When I read, as I have read in the last few weeks, that the Spanish people were ‘craven’ in the days following the Madrid bombs or that they ‘caved in’ to Islamic terrorism, it is clear that there is still a need to explain what really happened during that extraordinary weekend in the middle of March 2004.

Some background

A general election had been called for Sunday 14 March 2004 at the end of the four-year legislative period. This was the second term of government by the People’s Party (PP); it had first been elected as the largest party without a majority eight years earlier and had been re-elected with an absolute majority in 2000. Prime Minister José María Aznar had made it clear for a long time (perhaps before he was first elected, but I can’t remember) that he would serve no more than two terms. During his second term Aznar had turned Spanish foreign policy through a U-turn by aligning the country with the USA rather than with Europe. He hoped by doing so to establish Spain as an important country and ally in the world’s centre of power but this proved very unpopular in a country that, more than most in Europe, is rather suspicious of the USA. Nevertheless he persisted and his great moment on the international stage came with his appearance in the infamous Azores photo alongside his hero Bush and his best friend Blair.

Spanish troops did not participate in the invasion of Iraq; no-one knows for sure but while it is probable that Aznar would have wished this, his Government would not go along with it. What is sure is that in view of the opposition to the war, which reached over 90% in some opinion polls, a decision that Spain should participate in the actual invasion would have led to very serious popular opposition on an even greater scale than was in fact seen.

The PP was alone in its support for the invasion, though it was united – as close as a pine cone in the Spanish expression. All the other political parties in Spain opposed it and it was practically impossible to find a lawyer or diplomat who supported the action of the Government. After the invasion Spanish troops were sent there with the fig-leaf cover of providing humanitarian aid, but this too was widely opposed. The Socialist opposition said that Spanish troops had no business in Iraq and that if it came to power it would withdraw them. That was in the summer of 2003.

The election campaign

A general election was called for Sunday 14 March 2004. For many people Spain was ‘going well’ in economic terms as Aznar put it, in a phrase reminiscent of Macmillan’s ‘You’ve never had it so good’. Employment was low and sound police and political action had brought ETA to its weakest position for many years. However, there were domestic issues that were of great importance in the election campaign: the National Hydrographic Plan, which was to move water from the Ebro river in northern Spain to Murcia in the south was very unpopular in Aragon and Catalonia; a controversial major reform of the education system was proposed to come into effect after the election; the Government’s handling of the accident to the Prestige, the oil tanker that spilt oil on the beaches of Galicia was a very sore point; there was a scandal over the Spanish military personnel who had died in an air crash in Trebzon while returning from Afghanistan; the PP’s handling of immigration was controversial because its policy was proving unworkable; the spat with Morocco over Parsley Island had been ridiculous, and of course there were any number of minor and/or local issues. Iraq was certainly an issue in the election campaign, and Zapatero’s promise to bring the troops home was clearly made and was popular, but it was far from having the dominance that some people outside Spain now attribute to it.

Spanish electoral law prohibits the publication of opinion polls in the days before an election. A poll published in El País on Sunday 7 March gave PP and PSOE 42% and 38% respectively, which represented about 170 seats out of 350 for the PP and about 140 for the PSOE (the d’Hondt system is not truly proportional); this poll also showed that 65.7% expected the PP to win and that 66.1% wanted the troops withdrawn from Iraq. A later poll published in La Vanguardia on Tuesday 9 March predicted a narrow victory for PSOE. Both of these polls were based on field work done several days before publication. So, it was a close-run thing, and Zapatero was campaigning for the ‘useful vote’ for his party rather than dividing the left, as happened with disastrous consequences in the French presidential election in 2000.

The bombs

On the morning of Thursday 11 March bombs exploded on commuter trains in Madrid, causing widespread slaughter; in all 191 people lost their lives. Bombs and other terrorist attacks are nothing new in Spain; well over 1,000 people have been killed by terrorists in the last thirty years, over 800 by ETA, and some kind of attack during the election campaign had naturally been feared. At first it seemed natural to blame ETA, who are after all the ‘usual suspects’ in any action of that sort; moreover, they had attempted to attack a railway station in Madrid on Christmas Eve 2003 by leaving two rucksacks, each filled with 25 kg of dynamite, on a long-distance train; the attack was foiled by the police before the bombs were planted but it showed ETA’s intentions. Later on that Thursday morning, though, a strange thing happened: Arnoldo Otegi of Batasuna (who is as distant from ETA as Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin is from the IRA) disclaimed responsibility and expressed sympathy for the victims. That was not absolute proof of ETA’s lack of involvement, but it was most unusual indeed. Then again, it was unusual (though not unknown) for ETA not to give a warning of some kind and, also, the scale of the attack was much larger than is usual with them (previously, its bloodiest attack had killed 21 people in a supermarket in Barcelona in 1987); furthermore, the number of simultaneous attacks seemed beyond the possibilities of a greatly weakened organisation. All the papers brought mid-day special editions (El País published it only in the major cities and sold 500,000) and I was turning over in my mind the possibility that it had been the work of al Qaeda as I went out to get my copy. Its headline was clear and unequivocal: ETA attacks Madrid.

