MADRID, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Two weeks after a deadly bombing in Madrid by Basque separatist organization ETA, several hundred thousand people in Spain protested against terrorism.
More than 200,000 people marched in Madrid over the weekend, while in the Basque regional capital Bilbao, some 80,000 people took the streets to protest the violence.
The demonstrations come two weeks after ETA placed a bomb in a car park at Madrid's Barajas Airport, killing two men and breaking a months-long cease-fire agreement. The Spanish government immediately ended all peace negotiations with the Basque group.
ETA, which is listed by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization, seeks to create an independent socialist state in the Basque country, with territories currently belonging to Spain and France.
For the past 38 years, ETA has attacked military and later civilian targets to try and push through its claims, killing nearly 900 people with assassinations and bombings.
ETA stated in the cease-fire announcement it was committed to bring an end to the conflict by promoting "a democratic process in the Basque country and to build a new framework in which our rights as a people are recognized." But many voices in Spain have criticized Spanish Prime Minister Jose Louis Zapatero's willingness to engage in direct talks with ETA because of its violent structure and because it broke all of the seven cease-fires of the past. It has now broken the eight.
