Millions March To Protest Spain Killing

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.