Crackdown on Basque separatists sought
By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 39 minutes ago
MADRID, Spain - Hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets of Spain's capital Saturday to demand a tougher government policy toward Basque separatists.
Demonstrators demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, accusing him of insulting victims of the ETA separatist group by seeking peace talks and granting house arrest to a notorious ETA killer.
Madrid's government, which is controlled by the opposition conservative Popular Party, which called the demonstration, estimated the crowd at 2.1 million. That would make it Spain's largest protest in years.
The Interior Ministry, however, put attendance at more than 342,000. Such discrepancies are common in anti-government rallies in Spain.
It was the third protest in just over a month over the Popular Party's accusations that Zapatero is appeasing ETA. Spain has become increasingly divided over how to deal with ETA, which has killed 800 people since 1968 in its drive for Basque independence.
The crowd chanted "Zapatero, resign!" and carried banners reading, "Spain for freedom, no more concessions to ETA."
"Whoever does not see that the government has yielded to terrorists is blind," said Rogelio Casado, a 50-year-old tax consultant.
The protests were called after the government granted house arrest to Jose Ignacio de Juana Chaos, a convicted ETA killer who is near death on a hunger strike over a new conviction stemming from newspaper articles deemed to be terrorist threats.
The new charges came just as he was about to be released after serving 18 years of a sentence of 3,129 years for killing 25 people in a string of ETA attacks. Under Spanish law, the maximum he could have served in prison was 30 years.
"Whereas other governments tried to keep ETA prisoners in jail, this is the first time a government has worked to free them," said Alvaro Soldevilla, a 30-year-old lawyer at the protest with his wife and two children.
Conservatives were already furious over the Socialist government's refusal to rule out negotiations after an ETA bombing in December killed two people in Madrid and shattered a nine-month-old cease-fire.
While conceding that many Spaniards may have a hard time accepting the house arrest decision, the government has argued it was the humane thing to do it.
The decision is also seen by many as an attempt to prevent De Juana Chaos from becoming a martyr by starving himself to death.