HERNANI, Spain, 15 March 2004 — Over the bar at the Garin tavern in this mountain village in the heart of Basque country hang 22 color photographs of prisoners. Like a roll of honor, they are identified by name and by the prisons where they are serving sentences for political violence ranging from public-property damage to the attempted murder of police officers.

“These are our friends,’’ says Aiert, a political activist in his late twenties who refuses to provide his last name because he says he fears arrest. “These are not marginal people, they are the children of this community.’’

The Garin was jammed Saturday afternoon with young people and families who gathered there after holding a silent vigil in the village square to renounce violence and call for peaceful dialogue following the bombings that killed 200 commuters and injured more than 1,500 others in Madrid two days ago.

But people here expressed other feelings as well — a sense of anger and anxiety that the Spanish government initially focused on Basque separatists as the primary suspects, and a warning that a new crackdown could increase support for the radicals of the underground Basque Homeland and Liberty group known as ETA.

A trip through the rugged hills of northwest Spain suggests that sympathy for ETA and Batasuna, its banned political wing, is dwindling but still tangible in hard-core strongholds of Basque separatism such as Hernani. Some of the signs are literal — widespread posters and painted slogans denouncing moderate Basque nationalists as “liars and collaborationists’’ or demanding “Self-Determination Now,’’ and calling for Batasuna’s supporters to protest the party’s exclusion by casting blank ballots in yesterday’s national parliamentary elections. Other indications are more subtle. In places like the Garin, some customers contend that despite setbacks and internal splits, support for a separate Basque nation remains imprinted on the identity of this region.

“It’s something that is passed from father to son and mother to daughter,’’ said Alberto Zapirain, 38, who recycles car batteries, as he finished a cup of strong coffee at the Garin. “It is your inheritance. They can’t destroy it. Even if it has no voice, it’s still there.’’

Virtually no one here was willing to openly consider the possibility that ETA — which has waged a 40-year struggle for Basque independence in which more than 800 people have been killed — was responsible for the Madrid attacks. The announcement Saturday that five Muslims had been detained was seen here as confirmation of that view.

The numbers of dead and wounded were far beyond anything ETA had ever attempted, and one veteran of the organization insisted it would never have undertaken such an action without warning civilians.

“When I first got the news and I heard there were five dead I said, ‘Oops, something slipped and someone in ETA must have made a mistake,’’’ said the former member, who quit in the early 1980s but insisted that his name not be used because he said he fears harassment. “Then, when I heard it was 50 and more, I said it couldn’t be.’’

The former member — whose observations were confirmed by a European intelligence officer — said the core of ETA these days probably consisted of 20 to 30 fighters, backed by perhaps 150 sympathizers who provided logistical support. He said the tough government security crackdown of recent years had reduced the active career of a new recruit to between six months and one year.

“There used to be a long apprenticeship’’ before a recruit was sent on a mission, he said. “Now they go out without much training, and so they fall like rabbits.’’

Alongside tougher police measures, the Spanish government has also taken steps to eliminate ETA’s funding. It has shut down Batasuna offices throughout the region after accusing the party of colluding with terrorists and has closed some of the network of taverns and other businesses whose profits allegedly helped finance the organization’s activities.

But critics contend the ban on Batasuna has enhanced ETA’s stature among radical separatists. “It was the best gift anyone could make to ETA,’’ said Patxi Zabaleta, leader of Aralar, a political party that advocates Basque independence through nonviolent means.

Zabaleta, a Batasuna founder who broke with the party a decade ago because of its support for ETA, said the organization still had the capacity to recruit new militants. “So as long as there will be people who believe that there’s no political way to express their views, there will always be people who will join ETA. I don’t believe Spain can defeat ETA through police and military means only.’’

Most Basques vote for the Basque Nationalist Party and other political groupings that long ago renounced violence. Still, a long, bloodstained history mixed with modern grievances fuel ETA’s war.

At the picturesque fishing village of Pasaia stands a stone monument to four gunmen killed in a shootout with police in March 1984. “The people will not forget,’’ the plaque reads.

One of the Basques’ main grievances are the 750 inmates they consider political prisoners. Many are being held in state prisons hundreds of miles from the Basque region. Each Friday evening, relatives gather in Bilbao, the region’s largest city, for a silent demonstration to demand that prisoners be transferred to facilities closer to home.

Pasaia is plastered with political slogans and murals, and red-white-and-green Basque flags hang from many balconies and windows. Even the garbage bins are dabbed with pro-ETA slogans.