any message at all for the viewers and listeners of the BBC was oddly refreshing. But it is not going to do anything for ETA's image abroad. A locally based observer of the political scene told me later that the further up the hierarchy of ETA you went the more unconnected with ordinary life they were. At the top, he said, they really do not inhabit the same planet. They are untouchable - impervious to reason.