Basques go to the polls

Around 1.7 million Basques were urged to vote in elections today for the government in Spain’s most turbulent region.

The Basque Nationalist Party, or PNV, has ruled the 75-seat parliament in this semiautonomous region for most of the past 30 years, on a platform that courts separatist sentiments.

This time, however, some analysts predict big gains for Spain’s Socialist Party, which wants to retain strong links with central government.

The parliament will be the first to exclude the participation of radical nationalist parties supporting the armed separatist group ETA.

The Madrid-based Supreme Court in February barred candidate lists submitted by two parties – Askatasuna and Demokrazia 3 Milioi – on the grounds that they are directly linked to the banned Batasuna party. Batasuna was outlawed in 2003 for being the political wing of ETA.

Hardline separatists have complained that the exclusion makes today’s vote undemocratic.

ETA has killed more than 825 people during a violent separatist campaign since the late 1960s to try to establish an independent Basque country straddling northern Spain and southwestern France.

The PNV, which rejects ETA’s violence, insists Basques have the democratic right to decide by referendum whether to remain part of Spain or break away.

The Socialist party – citing Spain’s constitution – maintains that only Spain’s central government can invoke referendums.

Regional elections also take place in north-western Galicia today, where the Socialist Party of Galicia (PSG) and the Galician Nationalist Block (BNG) could form a ruling coalition again if together they win more seats than the conservative Popular Party.