is an e-mail I received from a friend of mine, Helena, who hails from Valencia,
Spain, but currently works and resides in Oxford, England. Here are her
thoughts and experiences of Spain in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that
took place on 11 March 2004. Any reactions or thoughts, e-mail me here.
I’m not one for getting emotional, but now I have a story to tell you. It’s my
personal story, because I cannot tell it any other way. It’s about Spain. About
the past four days. Hear me out.
At 6’45am GMT (7’45am Spanish time) on March 11 my mother rang me. She
was crying hysterically. For those of you who don’t know her, my mother
really is not the kind to cry hysterically. She fought underground for
democracy in Spain, she’s tough as nails. My mother lives in Valencia.
Every morning she wakes up at 7am, has breakfast (coffee and yogurt)
listening to Radio SER, and then gets a red and white train to go to
work.
The red and white trains are a national network of short distance overground
trains. On Thursday March 11 my mother, who fought for democracy and is
tough as nails, could not bring herself to go to work on those trains. The same
trains that had been blown to shreds in Madrid. All she could do was sob, and
all I could do was run to my computer and find the El Pais website to make head
and tail of what she was telling me.
I didn’t get any work done on Thursday, and my gratitude is to those members
of exec who held a minute’s silence at my request and who continued
to feed me information. I was glued to the El Pais website. The death toll kept
rising. It can’t be ETA. ETA wouldn’t do that. Not without a warning. The bombs
exploded in the most famous working class neighborhood in Madrid, where the
Communist Party of Spain was founded. ETA would never do that.
It’s not like them, it can’t be them. I began to count my friends in Madrid, and
rang them one by one. All okay. All shocked. Most of them being volunteers
and donating blood. Slowly, emails from friends in Spain started coming in –
this is mad, I don’t understand, why, why?
I didn’t sleep on Thursday night. I read every newspaper available online. Is it
Al Qaeda? 911 days since 9/11. The traits begin to be there. Trains
early in the morning targeted at commuters. Much like planes in NY. Bombs
set to go off when the emergency services arrive (thankfully, they
didn’t go off because of a fault in the mechanism). A chilling letter to a
London paper from a Muslim fundamentalist group. ETA denies it. ETA’s
illegalised political branch (HB) condemns the attacks. It must be Al Qaeda.
Why is no-one from the government saying anything?
Friday morning, wide awake after four hours sleep. I really want to go home
now. I read El Pais in my office and cry. 200 dead. 1500 wounded. The
b*stards put shrapnel next to the bombs to make sure more people were
hurt. Hijos de puta. The government is still sure it’s ETA, although they
are looking at the Al Qaeda possibility. Campaigning for the general
election has stopped, but this is quickly becoming an electoral issue. If it
was ETA, the tough line right wing party (Partido Popular, PP) will have
the upper hand. If it was Al Qaeda, the anti-war left wing party (Partido
Socialista Obrero Espanol, PSOE) will get the advantage.
Tell us the truth, for the dead and the wounded, just tell us who did this.
Reports start coming in about fascists taking the streets to condemn all those
who are not Spanish (Basque or ‘darkies’, doesn’t matter). Spaniards would
never do this to Spaniards, they shout. My mother rings. She has gone from
despair to anger. She tells me of the pride and dignity of the Spanish people,
and of disgust at the fascists. She also says that there are rumours on
the radio that the government is not telling the truth. The King addresses
the nation – dignified, sad and a democrat at heart. It is good to hear
him speak.
Friday, 7pm, 11 million Spaniards walk the streets in the pouring rain. Mostly in
deadly silence. I sit on the Oxford tube and wait for my mother to ring and tell
me the news. Instead, a friend from Valencia rings. She’s just come back from
the demonstration. Silence, but also angry shouts occasionally. Against the
war. Against ETA. Against Aznar. Against terrorism. Against lies. For the truth.
She says no-one knows where to channel their anger, and the tension is
palpable. I feel the tension. I am carrying a suitcase on the tube in London. I
leave it on the side and sit down. Three people come over to ask whether the
bag is mine. Clearly, there is tension in London too.
