G. Buster
Paying homage to its resistance to fascism, the poet Rafael Alberti once called Madrid "the capital of glory". On March 11, Madrid again became a martyr city. A cruel terrorist attack has left 198 dead and some 1500 wounded. Most of the victims are workers, women and/or youth of the southern working-class districts of the city. Against this wave of indiscriminate terror, the people of Madrid have built again a barricade of solidarity and courage.
The terrorist attack — 12 backpacks with eight or 10 kilograms of explosives placed in three local trains — took place around 7.30 am. Most of the victims were commuting to work or school. According to police, the terrorist was aiming to blow up the trains inside Atocha's station and bring down the whole building.
Three days before the general election, the conservative government of the Popular Party (PP) launched a massive campaign to manipulate the popular feelings. Madrid has also become the "capital of political infamy".
In its first press conference a few hours after the attacks, interior minister Angel Acebes blamed the armed Basque independence organisation ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) for the bombings.
When the journalists present at the conference asked him what evidence he had, he brushed aside any doubts. Just minutes before, Arnaldo Otegi, the spokesperson of Herri Batasuna, the illegal political wing of ETA, categorically denied that the Basque independence movement had been involved. But for the government, it has to be ETA.
A campaign of fear
The PP has built its electoral campaign on a program of fear:
fear of any change to the constitution that now denies full self-government to the Basque country, Catalonia and Galicia; fear of the new regional governments that question its neoliberalism; fear of the movement that has massively taken the streets against Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's support for Washington's war in Iraq; fear of the ecologist campaigns; fear of the students' protest against the reactionary university reforms; fear of workers' industrial action; and, most of all, fear of ETA.
It is fear that allows the government to keep the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) completely tied through the anti-terrorist pact. This pact, subject to the government's interpretation, excludes any solution to the national question that is not based on repression and the defence of Spanish nationalism.
When Carod Rovira, the new prime minister of the left Catalan government, travelled to France to meet with ETA leaders to discuss a cease fire, the federal Popular Party government declared him a "traitor". It also accused him of negotiating "peace" only for Catalonia, and thus making other Spaniards more likely targets of attack, and challenged the PSOE to immediately break any alliance with Rovira's party, the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC).
Rovira's government survived, but the crisis and the accusations set the tone for the PP's re-election campaign. Its objective was clear: to mobilise its conservative electoral base, paralyse the left, or at least stop its social campaigning.
This tactic has been very useful to the PP until now. If it can use the terrorist attacks to radically transform popular feelings — as the US Republican administration was able to do after September 11 — the PP could consolidate its hold on Spanish politics in a decisively new way, smashing the momentum of the biggest wave of popular protests in the Spanish state since the end of General Franco's dictatorship.
On the other hand — given millions of people marched against Spain's participation in the illegal occupation of Iraq — the PP could be sure of defeat if the terrorist attacks are shown to be the responsibility of al Qaeda or any of its allies.
ETA or al Qaeda?
It was very clear to the Spanish people that the participation of Spanish troops in the occupation of Iraq could only make Spain a target of terrorist attacks. Is US President George Bush's New World Order worth it? Are Aznar and his government worth dying for? The answer is clearly no!
Let us think that Aznar, Acebes and all the PP spokespersons really believed what they said on March 11. Why would they believe Otegi's assurances that ETA was not behind the terrorist attacks? It's true that ETA has sometimes manipulated the declarations of its political wing.
But by the evening of March 11 it was becoming clear that ETA was not the author of the attacks. At least, it was clear enough for the international stock markets — always the vanguard of the capitalist system — to fall to new lows on the basis that this was not an internal Spanish matter, but an act of international terrorism.
The attack showed that al Qaeda was not only alive, but able to strike at the heart of Bush's allies. Then there was the March 11 letter send to the London newspaper al Quods al Arabi by a branch of al Qaeda, claiming responsibility.
The PP government deliberately maintained confusion about who was responsible for the terrorist attacks for its own political gain, after it knew all the new evidence. It instructed its diplomatic representations all around the world to insist that ETA was responsible for the attacks, and requested the United Nations and the European Union maintain this. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and the French government refused to support the lies of Aznar.
By 8pm on March 11, Acebes had to reappear on TV to announce he had ordered a secondary line of investigation in relation to al Qaeda. A car used to transport the explosives had been found containing an Islamic tape. Just one hour later, Spanish TV was informed of al Qaeda's letter claiming responsibility. But the PP government continued to insist that ETA was behind the attacks. If truth and the political line of the PP government were in contradiction, so bad for truth.
Meanwhile, the enormous political pressure of the PP government has stopped the election campaigning. Actually, only the PP was campaigning, through the government. The other political parties were shut down on the name of the "antiterrorist pact" and the defence of the constitutional status quo. A new September 11, in this case a Spanish March 11, was in the making to restrict democratic liberties in the name of imperial security.
When I write these lines on March 12, the government is still holding to its own version of the events. It is trying to win time, to profit from the pain and desperation of the working class, to maintain the confusion as long as possible until the elections on March 14. They know that a terrible backlash could happen. That if the people have time to reconsider what has happened after this terrible terrorist attack — the political manipulation, the infamy behind these 24 hours of lies will be crystal clear.
The first such reactions are starting. You can hear the doubts and rage mounting in the popular radio programs. It could explode during the burial ceremonies. The left has a lot of political explaining to do if it to be able to rise to its responsibilities. Now, the question that the people will have to decide the March 14 is if they believe the lies of the PP.
[G. Buster is a member of the editorial board of the review Viento Sur, published in Madrid, and a supporter of the Fourth International.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 17, 2004.
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