Bomb scare at Barajas airport

A security alert after a suspicious package was found at Barajas Airport on Saturday has been confirmed by Spain’s Interior Minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, to have been a false alarm. The rucksack was found in the car park of Terminal 4 – the same area where a car bomb exploded on 30th December 2006 causing massive damage and cost the lives of two people. ETA claimed responsibility for the attack in 2006.

Security forces evacuate the area and the rucksack was detonated in a controlled explosion at around 1pm on Saturday. No evidence was found of explosive materials when the remains were inspected. EFE report that the bag was discovered beneath a parked car on the ground floor of block D of the T-4 car park when a police sniffer dog aroused suspicions.

It came after a warning from the government last week that the ETA could be planning a ‘spectacular attack’ to mark Spain assuming the EU presidency on 1st January. The terror alert was raised to two on a four-point scale as a result of this.

At around the same time, in Bilbao, there was a march through the streets to demand that the rights of ETA prisoners be respected and that they be moved to jails closer to their homes in the Basque Country. There were no photographs of ETA prisoners displayed during the march, as is normally the case, after a judge banned the participants from showing expressions of support for ETA. The march was called by leftist Nationalist parties in the Basque Country and allowed to go ahead on that condition, after the National Court earlier banned a similar march which had been called by the association of ETA prisoners’ families, Etxerat.