SPAIN: Five people, one of them a small child, were slightly injured yesterday when seven bombs exploded almost simultaneously around Spain, writes Jane Walker in Madrid
The devices were distributed around the country, from Santillana and Leon in the north to Malaga and Alicante in the south. Damage to buildings was slight, mainly broken glass, although the front of a café in Avila was completely blown out.
It was almost certainly the work of the Basque terrorist organisation ETA who had issued two phone warnings less than an hour earlier.
The seven bombs, each believed to contain around 100 grams of explosives, were aimed at disrupting the celebrations marking the 26th anniversary of Spain's post-Franco constitution. They were similar to the five that exploded around the Spanish capital during the Friday evening rush hour, causing traffic chaos.
A sixth bomb was found and defused on Saturday night. It had been left in a briefcase in a children's playground in the centre of Almería, in the south-east.
Police say it was similar to the others and had been set to go off at the same time as yesterday's explosive devices.
It seems likely that the terrorists wanted to create fear and tension amongst the public rather than cause injury or loss of life. In all but one of the cases - that in Santillana, near Santander - the caller who phoned the Basque newspaper Gara with the warnings gave accurate locations as to where the explosives had been placed, giving police sufficient time to cordon off the areas.
The casualties, none of them serious, occurred in Santillana del Mar, where the caller warned that a bomb had been left in the zoo car park, and from where some 300 staff and visitors were evacuated. But just 10 minutes later a blast occurred in a different park, not far away, damaging a small wooden hut and causing minor cuts to the legs of a small child.
Mr Miguel Angel Revilla, the president of Cantabria, drove immediately to Santillana to see the damage for himself. He said it was a miracle that no one had been killed or seriously injured. "If that child and her family had been only a couple of metres nearer the hut, then the results would have been tragic," he said.
The news of the blasts cast a shadow over the official celebrations taking place in the Cortes (parliament) in Madrid.
Interior Minister José Antonio Alonso described the bombs as small explosive devices detonated by battery-operated timers. "Tedax (explosives police) officers are examining the remains of all the devices, but preliminary signs are that they are similar to those used in Madrid last Friday, and in Almería on Saturday," he said.
Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said: "ETA knows that it only has one alternative, and that is that it ends its campaign of violence and lays down its arms. And I hope that this will be very soon."