Tens of thousands of people marched in downtown Madrid on Saturday to protest the government's anti-terrorism policies and its willingness to negotiate with the armed Basque separatist group ETA.
Crying "Zapatero, resign," referring to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, marchers mobilized by the Association of the Victims of Terrorism (AVT) waved placards scrawled with "Not in my name!" and "Memory, dignity and justice."
Others in the demonstration, which also had the support of the right-wing opposition Popular Party (PP) and the Catholic Church, bore photos of some of the 800 people killed by ETA during its 40-year campaign to establish a Basque state in northeast Spain and southwest France.
The PP-led Madrid government said 1.4 million people turned out for the demonstration, more than 10 times the police estimate of 110,000.
The AVT and right-wing parties accuse Zapatero's socialist government of negotiating secretly with ETA.
The government denies this and says ETA must lay down its arms as a precondition for any talks.
AVT rented 200 buses to bring people to the capital from all over Spain with the aim of matching the success of a rally it staged last July, which drew hundreds of thousands of people to the capital.
Public opinion in Spain about ETA has become even more polarized as Zapatero began talking in recent months about entering into a peace process and hinting "the beginning of the end" of the group was in sight.
But ETA put Zapatero on the back foot one week ago when it called on Basques to take "new steps" towards peace but failed to declare an expected truce.
On Saturday it released another statement saying that "respect [of the right] of all citizens of the Basque Country to decide" their future was key to resolving the conflict.
Like most people in Spain, the organizers of Saturday's march are against any political concessions, such as offering the recognition of self-determination, or pardons for prisoners, in return for an ETA ceasefire.
Such opinions are however not unanimous. Some ETA victims, most of them Basque socialist legislators, on Wednesday gave their support to Zapatero's efforts "in the hope that future generations might live in peace and freedom."
The widow of Fernando Baesa, a Basque socialist assassinated by ETA six years ago, released a statement on Saturday saying such demonstrations were divisive and only strengthened those bent on violence.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion