To avoid “undesirable consequences,” the Basque separatist group warned tourists to stay away from Spanish resorts.
ETA’s statement was published in the Basque newspaper Gara in which it said “Spanish touristic-economic interests” are among its targets.
Spanish authorities have blamed the group for two car bomb explosions in beach resorts earlier this month. A policeman was killed by a car bomb on March 17 in the northern coastal town of Rosas, located in the Catalonia region.
With 48 million foreign visitors last year, tourism is Spain’s biggest industry. Spain is the world’s number three tourist destination after France and the United States.
Great Britain’s Foreign Office has already issued a warning to its citizens traveling to Spain, posting the following notice on its Website:
“Visitors should be alert to sporadic terrorist activity following the end of the ETA ceasefire," the statement says. "British nationals, residents and visitors throughout Spain should therefore be alert to the situation and report anything of a suspicious nature, including bags or other objects, to the police."
U.S. State Department officials have yet to issue a similar warning.
Seventeen Britons were injured in 1996 when ETA exploded a bomb at Spain’s Reus Airport south of Barcelona.
Spain’s interior minister called the ETA’s statement an “ode to murder.” But officials and representatives of the country’s tourism industry downplayed the threat as a panic-producing tactic.
“They have repeated this kind of thing several times,” a government spokesman said. “Their attacks have never had a noticeable impact on tourism.”
In its statement, ETA also claimed responsibility for six killings in fifteen attacks since January.
Two police officers, two electrical workers, a local politician, and a cook were among those killed in the attacks that authorities had already blamed on the group.
ETA, whose acronym means Basque Homeland and Freedom, apologized to the families of the two electrical workers killed by “mistake” in a February blast which severely injured a local Socialist politician –the bomb’s intended target.
The group has now claimed responsibility for 29 killings since it called off a 14-month-long ceasefire in December 1999. ETA has been blamed for some 800 deaths in its 33-year-long campaign to carve an independent Basque state from northern Spain and parts of France.
ETA has typically reduced levels of violence in the months before regional elections, but the group has been increasingly aggressive despite scheduled early elections for the Basque parliament on May 13.
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