En EspañolETA kills another Spanish police inspector in Basque Country
The Basque terrorist group ETA has killed another Spanish policeman this morning (around 9 a.m.) in the Vizcaya region of the Basque country in the North of Spain with a car bomb.
The police chief inspector – forty-nine year old Eduardo Antonio Puelles – was married with two children and had been a policeman for twenty-seven years. He was the current head of the Bilbao police intelligence department. (ABC)
Zapatero has cancelled his trip to Brussels and flown back to Madrid, condemning the attack and promising that the ‘full weight of the law‘ will be brought to bear on the perpetrators and that his government has an ‘unbreakable determination‘ to do away with ETA. (20 minutos)
The Spanish conservative party opposition leader Mariano Rajoy has also condemned the attack and promised his full support to the Basque government and the forces of law & order, but I didn’t hear him offer his support to Zapatero’s government.
It’s the first ETA attack with socialist Patxi López as Lehendakari – the Basque regional prime minister – so watch for commentary on how he responds. For the minute he has condemned the attack and called on everyone to demonstrate tomorrow at 12 p.m.
No news on catching the terrorists yet.
16h00
Lots of Spanish twitterers annoyed about New York Times describing ETA as ‘Basque militants‘.
16h15
The Prince and Princess of Asturias (Felipe and Letizia) will be going to Puelles’s funeral tomorrow in the Basque country. The Spanish King and Queen are currently in Singapore on a commercial visit. Town halls, the press and Spanish people all over the country are currently organising anti-ETA demonstrations for tomorrow at noon, which are normally well attended.
16h45.
Giles Tremlett, The Guardian’s Spain correspondent, notes that: “With senior members being picked up so regularly, thanks largely to the help of French police, it is unclear who is in charge of the group.” The Times has Spanish security sources telling them ETA represents as big a threat as Islamic fundamentalists.
19h30
The Basque regional government has published an ‘ETA no’ slogan on its website in Spanish and Basque ‘ETA No. ETA Ez‘. This is not something that would have happened with Ibarretxe as Basque prime minister. They have also decided that the slogan for tomorrow’s march in memory of Eduardo Puelles will be ‘Por la libertad.ETA NO.Askatasuna‘ which means ‘For freedom. ETA NO. Freedom’ (in Basque).
In a gesture of political solidarity, Rajoy and ZP are travelling to the chapel together to pay their respects.
The Spanish Home Office is saying a splinter group of ETA’s Vizcaya Comando – broken up last year – is responsible for the attack. (El País)
El Mundo’s editor Pedro J. Ramírez says in his daily video that ETA has done what it always does ‘put another dead body on the floor‘. He thinks that the Spanish state is slowly winning the battle against ETA; ‘That form of lowlife should not even be given a glass of water.‘
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I caught his widow's full speech in the telecast of the rally and she said, I think, everything that needed to be said. What a strong, eloquent person! I was in tears.
As for the usual griping by Spaniards over the wording of U.S. media coverage of ETA attacks: the Spanish news media has reached the point where it treats “labandaterroristaETA” (“theterroristgroupETA”) as if it were a single, indivisible word. I can't remember the last time I heard a Spanish news reporter just say “ETA.” This deliberate repetition has had the desired effect: Spaniards are so used to this that if someone in the foreign media mentions ETA without specifying “the terrorist group, ETA,” it sounds to them as if something is missing. To my foreign ears, it feels almost propagandistic.
If it is possible to say “al-Qaeda” without always saying “the terrorist group, al-Qaeda,” surely it's possible to mention ETA without always adding the word “terrorist.” In any case, the description used by the New York Times seemed fine. Part of the problem, I think, is that Spanish speakers assume the English word “militant” means the same as the Spanish “militante,” which it does not.