Zapatero may have given in to Al Qaeda an easy time after the Madrid train bombing, but the Spanish won’t have any negotiating with the Basque separatists. Victims, relatives, and supporters are marching in Madrid against government plans to negotiate with the ETA terrorists.

Great photo here.
Spain’s prime minister Jos???? Luis Rodr????guez Zapatero faces the first major demonstration against him today when tens of thousands are to march through Madrid demanding he does not negotiate with the Basque terrorist group Eta.

Organisers said at least 200 coaches were due for the march, which has the backing of the main conservative opposition, the People’s party.

The march comes more than a year after Mr Zapatero’s Socialist party formed a government and a month after the Spanish parliament gave him the go ahead to open talks with Eta if it shows a “clear will” to renounce violence.

“Do not negotiate in my name,” is the slogan of a march that was also expected to attract dissident sectors of Mr Zapatero’s own party.

The marchers, to be led by relatives of some of the 800 people killed by Eta over the past three decades, will go from the site of one Eta bomb attack in Madrid to another.

Organisers claimed it was not a protest against Mr Zapatero but against any attempt to talk to Eta – a group going through the weakest period of its 30 year history after failing to cause any deaths for two years.

“We want to demonstrate against a policy that we believe is humiliating for the victims of terrorism,” explained Jos???? Alcaraz, president of the Association of Terrorism Victims.

The negotiations don’t make much sense, as the article goes on to note, because ETA is in the worst position it has been in years. Take a look back at the Basque municipals earlier this year, where they lost out considerably.

In any case, it’s a very unpopular move, and an outright wrong one. Franco Aleman at Barcepundit has much more on the march, saying that figures have been released near one million.

According to Telemadrid again, local police has released a figure: 850,000. Organizers have an even higher figure: 1 million (the real one is probably in between). That’s more or less the same number on the big rallies against the Iraq war, touted by the intelligentzia as an evidence of a vibrant democracy in which people were speaking the truth to self-centered politicians. The same inteligentzia has been criticizing the plans for today’s demonstration because they now say that street demonstrations are not really democratic since it’s up to politicians to make decisions. We’ll have to see what they have to say after this huge demo, but I’m sure they’ll work something mean.

Wow.