Tens of thousands of people marched in Madrid on Saturday to protest the Basque separatist group ETA and urge the government to bar anyone linked to it from running in regional and local elections. Basque separatists launched a new party called Sortu on February 7 in a bid to field pro-independence candidates in elections to be held May 22.
The Supreme Court denied Sortu legal status on March 24 and barred it from elections, saying it is a repackaged version of ETA's outlawed political wing Batasuna. Sortu can appeal to the Constitutional Court, and the rally in downtown Madrid was called by victims of terrorism associations to urge government and legal institutions to bar pro-ETA activists from running for office.
"We demand the government stops ETA sympathisers from accessing taxpayers' money by getting themselves elected to public office," said Conchita Martin, whose husband Colonel Pedro Antonio Blanco was killed by ETA in 1999. Protesters carried Spanish flags and banners reading "For the defeat of terrorism: ETA barred from elections." "It would be a betrayal of victims of ETA terrorism to allow Sortu to be legalised, or to permit sympathisers to join other already legal parties in order to run for office," said Almudena Portero, 28, who was handing out posters.
She said she is an activist in Spain's main conservative opposition Popular Party. Sortu emerged after intense debates within ETA-linked pro-independence groups which concluded that bombs and bullets were no longer an effective way to seek a Basque state independent of Spain and France.
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