Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent in San Sebastian The Guardian 22 September 2003

The most controversial Spanish film in decades had its premiere last night despite a government campaign to ban it. The Basque Ball, an emotional documentary by the acclaimed director Julio Medem, urges the government to reopen talks with Basque extremists. It received a five-minute standing ovation at the San Sebastian Film Festival after convulsing Spain in an ugly debate over whether it should be outlawed. The ruling rightwing Popular party refused to cooperate with the film, and has kept up a ferocious assault on what it termed Basque-born Medem's "suspicious enterprise".
But many anti-secessionist Basques have rallied to the director's defence, with the socialist mayor of San Sebastian, Odon Elorza, claiming the clock was being turned back to the "time when the man with the little moustache [General Franco] covered women's breasts, had the bottoms of nudes in museums draped and eliminated all 'red' films". He added: "It is one thing to criticise a film, but it's another to do all you can to make sure it is never shown."
Medem, the director of Sex and Lucia, and Cows, claimed he was not a nationalist, but despaired at the division that the lack of talks was causing in the Basque country, where half of the inhabitants were "immigrants" from the rest of Spain. Advocating talks with the separatist group Eta or its supporters, however, has been a heresy since the prime minister Jose Maria Aznar's government banned its political wing Batasuna last year and closed down a string of cultural groups, which it claimed were fronts for its terrorist activities. The ban has revived support for the party, whose vote had plummeted to 10% after Eta broke a 14- month ceasefire in 1999, alleging that Mr Aznar had sabotaged peace talks.
The culture minister, Pilar del Castillo, led the attacks on festival organisers, and refused an invitation to see the film. She condemned Medem for blaming Mr Aznar's "Spanish ultra- nationalism" as much as the terrorists. "When you start from the position that a legally constituted government voted for by 10 million people is one pole, and the other is a terrorist group, that puts you in a delicate position," she said. But far from taking a pro-nationalist line, the film, for which more than 70 of the autonomous region's politicians, intellectuals and victims of violence were interviewed, makes extremely uncomfortable viewing for Basque nationalists, never mind Eta. The author and academic Maria Delgado said: "There is no comfort in the film for Basque nationalists, but neither is there for the government."