Reuters’ AlertNet reported on June 24, 2003 that the Spanish government threatened to revoke the region’s autonomous status if the nationalist government continued to disobey court instructions to implement a Supreme Court order to disband a party suspected of supporting the armed separatist group ETA. Jamie Mayor Oreja, the head of Spain’s ruling Popular Party in the Basque Country, said during a local radio interview that if this insubordination continues the government will have to apply its constitutional clause that allows for the suspension of autonomy. The talk of revoking the region’s autonomy, the first of its kind since 1979, has caused much outcry from the nationalist government, as officials claim that Madrid cannot simply revoke and install the status of autonomy at will. Spanish prosecutors filed criminal charges against three leaders of the Basque parliament on the grounds of “defying authority.” The party is said to be the successor group of the Batasuna group, which was banned earlier by the Supreme Court and which is suggested to be affiliated with the political faction of ETA, a terrorist group which is responsible for some 841 deaths since 1968 in a violent struggle for an independent Basque state in Northern Spain and Southwest France.
