The Spanish supreme court has barred 241 political groups from contesting municipal elections in the Basque region this month on the grounds that they are related to the armed separatist group Eta or its supporters. The decision was made five weeks after the court banned the radical separatist political party Batasuna, which had 10% of the Basque vote, under a new law forbidding parties to encourage violence. The court agreed with Jose Maria Aznar’s People’s party government that the groups were a poorly disguised attempt to keep Batasuna going at the local level. It said that more than 1,500 candidates on the lists were related to Batasuna and that the lists were drawn up by the people who ran Batasuna. Full Story