Live News From Spain As It Happens

TOWN and city halls across the country have been staging tributes to PP councillor Miguel Ángel Blanco to mark the 20^th anniversary of his assassination by Basque terrorists ETA.

Some local councils have declined to do so as they consider it an insult to all other terror victims who have not been given the same homage.

One of these was Madrid, although mayoress Manuela Carmena has relented and agreed to hang banners in memory of 'all victims of terrorism', including Blanco.

Miguel Ángel Blanco Garrido's 20-year anniversary is in fact tomorrow (Thursday, July 13), but Monday this week was the day he was kidnapped by ETA as leverage, in an attempt to force the central government to move all prisoners of the separatist cell to jails in the Basque Country so they could be nearer their families.

The kidnap was televised live, and millions of Spaniards watched with fast-beating hearts, praying for his release.

But suddenly, the screen went black, and minutes later the news came on TV and it was announced Blanco had been shot and was fighting for his life.

Early the next morning, Spain awoke to hear that the scapegoat councillor had passed away in hospital.

Blanco became councillor in his birth town of Ermua, in the province of Vizcaya, two weeks after his 27^th birthday in 1995.

Less than a fortnight before he was kidnapped, prison warden José Antonio Ortega Lara was freed by the Guardia Civil after 532 days held hostage by ETA, and the four terrorists who kept him held against his will were arrested.