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Spanish Prime Minister’s Stance on Basques Is Called Hypocritical

While Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero tries to stand firm against the Basque region’s recent declaration that it has the right to break away from Spain, conservative critics are seizing on his congressional pact with a separatist party from another semiautonomous region, Catalonia, to cast him as a hypocritical and compromised leader. Mr. Zapatero formed a loose pact with the party, the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, to gain a majority in Parliament after he led the Socialist Party to power in March with less than half the popular vote. Full Story