Word: vitoria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Every year the people of Vitoria, a Basque community in northern Spain, celebrate the fiestas of the Virgen Blanca, the city's patron saint. Last week the annual merrymaking was disrupted when about 1,000 youths who had been drinking at fiesta street bars began chanting slogans in support of the Basque terrorist organization ETA. The demonstration soon developed into a riot in which 48 people, including ten police, were injured and tens of thousands of dollars in damage was done to public buildings...
This month the bishops of the Basque cities of Bilbao, San Sebastián and Vitoria said as much in a pastoral letter that warned of the "coercive pressures" of the military on individual liberty. The three prelates condemned ETA's continuing terrorism, but they also cautioned that the military's new role in the Basque country could eventually pose a threat to democracy. "When the armed forces set themselves up as judge over the democratic process and feel tempted to intervene," they wrote, "this constitutes a serious danger rather than a genuine defense of the interests...
...King Juan Carlos' first official tour of Spain's volatile, autonomy-minded Basque country, and the reception was often only lukewarm, sometimes hostile. Security forces outnumbered the crowds nearly everywhere, and at most of their stops-from Vitoria to San Sebastian -the King and his wife, Queen Sofia, also had to endure the presence of angry Basque demonstrators, who were raising clenched-fist salutes and chanting anthems and slogans in their ancient language...