Saturday morning I fly to Spain. I buy El Pais at the first available opportunity
and read it all the way through. The personal stories: a little girl in a pink coat
looking for her mother, a seven month old baby found alive but dies later, a lad
who would be eighteen today and was excited about voting, a nurse whose
boyfriend was amongst the wounded. I am quite visibly emotional, and the
woman next to me puts her hand on my arm. We are all Madrilenos, she says.
Her friend’s friend is amongst the wounded. My friend’s brother’s girlfriend is
amongst the wounded too. If there are six degrees of separation from anyone
in the world, how many degrees of separation are there within a country? Not
many, it would appear. I read the Guardian as well – the Spanish government is
still not confirming whether it is Al Qaeda or ETA, but the balance of evidence
points to Al Qaeda according to most foreign intelligence services.
The British tourists on a hen night trip to Barcelona really irritate me. They are
all wearing red and drinking gin and tonics, and seem oblivious to the sombre
atmosphere of most Spaniards on this flight.
In Barcelona, my mother’s best friend is waiting for me. She’s asked whether I’ll
take a later train and talk to her for a bit. She lives alone, and has felt very
lonely and scared in the past few days. We sit in a cafeteria in Barcelona train
station. The bustle of Spain is there, but it seems subdued. Like we’re all
dumbed, numbed. We talk about what is happening. She is another fighter of
democracy, and another who is comparing the tension and fear and lies with
the dictatorship. I cannot understand why that is the reaction of so many of my
mother’s contemporaries, but I hold her hands and hug her.
Train to Valencia. It’s packed. Good to see none of us are scared of trains. I sit
next to a young man listening to the news on the radio. I am re-reading El Pais.
He turns to me and tells me that Radio SER has just announced that three
Moroccans and two Indians have been arrested, but the government is not
saying anything. We both glue our ears to the radio. The rest of the carriage
realises what is going on and hushes. We relay the news, and soon enough
arguments break out. ETA could be working with Al Qaeda.ETA is trying to
confuse us. No, no, this is clearly Al Qaeda. The consensus is clear – the
government has got to say something. Finally, the Home Secretary speaks –
yes they have arrested them in connection with the bombing, yes they are
Muslim fundamentalists, but it is still not clear whether it was ETA or Al Qaeda.
Like one, the passengers shout in anger. It’s a cover up.
I arrive in Valencia. My mother hugs me tight and we go home. On the way I see
a group of people beginning to congregate in the main square, in front of the
PP’s offices. It smells like direct action to me. I drop my bag at home and run
back to the square. Immediately bump into friends. The plan is to block the
road. And so we do, about 300 of us. Other people start arriving soon. Mostly
young, but not all. I bump into a teacher from school, and also into the ex-
director of a bank who is a friend of my mother’s. There are now about 1500
people. Silent, hands up in the air, placards reading ‘tell us the truth,
murderers, tell us the truth’.
And then we begin shouting: “we’re not all here, we’re missing 200”, “no
to war, no to war”, “this is what we get from a fascist government”, and louder
than all the others “tomorrow we vote, tomorrow we vote”. A child in a push
chair is sleepy, but looks amused at the chanting. His mother teaches him the
chant and he joins in, clumsily. The police don’t know what to do. They just kind
of stand around. And then the news comes – the government is accusing the
PSOE of calling the demonstrations, they are thinking of declaring an
emergency and stopping the election. One step to make this crowd angrier.
The angrier we get, the more tense the police gets. It takes one violent shove
from a policeman to make people run away, and then come back relentless. We
spend most of the night like that.
More news comes in – Radio SER has talked to the Spanish intelligence
services. They have known it was Al-Qaeda for a while, but the Spanish Home
Secretary is refusing to talk to them. A leaked memo shows that the Spanish
Foreign Minister instructed every Spanish ambassador on Friday to say it was
definitely ETA. Don’t trust the TV. (After all, the director of the Spanish national
TV has been found guilty of twisting the truth by an EU court…)
Tune in to the French radios. The older members of the crowd again talk about
remembering fascist times. By about 2am more news starts coming through –
the Home Secretary has finally acknowledged that they do know it is Al Qaeda.
