Many of ETA's victims are government officials. The group's first known victim was a police chief who was killed in 1968. In 1973, ETA operatives killed Franco's apparent successor, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, by planting an underground bomb below his habitual parking spot outside a Madrid church. In 1995, an ETA car bomb almost killed Jose Maria Aznar, then the leader of the conservative Popular Party, who later served as Spain's prime minister. The same year, investigators disrupted a plot to assassinate King Juan Carlos. More recently, in March 2008, ETA killed a former city councilman in northern Spain two days before an election.
The Spanish government estimates that ETA has killed over 800 people and carried out over 1,600 terrorist attacks. Some of ETA's victims are civilians, though the group usually phones in warning of their attacks before the attacks occur. ETA has consistently targeted Spain's tourist attractions, most recently by bombing buses along Spain's tourist-packed Costa del Sol. According to a report from the newspaper El País, attacks by ETA cost the Spanish government nearly $11 billion from 1994 to 2003.