Features

Phil McArdle is a Berkeley resident and author. On vacation in Spain, he arrived one day after the horrific terrorist bombing on the Madrid commuter train. Below is his first-hand account of events in Spain in the immediate aftermath of that bombing, including the election that toppled the Spanish government. 

On Thursday, March 11, my family and I set out for a holiday in Barcelona, one of Spain’s most beautiful cities. It has achieved a rare balance between the modern and the ancient, and we wanted to see the medieval frescos and the Picasso museum, certain Gothic churches and the Gaudi cathedral. We didn’t know as we rode BART to San Francisco International Airport that in Madrid commuter trains full of workers had been blown up by terrorists. 

When we arrived on Friday afternoon, Spain was in mourning. At least 200 people were known to be dead, and some 1,500 had been injured. And the massacre’s toll had still not been fully counted. We pieced together a picture of this dreadful atrocity from the Spanish newspapers, but our command of Spanish was inadequate to the event. 

The surface of life seemed relatively undisturbed in the Ciutat Vella, the medieval quarter where we had rented an apartment. The shops opened as usual in the mornings and early evenings, and closed in mid-afternoon. Shoals of well-dressed men and stylish women drifted this way and that through the narrow, echoing streets, some shopping, some en route to restaurants. No one hurried. And it was a perfect setting for a holiday: the mellow afternoon light enhanced the light gray of the ancient stone buildings, and the weather was wonderful, cool and comfortable. 

But we soon saw the signs of communal mourning. Catalonians though they are, the Barcelonans fully shared the grief of their fellow Spaniards. Black crepe bows were everywhere: on flags, on white towels hung from apartment windows five and six stories above the streets, on the doors of shops and restaurants, on church altars and government buildings, and on monuments sacred to the Catalan people, such as the eternal flame in the Placa de Santa Maria del Mar. 

In the evening we also saw the rich, somber glow of hundreds of red mourning candles in the plaza on the Palu de Generalitat (which houses Catalonia’s parliament), in front of flower-bedecked national memorials, and in the basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, where we attended a memorial service for the people lost in Madrid, with the liturgy sung in Catalan and the sermon in Spanish. 

On Saturday we found a tobacconist who sold English papers like the Guardian and the Telegraph, and we learned the full extent of the disaster. As we put the threads of the story in place, we learned the government was blaming ETA, the Basque separatist movement, for the crime. We also learned a national election would be held the next day (Sunday). In the final pre-election polls, the governing Popular Party (PP) led the Socialists in a close race. 

Jose Maria Aznar, the PP Prime Minister, a right wing nationalist, had waged an unrelenting personal crusade against ETA. He had made complete suppression of the Basque movement a major theme in his campaign. Aznar was so fixated on ETA that, without waiting for preliminary investigations to be completed, he announced the Basque movement was responsible. Within hours the intelligence services and the Madrid police both told the press that preliminary evidence pointed to Al-Qaeda. Aznar’s credibility plummeted. He stood revealed as a man blind to reality. 

But it was too late for pollsters to predict the impact of this on the vote. Political professionals didn’t know whether people would turn away from Aznar. 

We had, of course, noticed political graffiti. Its import was ambiguous. Some was perfectly clear, as in this anti-PP slogan: “Is it democratic to be fascist?” But some of it could be read in a number of ways: 

“NO to AIDS 

“NO to AL-QAEDA 

“NOW—VOTE!” 

But who should you vote for? The Socialists or the Popular Party? 

Saturday evening when we took a stroll through the Gothic quarter, we heard the voice of the people. Indeed, in those narrow streets—some only eight feet wide—it practically deafened us. At ten o’clock people indoors and outdoors, in the streets and at their windows, began beating on pots and pans. The volume of sound rose as it echoed off the stone walls, quickly reaching an ear-splitting, rock-concert volume. And it went on, and on, and on. As we approached an apartment where a young man stood in the doorway beating on a frying pan, I stopped and asked, “What is this all about?” 

“We are protesting the lies of our government,” he answered. 

“Which particular lies?” 

“About the bombings in Madrid.” 

We walked further on, sat down on a bench, and let the sound roll over us. My wife said, “We’re in the presence of something profound.” The protest lasted for an hour. 

The next day, the Spaniards voted out the conservatives. 

Sidney Blumenthal described the outcome as “a revulsion against the political manipulation of terror.” It is clear that the Spanish believed Aznar hoped their rage at the massacre in Madrid would cause a surge of patriotic feeling and return him and his party to office with an increased majority. They became angry at him, believing he deliberately lied for political advantage—playing politics with the deaths of his own people. 

American conservatives have derided the Spanish vote as appeasement of Al-Qaeda. They could hardly be more mistaken. The Spanish have contempt for the terrorism of Al-Qaeda. None of our conservatives have had the grim wit to compare the sickness of Osama Ben Laden’s terrorism to the scourge of AIDS. 

For what it’s worth, we came home convinced the Spanish election was a marvelously encouraging event. Aznar lost because he lied to the people. They exercised their right to demand a truthful government. They insisted on the honesty without which freedom and democracy really can’t exist. 

As to the future, the new Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, appears to be part of an evolving European consensus which conceives of the “war” on terrorism differently than the Bush administration. He has frequently said, “Fighting terrorism with bombs is not a way to win, but will instead provoke more extremism. Terrorism is fought with the rule of law, international law, and with intelligence services.” 

Corelli Barnett, the British historian, wrote of Zapatero that he “has expressed his strong resolve to cooperate with other European states in combating terrorism. His opposition to the American-led attack on, and occupation of, Iraq is a quite separate matter. His party believed a year ago that Bush’s plan to topple Saddam was irrelevant to the problem of Al-Qaeda.” His intention to remove Spanish troops from Iraq is consistent with this. 

As we look at the American scene today, we see the Bush administration sitting surrounded on all sides by the rubble of its own credibility, which has been blown up (like Aznar’s) by falsehoods on matters of life and death. The Spanish have every right to ask us whether we will allow our government to lie to us with impunity.