Lessons from Spain

Lessons from Spain
Praful Bidwai
The News International [Pakistan], 18 March 2004

The Spanish people have done something remarkable, indeed earth shaking by today's standards, by sending the ruling conservative Popular Party packing in Sunday's national election. The election was held just three days after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, in which 200 people were killed and 1,500 injured. This was Europe's worst terrorist episode since the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.

Just a week before the polling, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was confident that his party would sail to victory, as the opinion polls forecast, and he would hand over the baton to his designated successor Mariano Rajoy after eight years at the helm. The train bombings, the ruling party's supporters predicted, would further tilt the electoral balance in its favour. After all, security and anti-terrorism were the central planks of the party's campaign. And what better vindication of the obsessive conservative emphasis on "security" could there be than a major terrorist attack, which spreads panic, fear and insecurity all around?

Aznar, true to his abrasive style, launched a major campaign against the Basque separatist group ETA, blaming it for the bombings, although the operation did not bear its characteristic mark. (ETA rarely targets civilians on a large scale, and usually issues a prior warning.) Blaming ETA, Aznar calculated, would help tap Spanish-nationalist prejudice, and at the same time, isolate the Left, especially in Catalonia, which had earlier negotiated with ETA. This would enable the conservatives to overcome some of their unpopularity on account of their support to the war on Iraq, which 90 percent of Spaniards oppose.

In the event, Aznar's strategy bombed. Spaniards refused to buy the propaganda blaming ETA for the terrorist attacks. Instead, they noted, evidence was piling up of the involvement of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, particularly after the discovery of a van with telltale clues. At a hastily convened midnight press conference, Interior Minister Angel Acedes had to concede the evidence is weighty.

As the government awkwardly tried to cover up its lies and deceits, the Spanish people's grief turned to anger, and their anger to a very high election turnout of 77 percent, fully seven percentage points higher than in the past. Some of the greatest rush to the polling booths took place in the working-class suburbs of Madrid, the point of origin of the three trains that were bombed. These people forcefully disproved the conservative assumption that those put in the frontline of the "global war on terrorism" would inevitably vote for a ruling Right-wing party.

It would be a big mistake to reduce the dramatic events in Spain to a mere electoral battle. Their true significance lay in mass mobilisation and the spontaneous solidarity with terrorism's victims expressed in large public gatherings in Madrid, Barcelona and other cities immediately after the train bombings. These events quickly turned into mass protests. Among the commonest placards was one carrying a picture of Aznar, George Bush and Tony Blair, with the caption: "Is this photograph the reason for the killing of 200 people?" By polling day, Aznar and Rajoy's detractors were confronting them in polling stations with slogans like "Manipulator" and "You fascists are the real terrorists".

Finally, the opposition Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) won 43 percent of the vote and 164 seats in the 350-member Chamber of Deputies. The ruling party won only 148 seats with 37 percent of the vote. Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will now form the new government with other, smaller, centre-left parties.

Three big factors underlie the momentous change that has occurred in Spain: the powerful sentiment against the war and occupation of Iraq, anger against the Aznar government forlying about the identity of the agency behind the March 11 attacks, and growing popular sympathy for the cause of regional autonomy and decentralisation of power.

The biggest of these is the anti-war sentiment, expressed last year in some of the greatest mass demonstrations in the world. Madrid and Barcelona both had millions out in the streets on February 15.

The Aznar government has a poor record. It has zealously implemented neoliberal policies, dismantled public services and denigrated democratic institutions. With Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and Britain's Tony Blair, Aznar has tried to create a slavishly pro-US conservative axis against the pro-mutilateral, multipolar, mainstream tendency in Western Europe. The vote is a slap in his face.

Aznar has carried out a personal crusade against ETA, which tried to assassinate him in 1995. In general, the Spanish conservatives have ridden far too long on the anti-autonomy platform, which equates militant separatism of the ETA variety with peaceful and relaxed forms of autonomism like those in Catalonia. Catalonia is an extraordinarily attractive model of autonomy and decentralisation, in which federal authority prevails only in matters like defence and currency. Any radical democratic transformation of Europe and Spain has a lot to learn from the Catalan experience. Spaniards are showing recognition of this.

Developments in Spain highlight two other things on the eve of the first anniversary of the Iraq war. Contrary to US propaganda, the Al-Qaeda network has not been decimated or disabled. Nor has it been weakened to a point where it can only attack "soft" targets like Bali or Istanbul. It can reach the heart of Europe-with devastating effect. Indeed, as this column has argued time and again, the war in Iraq, because it is so grossly unjust, turned into terrorism's most fertile recruiting ground. The occupation is making things even better for the fundamentalists. The US has created a huge mess in Iraq-with a welter of discontents, unaddressed grievances and injustices.

The US has failed to find a fig leaf of democratic acceptance for its continuing occupation of Iraq. Its puppet regime remains deeply unpopular. The new constitutional plan does not have enough takers. Genuine transfer of power to the Iraqis seems a remote possibility. Indeed, the US is digging in its heels for a long, long haul. In Baghdad, it is about to build what could be the world's biggest embassy-with 3,000 staff! Secondly, West Europe has mercifully not succumbed so far to a US-style obsession with security that is delusorily seen as deriving from military might alone. The US-led "war on terrorism" has not united the West; rather, it has divided it. That makes the struggle for a saner, more peaceful, multipolar world order particularly worth waging.

The PSOE is committed to withdrawing Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq by June. The withdrawal will shake the claim to solidity of the US-UK war coalition. It technically has 34 members. Most of them are client states like the former USSR's smaller components (Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.) and the Philippines, Macedonia, Honduras, El Salvador or the Dominican Republic. The unjust occupation of Iraq will continue to endanger the lives of innocent people in many parts of the world. It must end at once. This coming Saturday, millions of people will gather in scores of cities across the globe to demand this. We in South Asia must join them in large numbers. The global fight for peace cannot be separated from our own struggles for peace and justice.

Copyright 2004 The News International