Basques protest against ban on vote

MADRID (Reuters) - Thousands of people demonstrated throughout the Spanish Basque Country on Saturday against a ban on a referendum-style vote on the region's links with the rest of Spain.

Saturday was to have been the date of the vote, until it was declared illegal by Spain's constitutional court.

Demonstrators gathered in towns throughout the northern Spanish region. Organisers said 20,000 people joined in, news agency Europa Press reported.

The moderate nationalist government of the Basque Country had planned a vote on "the right to decide" of the Basque people -- a coded reference to the question of independence from Spain.

The head of the Basque Country government, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, has pledged to continue to seek a way for Basques to decide their relationship with the rest of Spain if he wins regional elections next year.

Early on Saturday, bombs ripped through two train stations in the Basque Country towns of Berriz and Amorebieta without hurting anyone.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Basque separatist rebels ETA have regularly planted bombs in their four decades of armed struggle for the region's independence, during which they have killed more than 800 people.

The Basque Country already has considerable autonomy over areas such as health and education and polls do not show a majority in favor of independence.

(Reporting by Jason Webb)