The words of peace uttered by three Eta leaders hiding behind white silken masks sounded promising, but hopes that they would turn into anything concrete were dim today.
"It is a step forward, but a slow one," said Kepa Aulestia, an Eta expert at the Vocento media group. "Eta's end is inevitable. It is now trying to justify its own place in history."
The key words used by the men with the raised fists were that they now considered the ceasefire to be "permanent" and "general", while also offering a vague promise it would be "verifiable".
Spain has been down this road before. The ceasefire Eta called in 2006 was also deemed "permanent". Carlos Palate and Diego Estacio disovered that December that the description was not literal when Eta planted a bomb at Madrid's Barajas airport.
Both men died. Not only were hopes of peace buried in the rubble, so was much of Eta's credibility.
Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – who had taken considerable political risks to promote peace – was made to look foolish. He had declared his optimism about the peace process on the previous day.
That is why government reaction to the latest Eta statement was so negative. As rumours spread in recent weeks that Eta would widen its ceasefire, ministers had held up the example of the Barajas bomb as a reason for insisting nothing short of a definitive and final end to the violence would satisfy them. Eta's offertoday falls well short of that.
Some analysts believe Eta is not sincere and will use the ceasefire to rearm before returning to terrorism. "It is part of the propaganda of a terrorist organisation that has serious operational difficulties," said Rogelio Alonso, a terrorism expert at Madrid's Rey Juan Carlos University.
The Eta leaders who decided in 2006 to return to arms thought they could mount a campaign of violence that would force the Spanish government to bend when they next spoke.
Three years later that campaign had resulted in 10 deaths. But it had also seen most of Eta's senior leaders captured and hundreds of its footsoldiers detained by police in Spain and France.
Eta's inability to either negotiate peace or carry out an effective terrorist campaign saw grassroots support slip away. Nowhere was this trend stronger than in Batasuna, the dormant political party that was banned as an Eta front.
While Batasuna has traditionally followed Eta's lead but is now trying to push the group towards a definitive peace, so it can become legal once more and stand at regional and municipal elections. It does not seem to have got there yet.
"There is an infight within the militant separatist left," said Mr Aulestia.
