Casting out the government was no victory for terrorists or their plots.

Did the bombs that exploded on March 11 in Madrid within the space of three minutes affect the result of the Spanish general election three days later? Without a question.

More than 190 people died and more than 1,800 people were wounded, some very seriously. Emergency teams appeared on the scene within minutes, and they started the terrible task of removing the dead and the wounded from the pieces of twisted iron that had become the wagons from the Alcal de Henares-Madrid train line.

Demonstrations of solidarity with the victims on Friday, March 12, were the largest the country has even seen. Eleven million people showed up in a spirit of unity that is rare for a country that has seen seven civil wars in the last 200 years. Two days later, this same crowd ousted the Spanish government of Jos Mara Aznar, one of George Bush’s staunchest allies. The means was the ballot. Was this a victory for Islamist terrorists? Hardly.

Thirty-five years of fighting terrorism in Spain – 27 of them through democratic institutions – led almost everybody in Spain to think that Basque terrorist organization ETA was at it again. Who else would want this sort of horror three days before the scheduled general election?

Yet spokespersons from this band of killers denied any ETA involvement in the bombings. In fact, as the police started to discover signs indicating another, Islamic fundamentalist source, government ministers circled their wagons around the initial theory. To do otherwise would have incalculable political repercussions, with the general election so close.

So hard they dug their heels on the ETA hypothesis that in a few hours they found themselves in a political, deep hole. As the government kept denying the mounting evidence of an Islamist connection, the police were announcing more and more details in that direction.

As scheduled, on Sunday, March 14, people went to the polling stations to cast their vote in what all political forces considered a show of support for democracy. Participation increased considerably. By 8 p.m., a democratic earthquake had taken place. The Popular Party of Prime Minister Jos Mara Aznar was soundly beaten by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the oldest political formation in Spanish politics. Prime Minister-elect Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero was quick to assess the need for circumspection. Madrid still was mourning its dead.

On Monday, however, Rodrguez Zapatero repeated his promise to pull Spanish troops from Iraq unless the United Nations takes a leading role in the occupation. He called Iraq a disaster and a mistake, as well as an illegal act of aggression.

Some conservative analysts interpreted the election results as a vote of fear. A closer analysis, however, gives a more complex scenario.

Opinion polls have shown that close to 90 percent of the Spanish people are against the war and the country’s involvement in it. The Spanish government of Jos Mara Aznar sought an alliance with the Bush administration without obtaining a consensus among the political forces.

In a democracy, that is a serious gamble. More so if the war has been declared illegal by friend and foe. Things got worse when the justification for the invasion of Iraq had proven to be a fiction, the fig leaf of the oil interests slowly falling to the ground. Three days after the bomb attacks in Madrid, these concerns and the blunder of the government authorities around the political origin of the bombs caused many people to change their vote, or to go to the polls when they did not plan to do so four days before. People do not like the feeling of being lied to, and that was the sentiment that weekend. A majority of Spaniards were not so much afraid as disappointed.

Weeks after the election, the morning continues. The victims of the attack were from all walks of life, but mostly they were workers and students. More than a dozen among the dead were foreign immigrants. Some were Polish, some Romanian, Bulgarian or Moroccan. One was born in Guinea-Bissau and others in Ecuador, Peru or Colombia. Much to its credit, the same Spanish government that would lose the election three days later approved a decree granting automatic rights of citizenship to all the mortal victims of the attack and to their direct relatives.

Furthermore, the same decree granted permanent residence to foreigners who were wounded in the blast, extending it to their families as well. This was done hours after the bombs exploded, so nobody would feel afraid to ask for help due to their immigration status. Inadvertently, the terrorists taught a simple lesson to the people of Spain on March 11, since the intent of the bombs did not acknowledge differences in nationality. A democratic society cannot make them either.

Many of the dead, over 40, lived in Alcal de Henares, a town 20 miles to the east of Madrid and the birth place of Miguel de Cervantes, the author of “Don Quijote de la Mancha.” It looks as if Spain has taken advice from Sancho Panza, when left the governorship over the island of Barataria (a word that means hoax) that had been given to him under false pretenses. Iraq is like that illusory island promised to the poor peasant by his master, the crazy knight errant, and the price one pays for entering a situation unadvisedly is frequently too high.

Baltasar Fra-Molinero is an associate professor of Spanish at Bates College, where he teaches on different political issues related to literature and film from Spain and Latin America. He has lived in Lewiston for the past nine years.

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