Slightly over 95 percent of those sampled said "yes" to whether they wanted to be citizens of a sovereign/ independent Basque Country.
The group’s leaders, Angel Oiarbide and Zelai Nikolás, praised the vote as "historic," saying it was "the first step to a referendum."
"We are on the way toward a referendum. And we will continue working in this direction. Today is a historic day," the organization said in a statement.
The Basque Country has followed in the footsteps of Catalonia, a well-off Spanish region which has held dozens of local votes on whether it should leave Spain in the past years. Madrid has called all of them unconstitutional.
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