Spain is far more complex than that.

The Spanish response to Madrid - where the People's (sic) Party was voted out - was primarily because of Jose Maria Aznar's contemptible attempt to blame the train bombings on ETA, when two things were obvious:

a) It would have represented a massive change in ETA's tactics, which were (broadly) similar to those of the IRA here - very small-scale, occasional civilian bombings and attacks on political targets, and
b) 'Al-Qaeda' (that is, a group of fundamentalist Islamic insurgents) were angry at the Spanish involvement in the Iraq war.

Something like 50% of the Spanish electorate disagreed with the Iraq war, and 80% or so (IIRC) did not think Spain should become involved. There's little history of Spanish-American alliance (America did nothing for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, for example) and Aznar's involvement was very unpopular, striking as it did of shameless political opportunism.

By removing Aznar in the elections, the Spanish weren't "pandering to terrorism" (a phrase used by the Bush administration to cement their own power in the wake of an attack which they knew political commentators would place within the chain of events of US involvement in the Middle East, going back 100 years or so).

They were doing precisely the opposite - showing how people can express their disapproval with governmental policy through the system of indirect democracy. One of the biggest problems with this global conflict between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam is that Bush and Blair have tied their religious beliefs, and their attendant foreign policy, to the (essentially secular) system of indirect democracy, in an attempt to prevent critical responses to their political programme. Hence Bush's famous "You're either with us or against us in the war against terror".

Basically, what the Bush-Blair alliance have done since 9/11 is to attempt to exclude the possibility of criticising both sides in the conflict - they are fully aware that many people, myself included, despise both sides equally. This 'third way' is denied, and the people suffer.

They suffer physically - nowhere near all of the people killed in today's attacks, or in Madrid, or on 9/11, probably did not support Bush, Blair or Aznar, or vote for them, or support the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan (although some probably did, to some extent) - they were and are in no way complicit with the actions of their governments, which proved that they were not prepared to listen to dissident voices (of any kind) in the run-up to the war, or even change their position in the wake of the basis for the war that they had set up being undermined.

The Spanish people revealed the true potential of the "democracy" which Bush and (to a lesser extent) Blair hijacked. They reminded their government that there is a people who criticise their actions, and will hold them responsible for their actions, especially when they have disastrous knock-on effects for people not involved in their political programmes. They were not "pandering to terrorism" as they were outside the discourse which produced the terrorism, and resented being involved in it, and being killed by it (the same voters who removed Aznar were the ones who protested against terrorism across Spain).

The response of the Spanish people was measured and intelligent. It represents our only hope of ending this idiotic conflict between two outdated belief-systems, which always ends up killing people who were uninvolved. I just wish that there was some ray of hope, however small, for political change in today's events. Sadly, I fear not - when I saw Blair give his speech I got the feeling that his thoughts were solely on making sure he didn't follow Aznar out of office.

Apologies that this was *so* long, but I had plenty of friends in Madrid at the time of the bombings and it's an incredibly complex issue ...

Posted By: Ottosson Foxtrot on July 8th 2005 at 03:17:02

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