Ibarretxe

With reference to the recent arrest of the entire leadership of the illegal political party Herri Batasuna, Juan José Ibarretxe is here quoted as saying:

…en Irlanda jamás se le pasó por la imaginación meter a los dirigentes del Sinn Féin en la cárcel para avanzar en el proceso de paz y conseguir acuerdos políticos.

which in English would be,

In Ireland it never occurred to anyone to jail the leaders of Sinn Féin in order to advance the peace process and arrive at political agreements.

——
1.
Since the rise of Gerry Adams and his supporters to the leadership, Sinn Féin increasingly became the dominant partner in its relationship with the IRA. Adams and McGuiness were members of its Army Council and they were able to effectively impose their will on the movement. Those seriously unhappy with the Adams-McGuiness line jumped ship to join militarily ineffective and politically irrelevant splinter groups. What would have been the point arresting a Sinn Féin/IRA leadership that was obviously intent on ending the armed struggle and settling for a political deal that involved the abandonment of their central political aims?

2.
In Spain and the Basque country by contrast, it’s the other way round. The political leaders have no control over the loosely-bound constellation of armed groups that make up ETA and appeared to have taken as much by surprise as anyone else by the breaking of the last ceasefire. Their main function appears to attempt to justify to the public whatever it is that the gunmen have decided to do and organise political support for it. So it’s not like Garzón has ordered the arrest of leaders in a position to deliver ETA

3.
There’s also the question of the ideological  and political evolution of Sinn Féin from the pan-Celtic fantasies of the Ruairí Ó Brádaigh years to the election-winning machine it is now with policies on everything and at least capable of paying lip service to human rights. No similar evolution has taken place in ETA and its supporters; they remain attached to a deeply repulsive blood-and-soil ideology and unachievable political aims. While in Ireland the most mad-dog elements were forced to the margins of the republican movement, in the Basque country they remain firmly in charge.

4.
A final point; bearing in mind that the leadership of the provisional republican movement settled for the release of prisoners and a role in administering the state they spent decades trying to destroy, it’s hard to understand Ibarretxe’s enthusiasm for the Irish peace process. Under current constitutional arrangements in Spain, Basque nationalists already have far more than that.