Word: bilbao
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Strikes, demonstrations and violence continued to trouble Spain last week. In Basauri, a suburb of Bilbao in rebellious Basque country (TIME, March 15), a demonstrator was gunned down by the Guardia Civil; a furious crowd forced the guardsmen to retreat to their headquarters. In Tarragona, a worker fell from a roof to his death during a clash with police. Shipyard workers even struck in Franco's birthplace. But a quieter event of considerable political significance occurred last week in Madrid, where nine military officers were found guilty of sedition...
...Madrid, Alava's provincial authorities declared themselves "profoundly disgusted by the government's acts." More than 30,000 people gathered for the slain men's funeral at the cathedral, where an angry priest thundered against the "brutal violence" of the police. While Vitoria mourned, workers in Bilbao, Pamplona and other Basque cities streamed off their jobs in sympathy, closing down hundreds of factories...
What will be the fate of the Basque people now that Franco is no longer head of the Spanish government? The importance of the Basque country to the Spanish economy is undeniable. Bilbao is the "Pittsburgh of Spain"--and the government's long struggle to repress the separatist movement can be expected to continue. However, the tension created by the presence of thirty-thousand paramilitary police in the north has not succeeded in discouraging separatist sentiment but rather has served to fan the flames of disenchantment with the present regime even among the most conservative factions of the Basque leadership...
...night of May 10,1975, 360 people were arrested in Bilbao and since the jails were full, the prisoners were locked in the city's bullring. Censorship has been increased and freedom of speech and press have been severely curtailed even in educational institutions. It has become a great deal more difficult to purchase reading materials in the Basque language and to speak Basque in public without fear of arrest. The Basque language has not been taught in the schools for the past five years; thus some young children have not learned to speak the language of their parents...
DURING THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, from July 1936 through March of 1939, the Basques suffered 336, 830 casualties--including dead, wounded, missing, and forcibly exiled. Of these casualties, 21,780 men, women and children had been executed. When the rebel forces (including Italian and German Fascist mercenary troops) occupied Bilbao, General Franco's first decree was to abolish the independence of the Basque country. Over thirty-thousand Basques-men and women-were imprisoned without due process, and more than two-hundred thousand Basques were forced into exile. Arbitrarily, by decree, the use of the Basque language was prohibited. On March...