In the midst of a wave of violence perpetrated by the Basque separatist group ETA, Spain's chief prosecutor, Mr Pedro Rubira, called yesterday for prison sentences totalling 1,168 years for a former ETA leader, Francisco Mugica Garmendia, alias Pakito.
Garmendia faces around 70 charges, including participation in a 1998 bomb attack in Madrid that killed two people, including a two-year-old child, and wounded 88 people when it exploded near the Civil Guard headquarters.
Mr Rubira accused Garmendia of supplying a French ETA cell with 100 kilos of explosives and the keys to a vehicle with false registration plates used in the attack.
Garmendia was extradited from France, where he was serving a 10-year prison sentence, on February 8th.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, has sent a defiant message to ETA following the murder in Pamplona yesterday of Lieut Francisco Casanova.
"[This] brutal, terrible and savage campaign . . . will not make us give in and we must fight harder than ever," he said in a broadcast to the nation.
"They can kill many but they will never be able to kill the liberty of the Basque country and Spain."
His words were mirrored in the silent protests of hundreds of Spaniards who gathered in front of town halls yesterday, notably in Madrid and in the northern town of Zumaya, where car bombs exploded on Tuesday.
Similar mass demonstrations have followed most of ETA's major attacks, but the fear that the group used its ceasefire to rearm and recruit new members has provoked widespread revulsion.
The deadliest bomb in the latest wave of violence killed ETA commander Patxi Rementeria and three accomplices when explosives they were transporting by car blew up late on Monday in the northern city of Bilbao.
A leading Spanish businessman, Mr Jose Maria Korta, was killed on Tuesday when a car bomb was detonated by remote control outside his office in Zumaya.
And another car bomb exploded later on Tuesday in a residential district in Madrid, wounding 11 people, including two children.
The Interior Minister, Mr Jaime Mayor Oreja, yesterday visited the scene of the bomb which killed Mr Korta, calling for calm and pledging his "complete confidence" in the state's security measures.
The Spanish press said ETA was attempting to spread its attacks across the country in a bid to force people to pressure the government to find a peaceful solution. It pointed out that ETA had extended its violence from military and police targets to include local politicians, judges, businessmen and journalists.
Meanwhile, smaller acts of violence continued yesterday, with radical Basque youths setting fire yesterday to a bus in the northern town of Vitoria. Two unknown assailants also threw Molotov cocktails at the house of a police officer, causing a small fire.
Pro-ETA slogans have been daubed on walls in many Basque towns since the four deaths on Monday and violent actions generally attributed by police to young ETA sympathisers have intensified.
Jane Walker adds: The court prosecutor in Bilbao has opened a file to investigate Mr Arnaldo Otegi, the spokesman for Euskal Herritarrok (EH), ETA's political front. Speaking outside the mortuary after the deaths of the four ETA members blown up by their own bomb on Monday night, Mr Otegi described them as "comrades and Basque patriots", and called for a "day of struggle" in their memory.
He could face charges for "defence of terrorism", while three elected EH members also face charges after they issued death threats against Ms Maria San Gil, the president of the Popular Party (PP) in Guipuzcoa.