Spanish police stormed five more offices of the radical Basque party Batasuna today, moving quickly to carry out a judge's order shutting down the party accused of supporting armed separatists ETA.
The closures came a day after the judge and parliament teamed up in legally separate but politically coordinated cases that marked Spain's first attempt to ban a political party since the death of dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975.
Masked Spanish police last night seized the Pamplona headquarters of Batasuna, then today shut five smaller ones in the Navarre region bordering the three official provinces of the semi-autonomous Basque country, officials said.
"Democracy in the Basque homeland!" shouted several Batasuna members, including democratically elected regional legislators and town councillors, as police ejected them from the building.
Investigative High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon's order was taped to the door like an eviction notice.
The Pamplona site is one of three central party offices and symbolic for its presence in Navarre, considered by hardline Basque nationalists as a lost province, along with three others in France.
Hundreds of elected Batasuna officials may remain in their posts. The party received 143,000 votes, or 10 per cent of the total, in last year's Basque parliamentary elections. It also controls town councils in the Basque country and Navarre.
Hours after Judge Garzon's ruling, parliament voted, 295-10 with 29 abstentions, instructing the government to petition the Supreme Court to have Batasuna blacklisted.
Tensions grew overnight when a bomb was planted outside a courthouse in the Basque town of Tolosa. A local newspaper received a warning in the name of ETA, which gave police time to defuse explosives packed in a cooking pot.