Fall of pro-war government in Spain rattles the foundations of Bush's coalition

By Gerry Foley

In its attempt to manipulate the public shock at the March 11 bombing of Madrid commuter trains, the right-wing Spanish government of Jose Maria Aznar badly overplayed its hand.

The attack came within days of general elections in the Spanish state. The polls were predicting a win by the premier’s Partido Popular but the vote was expected to be fairly close. As it turned out, Aznar was soundly defeated by Socialist Party candidate Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Although it was obvious from the beginning that the terrorist atrocity had all the hallmarks of al Qaeda, the government pulled out all the stops to use it to whip up hysteria against the Basque separatist guerrillas of Euzkadi ta Askatasuna (ETA Basqueland and Freedom). Aznar’s method was as characteristic of him as the bombing was of al Qaeda.

The Spanish rightists had used the ETA guerrillas effectively as a bogyman in the past. Some years ago, they succeeded in mobilizing huge popular demonstrations to condemn ETA terrorism. At the time, mass circulation bourgeois newspapers even solicited a massive barrage of e-mails that shut down the server carrying Basque pro-independence web sites.

In the wake of the Madrid bombings, mass demonstrations condemning terrorism in many cities of Spain dwarfed the previous marches directed against ETA. An estimated 11 million people participated in the protests. The government forces got so carried away with the witch hunt that a policeman shot and killed a Basque store owner in Pamplona March 13 because he had refused to hang a black ribbon on the door of his bakery.

Aznar’s party, the successor of the movement of ex-dictator Francisco Franco, made its stock-in-trade to be the defender of the Spanish state against separatists. If the train bombing outrage could be blamed on ETA, the Aznar government obviously calculated, the maximum conservative vote could be rallied behind the Partido Popular as the tough law-and-order Spanish patriotic party.

The government sent out orders to all Spanish embassies to blame ETA for the bombing. It persuaded the members of the UN Security Council to vote a resolution condemning ETA without even offering any evidence that the Basque guerrillas had been involved.

Very quickly, Basque spokespersons in touch with ETA issued denials that any fighters for Basque independence were associated with the train bombings. In its March 14 issue, the Mexico City daily La Jornada reported a statement by Herri Batasuna [The People United], the political party of the militant wing of the Basque nationalist movement. The statement said: "Indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population and workers going to their jobs are absolutely rejected by the abertzale [pro-independence] left.

"We denounce the Spanish government’s electoral maneuver of trying to link the just struggle of the Basque people for its liberation with the events in Madrid, when the whole world is more and more convinced that this attack came from some Islamic group."

Even in the mass circulation press controlled by big business, most commentators noted that the Madrid bombing was unlike ETA, which has aimed at political targets, although some of its strikes have gone wrong. Very quickly, concrete evidence emerged pointing to al Qaeda. When the police started arresting suspects, they were all linked to Islamist currents.

On March 12, the day following the bombings, while the government was still sticking to its story, radio station Cadenasur announced that Spanish security services were "96 percent sure" that Islamists had carried out the bombing. By 6 p.m., the March 16 issue of the Italian left daily Il Manifesto reported, a crowd of 5000 people had gathered in front of the central Madrid office of Aznar’s party shouting, "Lies," "Resign," "Peace." By 8 p.m., the government had to admit that it was "following an Islamist trail."

By midnight, spontaneous demonstrations had gathered in the center of Madrid, in which participants shouted, "Resign!" "You don’t represent us!" By 2 a.m., crowds had gathered at the commuter train station, Atorcha, the terminus of the bombed trains. Soon, there were 10,000 people there. Less than an hour later, crowds moved to the Partido Popular headquarters, and 3000 gathered in front of the homes of Aznar and his designed successor, Rojoy. There was a steady coming and going, and at 6 a.m., according to an Il Manifesto correspondent, there were about 5000 people there. A loud speaker proclaimed, "200 dead, 1400 wounded, 34 million victims of manipulation."

Although the Aznar government, after the government of Tony Blair in Britain, was Bush’s major ally in the Iraq war, the polls have showed that 90 percent of the Spanish population was against the war.

Until the events of March 11-14, it had appeared that the opposition of the vast majority to the war and occupation of Iraq would not lead to the ouster of the Aznar government. But antiwar sentiments were heightened after the terrorist action in the capital, which was apparently carried out by Islamists determined to punish Spain for its participation in the U.S.-led coalition. "Peace" became a common slogan of the anti-government demonstrators.

However, the most immediate issue seemed to be the resentment of the masses at the government’s attempt to use the tragic bombings for political manipulation and electioneering. Resentment had already been building against the attempts by the big business and government-controlled media to downplay the vast demonstrations against the Iraq war.

On March 14 the popular anger swept the Partido Popular from office. There was a marked rise in the number of people voting, especially of younger people. The opposition Socialist Party, which opposed the Iraq war, won 42.7 percent; and the Partido Popular 37.7 percent. But the parties of the oppressed nationalities, which received most of the remainder of the vote, could be expected to block with the SP against the Spanish centralist PP.

The defeat of one of Bush’s two chief allies shook the other, Tony Blair, and gave indications that the U.S.-led coalition could be breaking up. The Spanish vote was followed by a statement by the Polish premier that his government had been "misled" by the claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. South Korea decided not to send troops to Iraq. The Japanese government seemed to be backpedaling on its plans for sending forces to support the occupation.

The new Spanish premier, Rodriguez Zapatero, declared that he would withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq if command of the occupation forces were not transferred to the United Nations. Rodriguez Zapatero was bound to his pledge by his campaign promises and the majority sentiment in Spain. But he immediately sought ways of reassuring the United States that he was a reliable ally and that he was as determined to repress militant Basque nationalism as Aznar.

In fact, the previous Socialist Party government, headed by Felipe Gonzalez, had taken pride in proving that a Social Democratic government could carry out the agenda of the right as effectively as an avowedly conservative party.

The pro-war governments rushed to condemn the new regime in Spain for capitulating to "terrorism," ignoring the fact that the defeat of the Partido Popular seemed to be primarily a result of Aznar’s attempt to use the bombings for political manipulation. But the Bush administration is also trying to raise the specter of "terrorism" for electoral purposes. Aznar’s defeat should be a warning to the White House that this card is not necessarily a winner.

The article above first appeared in the April 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.