ETA Terrorist Threat in Valencia Before F1 Race

This weekend's European Grand Prix at Valencia could be tough to handle by the Spanish organizers. According to some media reports in the country, armed separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) has already launched a public threat to blow up the roads and railways in the city of Valencia.

Valencia is the third biggest city in Spain, with a population exceeding 810,000 people. With the city preparing itself for the big race this weekend, it would be a merciless target for the ETA, although the media reports did not state the locations targeted by the separatist group.

Alerted after this piece of information, the police started looking for bombs within the metropolitan are of Valencia. Luckily, they didn't find anything and, after hours of searching, they “lifted controls on the port city,” as mentioned by the GMM news agency.

ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom in English) is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization mainly operating in Spain. Founded more than 60 years back, the group has undergone several transformations, but their goal remained the same throughout the years: gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country.

Returning to this weekend's race in Valencia – hopefully it will take place without any major incidents – the grandstands of the F1 complex will likely see a greater audience than in the previous years for at least two reasons: the starting hour has been changed in order to allow more people to come to the race, and secondly Fernando Alonso now has a real chance for a race win in front of a home crowd, something that never happened before.

Ferrari will also bring a major update for their F10 challenger at Valencia, so we're expecting a full show this weekend.