AFP - Getty Images
A picture grabbed on Gara.net shows three ETA militants dressed in black shirts with white hoods over the heads and black berets making a declaration in an undisclosed location. Armed Basque separatist group ETA declared Thursday the
Rafa Rivas / AFP - Getty Images
Thousands of people march demanding the legalization of the new Basque pro-independence party Sortu, in the Northern Spanish Basque city of Bilbao, on Saturday, April 2. Banner reads in Basque "Normalization for the Basque Country. Legalisation Now." The Spanish Supreme Court rejected on March 23, 2011 an application by Sortu to be legalised so that it can stand in local elections in May. The Spanish government had asked the court to ban Sortu, arguing that it is merely an "extension" of Batasuna, the political branch of the armed Basque separatist group ETA. Batasuna has been outlawed since 2003 because of its links to ETA, whose bloody campaign of bombings and shootings for a Basque homeland independent of Spain has been blamed for 829 deaths in more than four decades.
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Spain's troubled Basque region Saturday, calling for the government to legalize a new pro-independence party that says it rejects violence by armed separatist group ETA.
The Supreme
Sortu can appeal to the Constitutional Court but that ruling will likely come after the May 22
Protesters carried placards saying "For the normalization of the Basque region, legalization now," and marched to Bilbao's town hall in silence.
The gathering was unusual in that Basque national flags were not visible, unlike at almost all separatist rallies. Another uncommon feature was that no one carried banners with ETA prisoners on them. Basque separatists have for decades pressed the Spanish government to allow ETA members convicted of terrorist offenses to serve their prison sentences in the Basque region instead of at jails in distant corners of the country.
AFP - Getty Images
Three members of the Armed Basque separatists ETA raising their fist after announcing a permanent, verifiable ceasefire after more than 40 years of bloodshed in their fight for a homeland independent of Spain on Monday January 10, 2010.
Basque armed-separatist group ETA Monday declared a "permanent and general, internationally verifiable" cease-fire, a move that could put an end to a 42-year campaign of violence, the organization said in a video posted on the website of Basque newspaper Gara. See more on this story from the Wall Street Journal here.
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