25 years since Hipercor bombing

Barcelona, June 19, 1987

SPAIN It is 25 years since an ETA (Basque terrorists) blew away the lives of 21 innocent shoppers in the Hipercor shopping centre in Barcelona, and injured another 45. ETA took responsibility for the powerful blast but in a subsequent communiqué announced that they had given the police plenty of warning but the place was not evacuated. This almost provoked a military rising at the time, 1987, because of what various Army commanders called 'police inefficiency'. True, too, that top officers of the Guardia Civil and the military, as well as the Military Governor of San Sebastián, had already been killed by the terrorist group, which led to a change in attitude towards ETA, who had until then clung to certain anti-dictatorship mystique.