Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold

It is my belief, obviously unprovable, that had the Partido Popular won the general election on March 14th 2004, then virtually none of the conspiracy theories about the Madrid bombings would exist. There would probably have been one or two websites where theories would have been floated about involvement either by Mossad or other intelligence agencies in the bombings. There always are sites like this. What there would not have been is a sustained campaign led by important media organisations and the principal party of opposition to try and insinuate the involvement of the current government or other organisations in the bombings.

The PP was the favourite to win the elections in 2004, and there is little doubt that the bombings affected the outcome, although there can be argument over the extent of that effect. They got themselves into trouble in the days following the bombings with some crude attempts to exploit the bombings for their own political advantage. It was always clear that the thesis of ETA being responsible for the bombings would bring them more electoral advantage than that of Islamist responsibility, and their undoing was in their frantic attempts to keep this thesis alive until election day.

Is March 14th the day that bothers them most?

Meanwhile, had the PP won the election they would have been quite happy with the thesis that the bombings were the work of Islamist terrorists. They might have had to work a bit to deflect suggestions that the bombings had anything to do with Spanish intervention in Iraq, but apart from that the issue of the identity of the perpetrators would not have consumed much of their time. El Mundo and the other media groups involved now in promoting the conspiracy theories would have found other issues in an attempt to maintain or boost their sales, while Pedro J Ramirez would be enjoying his invitations to dine in the official residence in Moncloa of the Prime Minister and leader of the PP, Mariano Rajoy.

What really convinces me of this is the evident political intention behind much of the campaign sponsoring these conspiracy theories. This is most evident on web sites and blogs where those involved in the campaign gather to express their opinions, but even in the press or statements by politicians the resentment felt by those who feel robbed of their rightful position does not take long to surface. That is why they talk about the elections following the bombings as being a golpe de estado (a coup d’etat), as if somehow the result was not a reflection of the popular vote. That is why they hint at secret agreements supposedly made by the current Spanish government with ETA, or of ETA blackmailing the government because of their hidden role in the bombings. The anti-government demonstrations where smartly dressed PP supporters wave their placards linking ETA and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to the March 11th bombings are not the product of a genuine interest in knowing what really happened on that tragic day. Rather they represent a fervent desire for revenge against a government whose legitimacy the demonstrators are unable to accept. It’s a pity, a great pity, that in the process of seeking that revenge they felt the need to convert the awful events of March 11th 2004 into nothing more than their partisan political plaything.