Terrorism
With the abandonment of a year-long unilateral "truce" the Basque terrorist group ETA resumed their campaign of bombings and assassinations in 2000. Despite the fact that Catalunya is the home to a minority which also suffered under the domination of Franco's Madrid, the region (particularly Barcelona) has been the occasional target of attacks; in June 1987 a bomb placed in a department store parking garage killed 28 people and injured over 40 in ETA's bloodiest attack. In the summer and autumn of 2000 their return to violence saw the murders of two representatives of the ruling PP-party and the university professor and socialist politician Ernest Lluch (whose death provoked a demonstration by nearly a million people), and the shooting of a local police officer who stopped two terrorists on their way to blow up a journalist. ETA's Barcelona cell was dismantled in January 2001, following the capture of two members who were driving through the city carrying a bomb (they were going to leave it at the Post Office). In addition to attacks by ETA, the radical left-wing group GRAPO planted two bombs in Barcelona in 2000, neither of which resulted in deaths. Catalunya's own regionalist terrorist group, Terra Lliure , had a short life in the 1980s and 1990s, but acted only against property which they considered to be emblematic of Castilian domination; their most famous victim was the replica of Columbus's ship, Santa Maria , which used to be moored at the bottom of the Ramblas. All this said the odds against a visitor being affected by terrorism are astronomical, although you may pass by one of the silent noontime gatherings in Placa Sant Jaume which take place the day after any ETA assassination.
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" Pamplona/BarcelonaRod says "Hi I just would like some advice on barcelona and pamplona on where to go and things I should'nt leave there without going to. Thanks My e-mail is rigochevere@yahoo.com"
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