The left-wing separatist party EH Bildu, which is seen as the successor to the political wing of ETA, scored a historic electoral breakthrough on Sunday in regional elections in Spain's Basque region, but will not be able to rule the region.
EH Bildu won 27 of the 75 seats in the regional parliament and thus has the same number of deputies as the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), a conservative party that has dominated regional political life for decades.
The PNV, which lost four parliamentary seats, won almost 30.000 more votes than EH Bildu, and is certain to retain power in the rich industrial region of 2,2 million inhabitants.
The coalition that currently governs the region between the PNV and the Socialists of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is expected to remain in power.
In recent years, the EH Bildu party, which achieved a good electoral result, followed a different electoral strategy, putting its demands for Basque independence on the back burner, instead focusing on social issues, ecology and women's rights.
Before the election, analysts assessed that it would be impossible for EH Bilda to rule alone and achieve a better result because the PNV and the Socialist Party rejected the possibility of an alliance with that party led by former ETA member Arnaldo Otegi.
ETA is held responsible for the murders of more than 825 people since the 1960s. That Basque organization fought with armed means for the independence of the Basque Country until 2011, when a permanent ceasefire was declared, after the arrest of most of its key members.
ETA is an abbreviation of the name in the Basque language "Euskadi Ta Askatasuna", which in translation means: "Basque homeland and freedom".
The Basque Country, which stretches in one part in France in the southwest, and in the other in the north of Spain, in the area of the Pyrenees, fought for decades for independence.
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