Spanish Officials, Eta Compete For Support

Spain’s justice and interior minister claimed that support for the Basque group ETA is waning on Sunday, just hours after more than 30,000 people rallied in support of the armed separatist group.

Juan Alberto Belloch, addressing Socialist voters ahead of March 3 legislative elections, said ETA’s supporters “live enclosed in their own terrible bubble, with their own culture, their own bars and their own areas.”

Supporters of Herri Batasuna, the ETA political wing which is running in the elections, filled a stadium in the Basque city of San Sebastian on Saturday night. The crowd cheered as the Spanish flag was burned.

The rally was held as ETA, a Basque-language acronym for Basque Homeland and Freedom, took responsibility for the death this month of Socialist lawyer Fernando Mugica on a San Sebastian street.

More than 760 people have been killed since the ETA took up arms in 1968 to win independence of Spain’s Basque provinces.