Fears of summer bombings as Eta steps up attacks

• Security services say resorts may be targeted
• Move designed to pressure Zapatero for peace deal

Graham Keeley in Barcelona
The Guardian

Spanish security services fear the Basque separatist group Eta is planning a summer campaign of violence which could include attacks on tourist resorts popular with Britons.

Concerns were raised after the assassination of a former politician and the car bombing of a police station over the past fortnight, suggesting Eta is stepping up its attacks.

Despite the arrest of key members which has badly depleted Eta, security forces say Eta appears determined to continue killing to pressure the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to broker a peace deal.

On Friday, a car bomb charged with 70kg (154lb) of explosives went off outside a police station in Calahorra, La Rioja, northern Spain.

After a phone warning to police from a man claiming to be from Eta, the area was evacuated.

The bomb exploded as people filled the city for a Good Friday procession. One officer suffered light injuries.

Two weeks ago, former Socialist councillor Isaías Carrasco, a 42-year-old father of three, was shot dead in front of his family in Mondragon, in northern Spain. The killing, which came just three days before the Spanish general election, led his teenage daughter Sandra to call on voters to cast their ballots and defy the terrorists.

Zapatero was returned to power with a higher share of the vote but without an absolute majority, which would have increased his power to solve the Basque question.

Anti-terrorist police believe Eta's next target may be Zapatero himself, whose investiture will take place next month. If Eta cannot penetrate the high-security surrounding the occasion in Madrid, they may opt to attack a softer target.

Eta has in the past targeted resorts popular with Britons during the summer. In 2003, the group bombed areas in Alicante and Benidorm, injuring 13 people.

A security source said: "We now believe Eta will start a prolonged campaign to put Zapatero under pressure."

Meanwhile, Zapatero is seeking an all-party pact against Eta which would join the conservative opposition Popular party and the Basque Nationalist party with the ruling Socialists.

In an effort to move away from the bitter political wrangling which typified any mention of Eta in the past four years, the Socialist leader will seek international cooperation to find a solution to a problem which has dogged Spain for 40 years.

Zapatero, who sought advice from Tony Blair over his experiences in Northern Ireland, wants to try to isolate hardline foreign support for Eta.

Representatives of the government failed in peace talks with Eta during Zapatero's first term in office. But the rightwing Popular party, suspicious of the Socialists for holding talks with Eta, seem unlikely to support Zapatero's plan.

Zapatero began peace talks with Eta after it declared a unilateral truce in March 2006. But Eta grew frustrated with a lack of concessions and reverted to violence with a car bombing at a Madrid airport car park in December 2006 that killed two people sleeping in their vehicles.

The group insisted the deaths were unintended and that the truce still stood. However, it declared an end to the ceasefire in June 2007. Eta has since carried out more than a dozen minor bombings. Eta members shot dead two undercover Spanish police officers in southern France in December.

ETA Is Blamed for a Killing in Spain That Curtails Election Campaigning

By VICTORIA BURNETT and ELAINE SCIOLINO

MADRID — Spain’s two main political parties abruptly curtailed campaigning for Sunday’s general election after a gunman suspected of belonging to the Basque militant group ETA killed a former city councilman in northern Spain on Friday.

The attack and the ensuing disruption of the campaign were particularly disturbing for Spain because of their timing, just short of the fourth anniversary of the March 11, 2004, Islamist bombing of the Madrid commuter train system, which left 191 people dead three days before Spain’s last general election.

Then, the conservative government’s insistence that ETA was responsible for one of Europe’s deadliest terrorist attacks — despite mounting evidence to the contrary — angered voters who felt that they had been misled. They turned out in record numbers to elect the Socialist contender, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, as prime minister.

“Today, terrorists tried to interfere in the peaceful demonstration of the will of the people as they go to the polls,” Mr. Zapatero said during a televised statement. “We will not permit it today. We will never permit it.”

The slain man, Isaías Carrasco, 42, a former Socialist representative and father of three, was shot several times in the torso and neck at close range as he left his apartment in the working class town of Arrasate, according to Spanish authorities. Local press reports said that Mr. Carrasco, who was a councilman until last year, worked in a highway tollbooth.

