A Basque town councillor from Spain's ruling party was killed yesterday in a car bombing blamed on the separatist guerrilla group ETA.
Mr Jose Ignacio Irureta Goiena (35), a Partido Popular (PP) politician from Zarauz, was driving to work when the bomb exploded, blowing off an arm and a leg, police said.
He died of cardiac arrest at the scene. The attack took place in Zarauz in the Guipuzcoa province, a stronghold of Basque separatism. Officials immediately condemned the assassination and blamed it on the ETA Basque separatist group.
"The terrorists want to murder those who are democratic," a Spanish government spokesman, Mr Miguel Angel Rodriguez, told state radio. "I think we have to continue living for freedom and that we won't take a step backwards."
ETA has murdered three other PP town councillors in the Basque country in the past two years.
The kidnap and assassination last July of councillor Miguel Angel Blanco sparked an unprecedented outpouring of national outrage, bringing an estimated six million Spaniards on to the streets in protests.
Another councillor, Jose Luis Caso (64), was shot last month while drinking wine at a bar.
The ETA group killed 13 people last year.
Mr Goiena was on his way to work at his family's wood factory when a bomb planted in the lower part of his car exploded, police said. It went off only a few hundred metres from a school where students were arriving for classes.
Mr Goiena was married with two children. His grief-stricken father, a former town councillor, was accompanied to the scene by local politicians before the body was taken away for an autopsy.
"This assassination is another sign of the contempt that ETA has for the will of the people," the Basque regional Interior Minister, Mr Juan Maria Atutxa, said. "This is what is called fascism."
Mr Carlos Iturgaiz, president of the Basque arm of the PP, said: "These murderers are continuing to attack the Popular Party and are continuing their campaign against us . . . but they're not going to gain anything."
ETA considers the centre-right PP the heirs to late dictator Francisco Franco, who brutally repressed Basque nationalism during his four decades in power.
In March 1995, ETA tried to kill the PP leader, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, as he travelled to his office, but he was saved by his vehicle's armoured plating. Mr Aznar, elected prime minister in 1996, has vowed to crush the guerrillas.
Authorities have been bracing for a violent backlash following the jailing early last month of the leaders of ETA's political wing, Herri Batasuna, for collaborating with the guerrillas.
The radical separatist party's entire 23-member directorate was sentenced to seven years each in prison by Spain's Supreme Court for showing a video of armed ETA guerrillas during the 1996 election campaign.
Herri Batasuna commands about 15 per cent support among Basque voters. Mr Caso's killing on December 11th was seen as an act of retaliation for the verdict.