The Spanish Parliament has green lighted his proposal to talk to ETA with aims at a resolution to the armed conflict.
From here on, there is just hope that this will be it, this will be an honest approach by Madrid to the end of the violent spiral triggered by Franco and his Falangists over 60 years ago.
Every step of the way will be full of obstacles laid down by those among the PP and the other parties and groups that will do anything they can to perpetuate an status quo that fits the way they like doing things.
For them, there is only one way to deal with the dreams of independence of the three nations within Spain looking for their self determination, and that is through repression, abusive measures and political apartheid.
They will rear their ugly heads here and there, read on:
The Popular Party, led by Mariano Rajoy, calls Zapatero's proposal a premature gesture to a terrorist group that detonated four small bombs over the weekend. Rajoy says Zapatero's overture amounts to the "surrender of Parliament" to ETA because the group has not renounced violence or declared a cease-fire, and Zapatero should keep pressuring ETA through police measures.
"We don't understand the why or wherefore of this proposal," Popular Party parliamentary spokesman Eduardo Zaplana told the chamber. "We don't see why the government must be the interpreter for a supposed willingness to abandon terrorism, which ETA refutes with its constant crimes."
Tuesday's vote is politically potent and could be the death knell for an anti-terrorism cooperation pact that the Socialists and the Popular Party have abided by for several years.
But Zapatero, accused of being naive by the darkest forces in Madrid, has this to say:
Zapatero argues now that ETA has been decimated by arrests and has not staged a fatal attack in two years, so the time is right to try to launch a peace process. No previous Spanish government ever openly sought Parliament's backing for the idea of negotiating with ETA.
A poll released over the weekend showed overwhelming popular support for talks with ETA if the group renounces violence.
And I really want to believe him, but the PSOE will forever be linked to the GAL, and well, that is something that we as Basques can not afford to forget.
One thing I have to say is, the talks with ETA have nothing to do with the political negotiations in place with the different political parties in Euskal Herria, who ever thinks that needs to learn a lot more about what is going on in the Basque Country.
The Basque society has proven again and again, at the voting stations, that their will is their self determination, and that is something that not Madrid nor ETA will take from them.
However, it opens a door of hope for all those political prisoners in both Spain and France, accused of belonging to ETA just because they defend the right of Euskal Herria to be.
If ETA calls a truce, or if they give up the armed struggle in behalf of a political avenue, then there will be no more excuses for the repressive Spanish forces to go around closing down news outlets and schools, arresting people in the middle of the night, torturing and murdering innocent individuals, nor they will keep Basques in preventive prison for up to 5 years just to drop the charges and charge huge fines for them to go home after being in prison for the crime of loving their country, their people, their language and their culture.
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