After 10 years working as a bodyguard in Spain's Basque country, where mayors need 24-hour protection and university professors check their cars for bombs, Julen knows when he's not welcome.
The animosity that fueled decades of separatist violence has softened with recent political developments, which includes surprise electoral wins for nationalist candidates in May. But that does not mean it is gone, he said.
In the towns where he accompanies local councilors and ex-politicians about their daily lives, Julen -- a false name he uses when he's working -- is still seen by many as a lackey for Spain's centuries-old repression of the Basques.
"Everyone wants this to end, but let's not confuse hope with reality," said the athletic 50-year-old.
"We still get refused food in shops and restaurants if we're recognized and get a mouthful of insults instead. The level of hostility has diminished, but it hasn't disappeared."
It's been 75 years since former dictator Francisco Franco ordered the fire-bombing of the Basque market town of Guernica in the Spanish civil war, heralding a renewed wave of repression of Spanish Basques, a culturally and linguistically different group in northern Spain and France.
Franco's ruthless suppression of his opponents was especially brutal in regions of Spain with some measure of autonomy like the Basque country and extended to language and culture as well as political beliefs.
Citizens caught speaking the Basque language faced public humiliation and fines, and incarcerated protesters reported torture, sexual abuse and even murders committed by the regime's police officers and paramilitary thugs.
Spain's transition from fascism to democracy after Franco's death in 1975 led to a sharp decline in human rights violations committed by the state and returned a degree of autonomy to Basques not seen since before the civil war.
The region recovered its own police force and some of the tax independence it historically enjoyed, and savvy politicians have continued to squeeze more powers from minority governments in Madrid.
While Basque resistance to the Franco regime won supporters across Spain and abroad, that support waned after ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) militants rejected offers of amnesty after 1975 and stepped up separatist violence instead.
The more than 800 people who died in the heightened violence included women and children in the wrong place at the wrong time or bystanders in undercover state-sponsored attacks on ETA suspects.
ELECTORAL UPHEAVAL
Hope for an end to the conflict is stronger than ever since ETA's political wing Batasuna rejected violence and cajoled the group into a partial ceasefire in September 2010.
Although Batasuna was banned after a change in the law, a court ruled that candidates linked to it could run in nationwide polls in May, prompting the formation of a new coalition, Bildu (Gather, in Basque), which ran on a non-violence ticket.
Bildu brought together a left-wing movement fragmented by their views on ETA's violence but committed in their struggle for an independent Basque homeland, and now the coalition has control of one of the Basque country's three provinces and town councils across the region and in neighboring Navarre.
Bildu has upset Spanish politicians by taking down Spanish flags and banning bodyguards from town halls on the grounds the ceasefire has removed the need for them, but the largest point of disagreement with Madrid is Bildu's refusal to ask ETA to disarm and disband.
Basque society, too, remains split over whether Bildu's victories in recent local elections are a good or a bad thing given the coalition's links to ETA apologists.
"They have dragged themselves out of the violent waters, but they haven't put the 'no swimming' sign next to them yet," said Txema Montero, a former leader of ETA's political wing who was expelled after calling for ETA's disarmament as early as 1992.
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