A man wearing a false beard shot Mr. Carrasco before fleeing in a gray car, leaving the victim’s wife and daughter screaming “Daddy!” and “Murderer!” as they bent over his body, according to news service reports and a witness’s account broadcast on CNN’s Spanish language service.

In a televised briefing, Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba blamed a lone ETA shooter for the killing. “ETA has killed a Socialist former councilman,” Mr. Rubalcaba said, calling the shooting a “vile and cowardly act.”

Mr. Rubalcaba, who said last month that he expected ETA to try to stage an attack before the election, did not offer any evidence for his claim that it was responsible for Mr. Carrasco’s death.

Neither Mr. Rubalcaba nor any other Spanish official explained why ETA would have singled out a little-known former local official.

But Kepa Aulestia, a newspaper columnist and former member of ETA, said that Mr. Carrasco would have been an easy target.

“It was clear that ETA wanted to get someone during this campaign and it managed to do that today, probably because it managed to catch someone who was undefended and with no bodyguard,” Mr. Aulestia said in a telephone interview from Bilbao.

Mr. Zapatero cut short a campaign rally in southern Spain and canceled a final campaign appearance scheduled for Friday night in the Madrid suburb of Leganés. The conservative candidate, Mariano Rajoy, canceled rallies in Seville and Madrid.

The decision to halt campaigning, although imposed only hours before it was to end at midnight, was a signal of how large the Madrid bombings and their aftermath loom in the country’s consciousness. The attack on Friday also served as a reminder of one of the most controversial chapters of Mr. Zapatero’s term — his failed attempt to broker peace with ETA after the group declared a cease-fire in March 2006.

What began as a day in which Spanish airwaves were dominated by jubilant politicians on the campaign trail became a series of dramatic and bleak images: The Spanish-language CNN station filled the screen with a photograph of Mr. Carrasco, smiling and sporting a silver earring in one ear. CNN also showed masked Basque antiterrorism police surrounding the scene of the killing and bloody images of destruction in ETA bombings that have taken place over more than a decade.

In an apparent show of unity, Mr. Rajoy, leader of the opposition Popular Party, who has branded Mr. Zapatero as weak for negotiating with ETA, condemned the attack Friday and expressed his support for “our fellow members of the Socialist Party and Spain.” But he underscored the changes he would make to ETA policy if elected.

“Everyone knows what I think,” he said. “Freedom, the people’s rights, their individual rights will return to Spain.”

It was unclear Friday whether the attack would change the political equation in Sunday’s vote.

After the 2004 bombings, the official electoral campaign was also called off. The government launched a different campaign of its own, suppressing mounting evidence that pointed to radical Islamists. The prime minister at the time, José María Aznar, asked Spaniards to join mass antiterrorism rallies the day after the attacks, and the United Nations Security Council, at Spain’s insistence, passed a resolution attributing responsibility to ETA.

Rage at the government was evident on Election Day that year as voters, especially young people who had not planned to vote, flocked to the polls. They said they did so not so much out of fear of terror as out of anger against a government that they said mishandled the crisis.

ETA, which has killed more than 800 people over four decades in a bid for an independent Basque homeland, is considered a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.

Spain Campaigning Ends After Killing

By PAUL HAVEN
The Associated Press
Friday, March 7, 2008; 8:57 AM

MADRID, Spain -- Both of Spain's major political parties called off all election campaigning nationwide Friday after a former city councilman was shot dead in the Basque region.

The killing raised tensions two days before the general election, bringing an early end to rallies that were supposed to conclude at Friday midnight. There would be no resumption of campaigning before the election, the ruling Socialist party said.

The former councilman Isaias Carrasco was shot in the Basque town of Arrasate as he emerged from his home with his wife and daughter. He died after being rushed to a local hospital, Basque police told The Associated Press. Police said he was shot several times, and Spanish news agency EFE reported the shots were all to the back of his head.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

MADRID, Spain (AP) _ The last time Spaniards voted in national elections, the trauma from the train bombings that left nearly 200 people dead was raw, the perpetrators at large and anger white-hot over suspicions the government was hiding evidence for political gain.

