Basque Nationalist Action illegalized, like under Franco's boot

Less than 24 hours (probably a few seconds, I can imagine) took the Supreme Court (special political tribunal) to ban the historical party Basque Nationalist Action (EAE-ANV). The sentence considers it "successor" of (already illegal) Batasuna (Union), no matter it was founded in 1930, sixty years before Batsuna was created and almost forty before its antecessor Herri Batasuna (People's Union) coalition was formed (with EAE as member, by the way). The party had only been illegal before under the Fascist dictatorship of general Franco.

EAE-ANV flag

One can imagine the judges, gathering in the morning, without any hurry, to sign a sentence that had been written before the very beginning of the trial, while having breakfast. There is no evidence of any criminal behaviour but who cares? They are there to serve the interests of Spain (the state, not the people) and the consensus between the post-fascists and the social-democrats. That's what they are paid for.

One thing someone commented on TV is that this practice of illegalizing parties is extremely rare in the context of the European Union. The only cases I can think of are in West Germany, where the Communist Party was decared illegal in the 50s in the context of the Cold War (and some neonazi parties have also been banned - but not all). None of them represented such a wide sector of society in any case, to find a truly comparable case one has to look at Turkey or other cases of authoritarian parlamentarism, always beyond the borders of EU.

Source: EITB.
See also my previous post.