1987 Zaragoza bombing
Car bomb attack by the Basque separatist organisation ETA
A car bomb attack was carried out by the Basque separatist organisation ETA on 11 December 1987. A vehicle containing 250 kilograms (550 lb) of ammonal was parked beside the main Guardia Civil barracks in the city of Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain; its explosion killed 11 people, including 5 children. Another 88 people were injured, the majority of them civilians.
The attack came almost six months after ETA had killed 21 people and injured 45 more in a car bomb attack on a Hipercor shopping centre in Barcelona. Most of those killed were women and children who were burnt by the high temperatures the explosion provoked.
Responsibility for the attack was placed on the Argala Commando Unit, an itinerant unit composed of French citizens who immediately returned to France after committing the attacks. Those involved in the attacks and those responsible for their planning were detained in a number of police operations during 1989 and 1992.
Attack
Context
The attack occurred nearly six months after the Hipercor bombing in Barcelona had killed 21 people and injured 45. Following the Barcelona bombing, ETA's call for talks with the government of Felipe González was rejected and, on 5 November 1987, the Pact of Madrid resulted in an agreement between the main Spanish political parties to release a joint statement rejecting the legitimacy of ETA to speak on behalf of the Basque people and ruling out negotiations until the group had formally disarmed. The Zaragoza attack was accordingly interpreted as ETA's response to the Pact of Madrid and occurred while ETA was under the leadership of the Artapalo group.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q80213. Authority coordinates are 41.661, -0.866. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1989 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “1987 Zaragoza bombing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.