1- The number of missing persons has gone up to two, both young men, both Ecuadorians that had gone to pick up incoming passengers.

2- The president Zapatero has just spoken to the nation. He announced what we were all expecting. The truce is broken and negotiations are canceled. Ever since the cease-fire the government had been negotiating with the idea of attempting a peaceful end to the violence (while ETA held the cease-fire to regroup and rearm, as they always to). Negotiations are now over and we’re back to treating these people as the murdering criminals they are.

Do you currently live in Spain? I may be shooting a documentary in Barcelona and Madrid in April. We’re looking for people who can talk politics in English. Your email address didn’t work. If interested can you email me at reynoldsapplegate (at) mac (dot) com?

Let me explain something. Well before the 3/11 attacks, when the previous government decided to join the “coalition of the willing” a modest 90% of Spaniards were against Spanish involvement in the war, with literally millions taking to the streets to shout against it. We were against the war overall and totally against going into a war that had nothing to do with us (keep in mind that European press was a lot more skeptical of the whole WMD and Al Quaeda link from the getgo). That’s not to say that the attack didn’t influence the elections, it did. What it didn’t do is make us vote for the opposition out of fear of more attacks, despite how many disgusting comments to that end people write on the net. The attacks reminded us of our anger at being thrust into a conflict we never wanted to be involved in. It didn’t help that the government rushed to blame ETA for the attacks even when evidence was coming out that it was an Islamic doing. We didn’t vote to get out of Iraq, we voted to punish the party that put us there in the first place! The new government took us out of Iraq, which was what we wanted all along and what they had promised in their campaign, BEFORE the attacks.

Now ETA does act with the certainty of soft government action. The laws in this country are pathetic and the kid gloves all the government have used to treat ETA have only emboldened them. As far as I’m concerned they should just firebomb their holes and execute their prisoners. Much of the population feels the same way and is constantly frustrated by soft government attitudes. But this is sadly a problem that outdates Islamic terrorism. What happened with Al Quaeda changed nothing as far as ETA is concerned.