The electoral commission has thrown out their complaint that the
demonstrations were called by the PSOE and that the election is illegitimate.
The Sunday morning papers are an odd mix of indignation and tragedy. Still
more stories of the dead and wounded in the bombings. But also the
tragic story of a policeman who shot a baker in the Basque Country because
the baker would not put a sign condemning ETA for the terrorist attack on
Madrid. The indignation comes mostly from foreign journalists, notably
someone from the BBC saying that in 30 years in journalism he had never been
put under so much pressure by a government to twist the truth. I take my
mother to vote, and then get a call from a friend. She and her brother told their
parents (PP voters) that they were voting PSOE. Her father called them both
terrorists and they are locked out of home for the day. The two Spains, again,
reminding us of our past. I go to vote with brother and sister and then my
mother gives us all lunch.
I then have to take my grandmother to vote (she’s allowed out of bed for this,
she was quite insistent). She walks very slowly and has forgotten her glasses,
she asks whether I can pick out the right voting card for her. I ask her, with
some trepidation, which one she wants. The PSOE one, if you please! 82 year
old, 55 years a fascist and refused to vote for the past 25 years because she
doesn’t believe in democracy, and now she is voting Socialist. Either she is
senile (a possibility, mind you…) or things are changing.
No-one has had any sleep and by 8pm, as polls close, my mother’s house
is packed with socialist activists. We are all buzzing, arguing. Each
time Aznar comes on the TV, we boo. Each time Zapatero comes on telly, we
clap and shout. We go quiet when Blair comes on. Silent. And then one of my
mother’s friends rather precisely spits on his face. I am afraid Mr
Blair has lost any respect he had in this country. If the rumours are true,
he helped Aznar’s cover up of who the terrorists were. And that is a
disgrace. The polls begin to come in, and we are winning. By a lot. I won’t bore
you with a minute by minute account of the count (I’ve gone on for a while
already). Just to say, there are 350 members in the Spanish congress. In 2000
– PP: 183 (absolute majority), PSOE: 125. In 2004 – PP: 148,
PSOE: 164 (simple majority). Thank God, the Virgin Mary and the Holy Grail,
says our next door neighbor.
At about midnight we are outside the PSOE’s offices in Valencia. As we wait, we
jump and shout “you’re from the PP if you are not jumping…” All ages jumping
for joy. Zapatero comes out to declare his victory and asks for a minute’s
silence for the victims. Hands up in the air again, we fall silent. When the PSOE’
s candidate for Valencia comes out to speak, she is greeted with three chants:
“no to war”, “we’re not all here, we’re missing 200” and “life without Aznar, what
joy!” Not sure any of that translates too well. It was an odd mixture of
exhilaration and sorrow. Dignity, respect, anger, joy. We’ve cried many seas,
shouted till we lost our voices and smiled to wash it all away.
This morning the news was hopeful. Esperanza is the word in Spanish.
The PSOE is already talking a language I recognise. Liberty and equality. A
welfare state to be proud of. A law against gender violence. A new approach to
terrorism. And the Spanish troops in Iraq to come home in July unless the UN
takes charge. Someone was looking after Spain yesterday. Spain is different.
I am absolutely drained from the last few days, and I have no idea how
much sense any of this makes. I needed to write it, and thank you for
indulging me and reading it. I have no doubt that this has been the coming of
age of my generation in Spain. Something was going very seriously wrong for a
while – and the massive demonstrations against the war and against
educational reform were a symptom of discontent. The tragedy is that there is
no denying that the massacre in Madrid on 11 March made all this accumulated
anger surface at just the right time. In the face of the dignity of the Spanish
people was the disgraceful attitude to tragedy of the leaders of the PP. Has Al
Qaeda won the elections? I don’t know. Perhaps. What I do know is that
hundreds of thousands of young people voted for the first time on Sunday,
myself included. And that we did so with feeling. Today, I heard a lot of people
talking of their government as if it were really, truly theirs. Collective
responsibility. Tragedy and democracy have brought the Spanish people
together.
So please tell your family and friends about this. About what has been
happening in Spain beyond the respectful minute’s silence you all held today.
Tell them.
Viva la democracia.
Helena
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