Letter from Madrid

[Howard Clark is a member of the international council
of War Resisters’ International, English. He lives in
Madrid with his partner and two children.]

First, a thank you to those of you who have been
thinking about us since last Thursday’s terrorist
attack in Madrid.

It was indeed horrific, yet - occurring at a divisive
time such as on the eve of a general election - it
brought forth marvellous 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, coloured what he called
his "no a la guerra" flag (although actually it said
"no al terrorismo").

However, the pro-war and pro-confrontation party of the
government - Partido Popular - 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 re-assess the question of Iraq’s
weapons, but not the PP.

Now the PP tried to blame ETA 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 meet leaders of other parties to discuss its
handling of the situation or to inform them, as would
be usual 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 prison told me that
the order had gone out to confine all ETA prisoners in
maximum security - the five who she works with have
signed a renunciation of violence and had been switched
more open conditions, two are even due for release. And
yet the news began leaking out that a stolen van had
been found with detonators using copper, not ETA’s
usual aluminium, 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 hq and began a
demonstration against the PP’s manipulation of
information. Word spread, and thousands joined it. 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 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 he too denounced the
lies and manipulation in the government’s handling of
this situation.

The next day, the electoral turn-out was much higher
than expected, and the PP - who had led the PSOE by 4%
in all the polls - were 5% behind in the poll that
mattered. At last its manipulation over the Prestige
oil slick and the war on Iraq had come home to roost.

I am convinced that what began as a small anti-war
demonstration on Saturday afternoon in Madrid was the
trigger for this reversal. 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.

When the main public TV channel interviewed president
and Mrs Bush on the eve of the election, I suppose 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".

So 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 looking very shopsoiled, creating enormous
disillusion, having taken Spain into NATO 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 30 June - the
first date possible - he would withdraw troops. 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 too. I have little doubt
that if the PP had been transparent in dealing with
this attack, they would have been re- elected, and even
if the reason for Spain to be a target 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 kick in Rajoy (his nominated
successor)’s backside. The areas worst hit by the
attack registered an increased Socialist vote, and so I
suppose some families are consoling themselves that at
least one good thing has come out of the death of their
loved ones.

Just an important precision about Zapatero.

His commitment is to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq
as of 30 June (after his investiture as prime minster),
unless the UN has taken control of operations there. I
omitted that provision.