On Political Prices

I found an excellent analysis regarding the "political price" that the Partido Popular speaks of again and again when it comes to negotiating peace with ETA.

At his blog Digressum, Andrew Z. Bates published a post called "Political Prices" in which he talks about certain other political price that the Spanish society paid a few decades ago, and that is still paying even today.

Here you have it:

Controversy is nowadays raging in Spain about the so-called political price that is to be paid to ETA for giving up the armed struggle. According to all evidence fire ceasing is effective. But many Spanish conservative politicians claim that giving up the violence is sheer returning to normality, and does not deserve any political payment.

Anyway, this is not the first time Spanish citizens have to pay some political price. In fact, a huge political price had to be given to the self-dissolving dictatorship so that the transition to democracy were not traumatic. Members of the "social police" (which pursued inconvenient opinion and association) remained free. Those who chased and mistreated the communists, anarchists and nationalists, were left in liberty. Fortunes built up by Régimen's favors were respected. And we are speaking of many hundreds, or thousands.

Why should one accept the price once paid to the dictatorship and not the present days one?

This "payment" would barely mean the State's acceptance of two facts. First, that armed struggle was a consequence of fascism. Second, that the controversial "price" will not be paid to any armed organization, but to the Basque society instead.

.... ... .