The biggest trial in Spanish history opened today with 56 people facing charges of belonging to a web of support groups for the armed Basque separatist group ETA.
The case, under investigation since 1998, comes to the High Court months after Spain's Socialist government held out an olive branch to ETA by offering to talk to the outlawed group if it laid down its arms.
Launched by Spain's best-known investigating judge Baltasar Garzon, the case is aimed at organisations alleged to have promoted ETA's aims in the political, financial, media and international spheres.
Prosecutors have described the organisations as the "stomach, heart and head" of ETA, which has killed nearly 850 people since 1968 in its campaign for an independent Basque state.
The trial, at a high-security courtroom in the outskirts of Madrid, has the most defendants of any trial in Spain's history.
The defendants, who had been free pending trial, arrived at the court in three buses. All wore identical t-shirts, bearing their case number "18/98" and the slogan "For civil and political rights".
Charges range from belonging to or co-operating with ETA to false accounting and tax and social security violations. Prosecutors are seeking a total of more than 900 years in prison for the accused, who face individual sentences of between 10 and 51 years if convicted.
Some 300 witnesses are expected to testify during the trial which could last up to eight months. Defendants include leaders of alleged ETA political wing KAS and its successor Ekin.