Surveys suggest EH Bildu’s focus on health, housing and employment is attracting younger voters

A leftwing coalition of Basque separatists, partly descended from the political wing of the defunct terrorist group Eta, could become the largest party in the Basque Country’s parliament after an election in the northern Spanish region on Sunday.

Latest polls suggest that EH Bildu, which is led by a convicted Eta member who later played a key role in persuading the group to end its armed campaign for an independent Basque homeland, has edged ahead of its rivals in the Basque Nationalist party (PNV).

The Eta group’s kidnap and murder of a young councillor in 1997 united a country in revulsion and the wounds are still open today

The place where it happened is out past the hotel, the roundabout, the pharmacy and the blocks of flats hung with washing and geraniums, out where the small Basque town of Lasarte-Oria gives way to a narrow road fringed with trees and ferns.

Today, little carries on the humid coastal air save for birdsong, the barking of a distant dog and the growl of a cultivator. But, 25 years ago this week, two shots from a .22 calibre Beretta pistol rang out beneath the trees and echoed across the length and breadth of Spain.