Founded in 1959 and functioning until 2018, the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (or ETA - Basque for "Basque Homeland and Freedom", pronounced ) was an armed Basque nationalist separatist organization. Formed in response to the suppression of the Basque language and culture under the régime of General Francisco Franco (in power 1939–1975) in Spain, ETA evolved from an advocacy group for traditional Basque culture into an armed Marxist group demanding Basque independence. Many ETA victims were government officials; the group's first known victim, a police chief, died in 1968. In 1973 ETA operatives killed Franco's apparent successor, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, by planting an underground bomb under his habitual parking-spot outside a Madrid church. In 1995 an ETA car-bomb nearly killed José María Aznar, then the leader of the conservative Popular Party, and in the same year investigators disrupted a plot to assassinate King Juan Carlos. Efforts by Spanish governments to negotiate with the ETA failed, and in 2003 the Spanish Supreme Court banned the Batasuna political party, which was determined to be the political arm of ETA.