April 2004

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Spanish Electorate Recoils from Lies

Howard Clark is author of Civil Resistance in Kosovo and a member of War Resisters International's Executive Committee. He now lives in Spain. A slightly different version of this open letter, written immediately after the elections of March 14, 2004, was published on Portside, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portside/ . This version was amended for Peacework.

Thanks to those of you who have been thinking about us since last Thursday's terrorist attack in Madrid. It was indeed horrific. Though it occurred at a divisive time on the eve of a general election, it brought forth marvelous solidarity, from the fire brigades and hospital workers working overtime to ordinary people queuing to donate blood. In the schools, pupils made posters and banners. Even our Ismael, not yet 4 years old, colored what he called his "no a la guerra" flag (although actually it said "no al terrorismo").

One of many free downloadable posters from insta-protest, http://64.70.140.219/feb15/

The people I know who've had the worst time since the bombing in Madrid have been people who work in hospitals. You can imagine how distressing it was there, not just seeing the deaths and horrific injuries but also knowing that just outside there are family members searching for those whose names had not yet appeared on any lists. Every day El Pais, the largest circulation newspaper here, is profiling some of the people who became casualties, something that was done in New York too.

I think it is more common for a population to become more rather than less supportive of its state and military after a terrorist attack. However, the pro-war and pro-confrontation party of the government, the Partido Popular (PP), tried to cheat the people once too often. Throughout the past eight years, it has used its domination of the publicly-owned media, especially the TV, to avoid dialogue, to lie, and to manipulate information. Prime Minister Aznar is someone capable of looking into the TV cameras and saying with the utmost conviction, "I know that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." Even Bush and Blair concede the need to reassess the question of Iraq's weapons, but not the PP.

After the bombing, the PP tried to blame ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna - Basque Homeland and Liberty) for the atrocity in Madrid, even though the leader of the Basque separatist political party linked to ETA condemned the action. The PP did not even meet leaders of other parties to discuss its handling of the situation or to inform them, as would be typical in a situation of national crisis. Instead, it chose divisive slogans for the mass rallies against terrorism, and when other leads began to appear that pointed away from ETA, it tried to cover them up. Unsuccessfully.

My friend who works in education in prisons told me that the order had gone out to confine all ETA prisoners in maximum security. The five she works with had signed a renunciation of violence and had been switched to more open conditions, two were even due for release. Despite the stonewalling of the PP, the news began leaking out that a stolen van had been found with detonators using copper, not ETA's usual aluminum, and with a tape of verses from the Koran.

There is supposed to be no campaigning on the day before the election, but on Saturday afternoon anti-war activists in Madrid went to the PP headquarters and began a demonstration against the PP's manipulation of information. Word spread, and thousands joined in. And then in Barcelona and other major cities, similar demonstrations began.

The Minister of the Interior finally decided to announce the arrest, several hours earlier, of three Moroccans and two Indians implicated, yet still the foreign minister continued to tell the rest of the world that the main suspect remained ETA.

In his final pre-election message on the 9 o'clock news, the PP's prime ministerial candidate, Mariano Rajoy, denounced the "illegal demonstration" and those who tried to make political capital out of the tragedy. His Socialist Party adversary decided not to appear, but one of his colleagues made a statement that the Party leadership had stayed quiet for hours waiting for the government to announce the arrests, and then denounced the lies and manipulation in the government's handling of the situation.

The next day, the electoral turn-out was much higher than expected, and the PP, who had led the Socialists by 4% in all the polls, were 5% behind in the poll that mattered. The areas worst hit by the attack registered an increased Socialist vote. At last the PP's manipulation of information, about the Prestige oil slick and the war on Iraq, had come home to roost.

My circle of friends are people not inclined to believe the PP, but as it had lied so blatantly with impunity before, there was a kind of fatalism that it would continue to win elections. I am convinced that what began as a small anti-war demonstration on Saturday afternoon in Madrid was the trigger for their surprising electoral reversal. When the main public TV channel interviewed President and Mrs. Bush on the eve of the election, this was another example of Bush trying to help the Spanish party that had supported his wars and of the PP trying to deploy Bush's friendship in the electoral campaign. That, too, was probably another "own goal;" it unintentionally worked to their disadvantage.

Now Spain will have a prime minister committed to the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, who has campaigned for women's rights and against domestic violence, who believes in dialogue, and who wants to restore Spain's traditional foreign relations, that is with Europe, Latin America and the Mediterranean. Perhaps his first foreign visit as president will be to Morocco. His party does not have an absolute majority in parliament, but can count on the support of further left or regional parties in most circumstances.

One has to be cautious about what the new government will achieve. The previous Socialist government left office in disgrace, creating enormous disillusion, having taken Spain into NATO in 1982, and sunk to real depths of deceit and brutality in the war against ETA. Now I am confident Zapatero will deliver on Iraq: the main Socialist chant during the victory was "No a la Guerra," and during the election campaign he announced that, if he was president, on June 30, the first date possible, he would withdraw troops, unless (an important proviso) operations there have been brought under UN control. I doubt that he will withdraw Spanish troops from Afghanistan, or even confine them to the UN operation there. And I do not know how far he will go in dialogue about the Basque country.

But at least the war-mongering PP has been rejected, and with them the alliance with Bush and Blair. Maybe this seems like a victory for Al Qaeda or whoever perpetrated Thursday's atrocity. I'm afraid that's how the terrorists will see it. I have little doubt that if the PP had been transparent in dealing with this attack, they would have been re-elected; even if the reason for targeting Spain was the PP's decisions about Iraq, a majority would have rallied to support those in power. But people like Bush and Aznar lack the moral courage to be transparent. And so it was that the Spanish electorate, in the words of one commentator, gave Aznar a metaphorical kick in Rajoy's backside.

Previous Article    Next Article