The Basque separatist group ETA detonated a car bomb at a Hipercor shopping centre in Barcelona, killing 21 people and injuring 45 others.

Basque nationalism is a form of nationalism that asserts that Basques, an ethnic group indigenous to the western Pyrenees, are a nation and promotes the political unity of the Basques, today scattered between Spain and France. Since its inception in the late 19th century, Basque nationalism has included movements supportive of Basque independence.

ETA, an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, was an armed Basque nationalist and far-left separatist organization in the Basque Country between 1959 and 2018. The group was founded in 1959 during the era of Francoist Spain, and later evolved from a pacifist group promoting traditional Basque culture to a violent paramilitary group. It engaged in a campaign of bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings throughout Spain and especially the Southern Basque Country against the regime, which was highly centralised and hostile to the expression of non-Castilian minority identities. ETA was the main group within the Basque National Liberation Movement and was the most important Basque participant in the Basque conflict.

A car bomb attack was carried out on 19 June 1987 at the Hipercor shopping centre in Barcelona, Spain, by the Basque separatist organisation ETA, which was classified as a terrorist group by the European Union and numerous nations. The bombing killed 21 people and injured 45, the deadliest attack in ETA's history. Controversy surrounded the timing of telephone warnings made before the attack and the authorities' response to them.

Hipercor S.A. is an upscale chain of hypermarkets in Spain, belonging to the same group as El Corte Inglés. It has its head office in the El Corte Inglés head office building in Madrid.