Millions March To Protest Spain Killing

Tue., July 15, 1997

Compiled From Wire Services

More than two million Spaniards marched in Madrid and Barcelona on Monday to protest the killing of a young politician by Basque separatists, hours after his hometown paid an emotional tribute at his burial.

Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar led a mass of people stretching nearly two miles to Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square, where the regional government building was draped in a three-story-high black ribbon.

The demonstration - in which Aznar was accompanied by all three former prime ministers of Spain’s 20-year-old democracy - was believed to be the largest since Spaniards marched in protest of a military coup attempt in 1981.

Madrid police said more than 1.5 million people joined the march. Another 1 million marched in Barcelona, police there reported.

Many waved photographs of Miguel Angel Blanco, a 29-year-old councilman from the Basque town of Ermua kidnapped by the Basque separatist group ETA on Thursday and shot and fatally wounded two days later.

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Millions March To Protest Spain Killing

Jesse Tinsley

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