Patxi Rementeria, the ETA terrorist blown up by his own bomb, received municipal honours yesterday in his home town of Markina, near Bilbao.
Rementeria and three other Basque separatists died when their car exploded as they drove through the streets of Bilbao 10 days ago. Their deaths marked the start of a week of violence in which ETA killed a Basque businessman and an army officer.
The decision to permit Rementeria's coffin to lie in state in the council chamber of Markina Town Hall was taken after an angry session of the corporation. Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) councillors, under pressure from the ETA's political front, Euskal Herritarrok, defied the wishes of their own party, and voted to grant him the honour. However, a motion to grant him posthumous honorary citizenship of Markina was rejected by the council.
The honouring of a dead terrorist highlights the support pro-ETA groups enjoy in the Basque Country, but it has shocked and angered politicians of other non-nationalist parties.
"It is a provocation to democracy and a scandal that they should grant the honours of a martyr to a terrorist who had the blood of innocent victims on his hands," said Mr Carmelo Barrio of the Partido Popular, which governs in Madrid.
Mr Angel Kareaga, the PNV mayor of Markina, admitted he approved the decision, in spite of instructions from his party, because he was threatened by EH and other pro-ETA sympathisers. "I did it to avoid incidents. I am no hero, and I was afraid," he told a Spanish radio programme yesterday. He also gave in to EH demands that no police should be present during the lying in state.
PNV officials tried to distance the party from the decision, although the party president, Mr Xabier Arzalluz sympathised with Mr Kareaga's position. "There is no motive or precedent to grant Rementeria the honours of a dead hero, but the mayor was under intolerable pressure," he said. A spokesman for the Basque regional government said yesterday that it did not have the authority to ban the ceremony.
The centre of Markina has be come a shrine to the ETA dead. An eternal flame blazes alongside their photographs in the town square, Basque flags bearing black mourning bands adorn many buildings, and pro-ETA graffiti has appeared on walls around the town. In the nearby town of Llodio, birthplace of one of the other ETA members, a similar shrine has been set up carrying photographs of the dead militants.