2006 Madrid–Barajas Airport bombing
Van bomb by the Basque separatist organisation ETA
On 30 December 2006, a van bomb exploded in the Terminal 4 parking area at the Madrid–Barajas Airport in Spain, killing two and injuring 52. On 9 January 2007, the Basque nationalist and separatist organisation ETA claimed responsibility for the attack. The attack, one of the most powerful carried out by ETA, damaged the airport terminal and destroyed the entire parking structure. The bombing ended a nine-month ceasefire declared by the armed organisation and prompted the government to halt plans for negotiations with the organisation. Despite the attack, ETA claimed that the ceasefire was still in place and regretted the death of civilians. The organisation eventually announced the end of the ceasefire in June 2007.
Ordered and planned by then head of commandos Miguel Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina alias Txeroki, the attack was carried out by the "commando Elurra", whose members were arrested in early 2008 and sentenced for the attack in May 2010. Txeroki was arrested in November 2008 and was condemned to prison in 2011.
Background
On 22 March 2006, ETA announced a ceasefire. Following the announcement, the Spanish government led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on one side and the armed organisation, as well as Batasuna, a Basque nationalist party banned for its ties with ETA, on the other, engaged in talks in order to put an end to the conflict between the two sides.
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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 May 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3504543. Authority coordinates are 40.492, -3.595. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “2006 Madrid–Barajas Airport 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.