BILBAO, Spain (AFP) — Police in Spain's Basque Country clashed with demonstrators and arrested five people Saturday at an illegal protest over the banning of pro-independence parties from regional elections next month.
The demonstrators set fire to rubbish bins and blocked roads in the protest in the Basque city of Bilbao, held in defiance of a ban on the gathering by top anti-terrorist Judge Baltasar Garzon.
They also broke the video cameras of two journalists from Basque television.
The Vasco Press news agency said one group also threw molotov cocktails at a centre of the ruling Basque Nationalist Party, but there was no damage.
It said police charged the demonstrators, leading to five arrests.
Leftist Basque radicals called the demonstration to protest a Supreme Court decision last week to ban two pro-independence parties, Askatasuna and the Democracy Three Million (D3M), from March 1 regional elections because of their links to the armed separatist group ETA and its political arm Batasuna.
Among the protesters Saturday were some ex-leaders of Batasuna and the spokesman of the D3M.
ETA has been blamed for the deaths of 825 people in a four-decade campaign for an independent Basque homeland straddling northern Spain and part of southwestern France.
Radical Basque separatist parties draw support from approximately 10 percent of Spain's Basque voters.
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