Spain’s Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, said this evening that the terrorist Galician Resistance group (Resistência Galega ) is planning to install a logistics base in the north of Portugal.
"A very small organisation and not comparable to ETA, intends to set up some kind of logistical base in the north of Portugal," said Diaz after a meeting today in Lisbon with Portugal’s new Minister of Internal Affairs, Anabela Rodrigues (pictured).
For this reason, the Spanish minister considers it essential that the Portuguese authorities collaborate in the case and track down the group should it already be established.
The Lisbon meeting was to analyse the two countries’ strategies to combat terrorist threats, illegal immigration, organised crime and the trafficking in human beings.
A couple was arrested in Portugal on January 10, 2010 for connections to the Basque separatist group ETA. Portuguese police found explosives and weapons in the couple's van and Spanish police confirmed that the couple have been operating from a base in Portugal.
In February the same year Spain’s Interior Ministry confirmed that ETA had started to set up a bomb factory in Portugal after the Portuguese authorities discovered 1,500 kilos of explosives at a property near Óbidos.
The discovery appears to confirm suspicions that Eta had been using sites in Portugal to prepare attacks in Spain and the pursuit of the group by security forces in both Spain and France had forced it across the border into Portugal.
Anabela Rodrigues said that "it was a very productive meeting, an atmosphere of mutual trust, which is an essential basis for efficient and effective cooperation."
