Thursday, July 15, 2010

WEEK 4



Basque in Spain




The homeland of the Basques are known by Basque nationalists as Euzkadi. There were about 3 million people lived in this area in the late 1980s. Approximately 300,000 people were on the French side of the border, while the remaining 2.7 million people were concentrated primarily in the two Spanish coastal provinces of Guipuzcoa and Vizcaya. The Basques are among the oldest peoples of Europe. ETA(Euskadi ta Askatasuna), one of the Western Europe's last terrorist groups conducts terrorist attacks to win independence for a Basque state in northern Spain and south western France. Euskadi ta Askatasuna means "Basque Fatherland and Liberty" in the Basque language which the group was formed in 1959. Its founders foused on General Francisco Franco's suppression of the Basque language and culture.In 2003, the Spanish Supreme Court banned the Batasuna political party, which was considered the political arm of ETA, and successive efforts by Spanish governments to negotiate with ETA have failed.


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