HERNANI, Spain (Reuters) - The mayor of the Basque town of Hernani is defiant. She will not be voting in Sunday’s election because her party has been banned, but she says Spain cannot ignore separatists’ calls for independence.

Marian Beitialarrangoitia enraged many Spaniards when she publicly applauded two suspected members of the Basque separatist group ETA, who had been accused of bombing Madrid’s airport in a 2006 attack that killed two people.

Her views are more extreme than most in Spain’s northern Basque Country, but even moderate nationalists here are angered by what they see as bullying by the Socialist government as it struggles to court voters in Spain’s heartland ahead of the March 9 poll.

Beitialarrangoitia described her actions, repeatedly broadcast on television in January, as an act of solidarity with men she said were tortured, and who should be innocent until proven guilty.

“You can ban us for centuries, you can persecute and jail people but the ideology of 200,000 people is not going to disappear tomorrow,” she said in her office, a few kms inland from the chic resort of San Sebastian.Pictures of imprisoned members of ETA hang from balconies in the pretty square opposite the town hall where she works.

The status of the Basque Country - a region of green hills falling to a coastline of coves and inlets near the French border — is the most venomous issue in Spanish politics.

Many Spaniards believe Basque demands for greater autonomy threaten the nation’s unity. Millions have marched across the country to condemn ETA guerrillas, who have killed 821 people over four decades in a violent campaign for independence.

Under fire from the opposition for going soft on ETA, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero launched a crackdown on the guerrillas and their allies after peace talks broke down following the Madrid bombing.This month, Beitialarrangoitia’s Basque Nationalist Action party and another group were banned because of their links to ETA. Strikes were called by the radical left, buses were torched and dozens of people were arrested in the region.

“Why don’t they just leave the Basque Country in peace?” said retired Bilbao resident Roberto, who declined to give his last name. “We are more than capable of surviving on our own.”

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