Last use of capital punishment in Spain
1975 executions in Spain
The last use of capital punishment in Spain took place on 27 September 1975 when two members of the armed left-wing Basque nationalist and separatist group ETA political-military and three members of the Spanish anti-Francoist Marxist–Leninist group Revolutionary Antifascist Patriotic Front (FRAP) were executed by firing squads after having been convicted and sentenced to death by military tribunals for the murder of police officers and civil guards. Spain was Western Europe's only dictatorship at the time of the executions and had been unpopular and internationally isolated in the post-war period due to its relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and the fact that its far-right autocratic leader, Francisco Franco, had come to power by overthrowing a democratically elected government. As a result, the executions resulted in substantial criticism of the Spanish government, both domestically and abroad. Reactions included street protests, attacks on Spanish embassies, international criticism of the Spanish government and diplomatic measures, such as the withdrawal of the ambassadors of fifteen European countries.
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This entry incorporates text from “Last use of capital punishment in Spain” 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.