The result: A young Socialist opposition candidate named Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero surged from behind to win power with promises to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq and push through sweeping social changes in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country.

Four years later, Zapatero has made good on those pledges and is hoping for a clearer mandate from Sunday's vote, a rematch against the man he beat so unexpectedly back in 2004.

Spain's once robust economy is softening and Zapatero's peace talks with Basque separatists have failed spectacularly, but the 47-year-old prime minister has never trailed in opinion polls and is widely favored to win a narrow victory over conservative candidate Mariano Rajoy.

A trio of recent polls shows Zapatero with a 4 percentage point lead.

Formal campaigning has been brief _ under Spanish law, it is limited to just two weeks _ but remarkably nasty.

During the candidates' first debate on Feb. 25, the two men used a version of the word 'liar' at least 17 times, according to an Associated Press review of the transcript. Their second debate included this exchange:

Rajoy: "You lied because you always lie. You never tell the truth."

Zapatero: "No, sir. No, no, no, no. Never."

Much of the enmity stems from the circumstances in which Zapatero won election back in 2004. Days before the vote, most polls showed Rajoy's Popular Party with a solid lead and Socialist insiders say even they did not expect to win.

But then came the horrific March 11 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people and injured 1,800, which the outgoing government of conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar initially blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA.

Hours after the bombings, police found an audio tape of Quranic verses in a van outside a station through which the targeted trains had passed.

Two days later _ and just a day before the vote _ authorities found a video made by the perpetrators claiming they did it in allegiance to al-Qaida and in retaliation for Spain's support of the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite the mounting evidence, Aznar and Rajoy stuck to their hypothesis that ETA was behind the bombing. The government was apparently concerned that acknowledging Islamic involvement would underscore their support for the war in Iraq, which was deeply unpopular in Spain.

But the perception of a cover-up did more than that. Angry voters swung behind Zapatero, earning him a surprise victory. However, many conservatives still see his 2004 win as a fluke.

"It is certainly true that in the eyes of a significant proportion of Popular Party voters, Zapatero is tainted with illegitimacy because of the way he won the last elections," said Charles Powell, a history professor at Madrid's San Pablo CEU university.

Zapatero is hoping his re-election under more normal circumstance would put any questions of legitimacy to rest and prove the country is behind the breathtaking social and administrative changes he has enacted since taking office.

Zapatero's Socialists pushed through legislation that made it easier to get a divorce, legalized gay marriage, allowed transsexuals to seek government funding for sex change operations and scrapped plans for obligatory religious education at public schools.

Equally troublesome to conservatives has been his backing of expanded autonomy for independence-minded Spanish regions like Catalonia and the Basque country, which have gained greater control of their finances and other tools of self-rule, and liken themselves to nations within the Spanish state.

Conservatives warn this is the first step on a road that will lead to the breakup of Spain. They have also hit Zapatero hard on what they see as a soft immigration policy that has allowed millions of South Americans, Africans and Eastern Europeans to live and work here _ either legally or illegally _ taking jobs that might otherwise go to Spaniards.

But the real fireworks have been over Zapatero's failed peace talks with the Basque separatist group ETA. The opposition says the prime minister lied to the country by continuing to have indirect contact with the militant group even after it shattered a cease-fire with a deadly Dec. 30, 2006, bombing at Madrid's Barajas airport.

Zapatero has countered that the Popular Party has broken a cardinal rule of Spanish democracy by politicizing terrorism.

Neither candidate has laid out an extensive vision of where they will take the country over the next four years, or how they will deal with a global economic slowdown that has already started to sink Spain's once-soaring property market and reverse the dramatic job gains of recent years.

And despite the evident bad blood between the two men, Rajoy has given no indication he would roll back most of the social changes enacted by the Socialists in recent years.

Although polls show Zapatero ahead, he is unlikely to garner an absolute majority in the 350-seat lower house of parliament, forcing him to seek an alliance with smaller parties, much as he does now.