Spain-politics

Today news came out that the group who claimed responsibility for the March-11 train bombs is threatening further action unless the Spanish troops are pulled out of both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is clever because the incoming Prime Minister promised before being elected that he would pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. He reaffirmed this promise just after being elected, but has been pretty quiet about it since then so as not to provoke a direct confrontation with the US right now. With the new threat this terrorist group can claim (and perhaps actually believe) that they are the real reason for the pullout and that the West is scared to fight them and that the terrorists are winning. But rather than making an attack less likely because success has been partially achieved this could be a further encouragement for them to carry out the threat because the Spanish have not pulled out of Afghanistan (which is politically impossible for them to do). Grand point is that even perceived success can breed more attacks.

But weren't the March-11 attacks successful in actual fact? Up until the attacks the governing Popular Party(PP) was ahead by a comfortable margin in the elections, but the Socialist Party(PS) won the elections three days after the attacks. There are at least two interpretations of the meaning of that reversal.

One interpretation sees the reversal as a reaction to the way the PP government handled the attacks. They were surely too quick to try to blame ETA the internal Basque-nationalist terrorist group. An email was sent out shortly after the bombings to the Spanish embassies around the world telling the ambassadors to push the ETA connection. Spain pressed for a resolution in the UN Security Council against ETA and received it against the initial objections of Germany. These actions point to an organized effort to cover up the real reasons for the attacks for pure political gain and the PP was punished by the voters for this set of actions.

Another interpretation is that the reason the PP was voted out was because of the close cooperation of that government with the US in the war in Iraq which was seen as the cause of the attacks. The PP was voted out because their actions had cost the lives of nearly 200 people. This is the interpretation that seemed to be floating most frequently in the press.

More after dinner...