Basque separatists clash with riot police
Riot police firing rubber pellets clashed with Basque separatist protesters who set rubbish bins ablaze yesterday, after a banned rally in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastian.
Authorities arrested five people, the Basque Interior Ministry said. It could not confirm news reports that at least 10 others were injured, including several bystanders.
Spanish television showed footage of flaming barricades set up near the old quarter of San Sebastian, where the outlawed separatist party Batasuna held a rally in defiance of a court order. Masked youths hurled rocks at police.
Police in helmets and wielding truncheons charged at groups of protesters who tried to assemble later on a major boulevard where they had hoped earlier to hold the demonstration but were prevented by Basque authorities, the ministry said.
The ministry declined to estimate how many people attended the rally, but news reports said it was more than 1,000, including senior leaders of the party, outlawed in 2003 on grounds of being part of the armed separatist group Eta.
After Batasuna last week announced plans to hold the rally, the Basque Interior Ministry banned the demonstration, saying the party could not hold rallies because it was a banned organisation.
Batasuna appealed, but the Superior Court of the Basque country upheld the ministry decision by a vote of 2-1.
Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi said the goal of the rally was to push for Batasuna’s inclusion in proposed all-party talks on the future of the Basque region.
This would bring together pro-independence advocates, more moderate nationalists and mainstream parties that want the semiautonomous Basque region to remain part of Spain.
Otegi’s convening of the rally prompted Spain’s opposition conservatives to renew their charge that the government’s policy toward Eta had only emboldened it and Batasuna.