There was uncertainty, but as the information came in it seemed increasingly clear that the bombs were unlikely to be the work of ETA but had been placed by al Qaeda. The problem was that the Government was in a bind: if the bombs had been placed by ETA, that would be terribly unfortunate but in a way expected. Whatever criticisms are made of Aznar, he managed to deal effectively with ETA, reducing its impact without resorting to any special legal measures. But if al Qaeda was behind them, that would open up a new perspective: it would lead to the suspicion that they might not have happened if it had not been for the Iraq war and it would show that the Government had been slack in its preventive intelligence. The result was that the Government, principally in the person of Ángel Acebes, the Interior Minister, was insisting that the bombs had been placed by ETA despite the evidence, and that the ETA trail was being given priority by the police when statements from the police showed that that was not the case. A van was found containing tapes with verses from the Quran, which seemed improbable for ETA; also the van had been stolen but the registration plates had not been changed, whereas ETA always doubles the plates – i.e. it fits a stolen vehicle with false plates that in fact bear the correct number of an identical vehicle. All of this seemed very indicative of an Islamist trail rather than a Basque one. The Government insisted on ETA involvement, perhaps in a joint operation with al-Qaeda, but without a shred of evidence. Nevertheless, the Foreign Minister Ana de Palacio sent a telegram to all her Ambassadors, which was promptly leaked, instructing them to take every opportunity to state that ETA was behind the bombs; Spain also proposed an emergency resolution of the UNO specifically placing responsibility for the bombs on ETA.

On the Friday and the Saturday people began to have even greater suspicions. There was mounting evidence, both physical and circumstantial, that ETA was not behind it, and more evidence came out that the police and security service (CNI) were not at all convinced that it was ETA. With an election looming on the Sunday things became tense. Demonstrations took place, called by mobile phone messages, outside PP offices with crowds shouting ‘Who was it?' The Government claimed that these demonstrations were illegal because they took place after the end of the official campaign on the days of reflection when no political activity was allowed. In the end there was no serious damage done; it was claimed that these demonstrations had been called and supported by the left-wing parties PSOE and IU. Whether or not this was the case, a subsequent court case brought by the PP found no improper action; Spanish courts take a robust attitude when it comes to demonstrations against politicians.

The election

The election went ahead on the Sunday. There had been a proposal from the PP that it be postponed but the overwhelming feeling was that it should go ahead as planned. It went off absolutely normally. Although I had no vote I went to my local polling station and it was as calm as I had ever seen it. The result was a big surprise – the PP had lost its majority and was unable to govern while PSOE had done far better than was expected; it had won 164 seats, short of the 176 needed for an absolute majority but was clearly in a position to form a government while the PP with 148 had lost badly and could do nothing. It had not a single party willing to associate itself with it.

How had this happened? This is where the theory that the Spaniards reacted cravenly to the bombs and voted to get them out of Iraq falls down. As has been explained above the withdrawal had been a constant Socialist policy since the deployment there, and there were other domestic reasons for voting against the PP. In understanding the results it is important to understand two factors: turnout was unusually high, and Zapatero had been campaigning for the 'useful vote'. It is very highly unlikely that many votes went directly from PP to PSOE. The PP was in a position of total isolation before the election and practically everybody had already made up their minds about whether to PP or not PP. What seems to have happened is that a number of people who would not have otherwise have voted actually turned out; a powerful democratic reaction to an attack on the democratic State is not to be sneezed at and should not in my opinion be called craven. Moreover, there seems to have been a shift within the opposition parties, with the minority parties, especially IU, doing less well than they had expected. But it is difficult to associate this phenomenon definitively with the reaction to the bombs. As I have said, this is precisely the effect that Zapatero had been campaigning for and in the absence of opinion polls it is impossible to claim otherwise. Nor is it clear why a country that had suffered the scourge of ETA (and other) terrorism for more than thirty years, with more than 1,000 deaths, should have 'caved in' suddenly to Islamic terrorism.

 

The aftermath

The PP was appalled and traumatised by the result. Mariano Rajoy had his very real hopes of succeeding Aznar in the Moncloa dashed and the party has still not recovered. It has lost or done badly in other elections; in the European elections held a few months later there was an unseemly scramble by PP bigwigs to find themselves seats in the European Parliament. Since then it has lost control of Galicia, which it had held almost unbrokenly since the transition, and it only managed to control Madrid’s provincial assembly because of the spectacular desertion of two Socialist deputies who deliberately absented themselves from the inaugural vote. It has closed in on itself even more in a state of denial that its policies could have been mistaken, still insisting that ETA was involved somehow, and bizarrely coming out with the theory that the Guardia Civil and CNI were also involved in an attempt to bring down the Government. This theory was put forward in all seriousness by Ángel Acebes, who was no less than the Interior Minister with responsibility for the security organisations in the PP government.

The new government got off to a resounding start with high levels of popularity; though that is now being tested, it is still leading PP in the opinion polls.