French Hotel in Madrid Bombed by Basques

Basque separatists said Friday they bombed a French-owned hotel here, bringing a reprisal campaign against France’s crackdown on guerrilla suspects to the Spanish capital.

The bomb went off just before midnight Thursday as the new 240-room Novotel was being evacuated following a telephone warning from the separatist group ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom).

The blast on the unoccupied third floor caused no injuries but blew a large hole in the facade. Water from burst pipes flooded lower floors of the hotel, which was opened last April by the French Novotel chain.

ETA said in a communique to Basque news media that it carried out the attack on the Novotel and another on Christmas Eve at a French-owned supermarket in the Basque town of Oyarzun in retaliation for France’s expulsions of suspected separatists.

France, pledging to stop ETA guerrillas from using its territory as a rear base in its 18-year-old war for Basque independence, has handed over 26 alleged guerrillas to Spanish authorities since last July.

Three of them, Andoni Guinea, Ramuntxo Sagarzazu and Mikel Urriz, were released on Christmas Eve.

ETA has bombed at least 27 French-owned businesses over the past two months while sympathizers have burned scores of French-registered cars to protest the deportations.

Attacks on French-related targets killed a paramilitary civil guard on Christmas Eve and have wounded about 40 people. ETA attacks left a total 41 people dead in Spain this year.

Attacks were first directed at French-related targets in the Spanish Basque country but extended earlier this month to Barcelona, Spain’s second-largest city.

The hotel attack was the first against a French company in Madrid, where police were placed on maximum alert after a tip that ETA might stage a spectacular action during the end-of-year period.

It appeared to be a direct challenge to King Juan Carlos I, who said in his Christmas message: “Terrorism . . . will not defeat us either now or ever. Our fight will not slacken.”