POLITICS-SPAIN: Police Thwart Renewed ETA Bombings

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Dec 21 1999 (IPS) - The Basque separatist organisation ETA is ready to renew its bomb attacks in Spain, concluded analysts Tuesday after the police frustrated what could have been the biggest bomb explosion in ETA’s history.

The Civil Guard (militarised police) made a routine stop and ended up detaining a vehicle in Calatayud, 204 km from Madrid, in which an ETA member transported a 950 kilo bomb, ready for detonation.

According to Interior minister Jaime Mayor Oreja, the attack was to be carried out in Madrid, though he could not specify the objective. Generally, he said, the individuals entrusted with transporting the bombs do not know where they ultimately will be placed, as this task is for the ETA operatives.

The Basque separatist group declared an end to its unilateral cease-fire on December 3, for an undetermined amount of time. ETA members had laid down their weapons more than a year before, on Sept 16, 1998.

All major political forces, including the moderate Basque nationalists, demanded that the ETA refrain from renewed attacks and called on the group to pursue negotiations with the José María Aznar government, of the centre-right.

The only party that did not join in the demands, though it says it backs political talks, was the Eusko Herritarrok coalition (EH), which supports the ETA.

The driver of the vehicle carrying the bomb, José María Novoa Arróniz, does not have any previous arrests and was the EH’s alternate city council candidate in a small town of Alava province, where elections were held earlier this year.

ETA operatives needed only to connect the detonator on the explosive device to make it ready, pointed out Mayor Oreja. The van used to transport the bomb was stolen in southwestern France, had false license plates and began its trip in the outskirts of the French city of Bayona, near the Spanish border.

The largest amount of explosive the ETA has used so far was in two separate attacks, with bombs of 500 kilos each.

The first was Nov 22, 1988 against a central Civil Guard station, and the second exploded Jun 26, 1989 at a police station in Llodio, in the Basque province of Alava.

But the greatest number of casualties – 21 people, all civilians – occurred when 30 kilos exploded in a busy supermarket, the Hipercor of Barcelona, part of Spain’s ‘El Corte Inglés’ chain of department stores and markets.

Mayor Oreja called the frustrated ETA attack “the best Christmas present the Civil Guard could give the people.”

But his positive take on the event was not shared by Xavier Arzallus, president of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). Arzallus is a moderate who governs the Basque region in coalition with the also moderate Eusko Alkartasuna (EA), and with the parliamentary support of the EH.

The PNV president, a constant critic of Interior minister Mayor Oreja, said the police interception of a vehicle with explosives, “whether the ETA’s, or whoever’s (…) is a big deal.”

“That is what the police are for, it is their job,” but “ETA attacks cannot be ended by the police alone,” he said, “political action is essential.”

The illegal organisation not only planned a large attack in Madrid, it also had its sights on Basque parliamentarians, according to a report Tuesday in the Madrid daily ‘El Mundo.’

According to the article, in the French home of ETA leader Belén González, arrested earlier in the neighbouring country, authorities found documents with detailed information on the movements of several of Spain’s legislators.

Among those being tracked was the president of the Basque Autonomous Parliament and leader of the PNV, José María Atutxa, president of the Popular Party in the Basque Country, Carlos Iturgaitz, and socialist representatives Javier Rojo and Luis Alberto Aguiriano.