Xabier Zabalo Beitia, sentenced to 208 years in prison for the car bomb attack on a hotel in Salou on August 18, has obtained the third penitentiary degree granted by the Basque Government. The Basque Department of Justice has confirmed a decision that comes almost 25 years after the attack, in which an explosion left about twenty injured in the Tarragona town.
The resolution also reopens a path that had already been halted by the courts. Zabalo received an initial progression to the third degree in February 2025, but the Prosecutor's Office appealed that measure and a judge revoked it, so now he is once again in a semi-freedom regime despite that previous step back.
The Prosecutor's Office already managed to revoke a third degree granted in February 2025
The inmate is serving his sentence in Martutene prison, in San Sebastián. The third-degree regime allows him to leave prison to work or study and return only to sleep, or to comply with monitoring through telematic devices from his home.
A native of Zumarraga, in Gipuzkoa, Zabalo was arrested in Bordeaux in May 2002 for his membership in ETA commando units specialized in placing car bombs. To the sentence for the Salou attack, he adds another sentence of 20 years for attempting to assassinate a councilor of the PSE-EE in La Arboleda, in Bizkaia, in January 2001.
Since the transfer of penitentiary competencies, the Basque Government initially proposes and grants these classifications. Even so, the resolutions are subject to judicial control by the National High Court and prison surveillance judges.
Covite asks to appeal the decision due to lack of public and verifiable repentance
Covite has rejected the new granting of the third degree and has defined it as a "disguised amnesty." The association maintains that "real, public, and verifiable" repentance has not been demanded from the convicted person.
For this reason, it has requested the Prosecutor's Office of the National High Court to appeal the decision again. The granting also coincides with the third degree awarded to Juan Antonio Olarra Guridi, former head of ETA's military apparatus.
The attack for which Zabalo was convicted occurred in a hotel in Salou on August 18, 2001, and left about twenty injured.