'ETA bomb' explodes outside disco (CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

From CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A car bomb exploded at a discotheque in northern Spain on Tuesday night, causing damage but no injuries because police had cleared the area after a warning call in the name of the Basque separatist group ETA, an Interior Ministry spokesman told CNN.

The blast came just four days after Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said that Spain could be witnessing the "beginning of the end" of ETA, which is blamed for more than 800 deaths in its 37-year fight for Basque independence.

While government officials and political analysts speculate publicly about an imminent ETA cease-fire, the Basque ambulance service DYA received a call just after 7 p.m. (6 p.m. GMT) Tuesday in which the caller, speaking for ETA, warned of a bomb that would explode an hour later at La Nuba discotheque in the town of Urdax, in northern Navarra province, a DYA spokeswoman told CNN.

Civil Guards rushed to the site and cleared the area. The bomb, in a van parked outside the dance club, went off at 8 p.m., the ministry spokesman said.
***
more at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/02/14/spain.bomb/index.html

Editorial comment: Suppose you're a linguist, and you want to learn more about the 'Basque' language (more properly, Euskara), the most enigmatic language in Europe, with no certainly known relatives. So you browse a bunch of Basque Web sites. For years, Spain outlawed *any* use of this language because of its association with outlawed separatist groups. So...are you now browsing "terrorist Web sites"? Does the NSA know? The Web sites in question lie in France or Spain, hence outside US borders, and communication with them would fall under NSA's mandate. Would you be suspected of being a "sympathizer"? Would US accept Spain's standards on this, and cooperate with Spanish law enforcement to have you questioned and your computer searched? All potential consequences of being curious about a language which is one of the great unexplained mysteries of comparative linguistics, hence irresistible to many linguists. Disconcerting, to say the least, and not something I'd want to test with ** cronies in charge.

[Roland99]

1. The former gov't claimed the 3/11 attacks were from ETA.

Hard to say who was behind this.