King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia joined tens of thousands of Spaniards at noon yesterday in a silent protest against the murder of the Basque journalist shot dead outside his home in Andaoin, near San Sebastian, on Sunday morning.
Although the king has frequently spoken out against terrorist violence it was the first time the royal family had taken part in a public demonstration against an ETA murder. The king and queen, on an official visit to Andalusia, stood on the balcony of Jerez de la Frontera with the mayor and other city officials.
Cities, towns and villages across the country came to a halt for five minutes' silence as workers crowded into streets outside public buildings and offices to show their condemnation of the assassination of Jose Luis Lopez de Lacalle (63), a respected journalist and veteran fighter for liberty in his native Basque Country, both during the Franco dictatorship and since the coming of democracy.
Other demonstrations took place yesterday evening to coincide with the funeral which, at the wish of his widow and two children, was a private service. Andoain is a hot bed of pro-nationalist sentiments, and the murder resulted in verbal confrontations in the town hall as pro- and anti-ETA councillors met in a special session on Sunday night to debate a joint statement against the murder.
Insults were thrown at the mayor, Mr Jose Antonio Barandiaran, a member of Euskal Herritarrok (EH), the party closely allied to ETA, as he struggled to make himself heard. "We are Basques, too," they shouted at him. "You have killed a good man. Not even Franco would have dared do that." Slogans and graffiti have been painted on the walls of the town insulting Mr Lopez de Lacalle and others opposed to ETA.
Mr Lopez de Lacalle's death has accentuated the deep rifts between the parties in the Basque Country and the dramatic radicalisation in recent months of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which governs in the region.
Mr Arnaldo Otegi, the EH leader, blamed the press for the murder. "It has pinpointed the role of the media and the role of certain journalists who have manipulated the situation in the Basque Country," he said.
Many Basque and national newspapers reprinted Mr Lopez de Lacalle's last column, a condemnation of ETA and of the Basque government, which had appeared last Tuesday in El Mundo. In an interview last February after his apartment building was attacked by gangs of pro-ETA youths, Mr Lopez de Lacalle said: "They are as fascist as the franquistas, who sent me to jail for five years, but not even they would have dared to attack my family and my home."