Governments of other imperialist powers, including France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have also seized on the bomb attacks to rally support for the use of their armed forces abroad and for attacks on workers rights at home, such as increasing the presence of cops and troops on trains and at transport hubs.

By March 18, police in Spain had jailed 11 men they claimed were connected to the attacks. They identified three as Moroccans, four as “Arabs,” two as Indian, and one each as Algerian and Spanish. Five of the men “gave testimony” behind closed doors at Madrid’s High Court on March 18, Spanish authorities said. Using undemocratic measures put in place in the name of the “war on ETA,” those imprisoned in the case can be held for up to four years without a formal indictment.

In the election, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) won 164 seats in the country’s 350-seat parliament and PSOE leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero became prime minister. The Popular Party (PP) of Prime Minister José Maria Aznar won 147 seats. Rodríguez Zapatero has said he will form a government with the support of smaller bourgeois parties.

The vote came only three days after bombs exploded in three Madrid train stations, killing more than 200 people and wounding at least 1,500 others. Without presenting a shred of evidence, government leaders and other capitalist politicians, including PSOE leaders, immediately laid the blame on ETA.

“The election campaign is over. This is a day of mourning for Spanish democracy,” said PP candidate Mariano Rajoy. PSOE candidate Rodríguez Zapatero also called off his scheduled campaign stops, and said, “The terrorists should know that any government will pursue them until they are answerable for this atrocious crime.”

The London Financial Times noted that “the only political leader to question ETA’s responsibility for the massacre in Madrid was Arnaldo Otegi, leader of the outlawed [Herri] Batasuna,” which government officials have claimed is ETA’s political wing. Madrid had declared the pro-Basque independence party illegal in 2002.

After a videotape was released in which a man claiming to speak for al Qaeda attributed the bombing to that group, Aznar began hedging his bets, saying no “line of investigation would be ruled out.”

Declaring that “March 11 now has its place in the history of infamy,” Aznar headed up a demonstration of two and a half million people in Madrid on March 12 to condemn “terrorism.” Joining him at the rally were Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Silvio Berlusconi, the prime ministers of France and Italy, respectively, and the president of the European Commission. According to the Financial Times, more than 7 million people joined such events across the country.

In the wake of the bombings, the social-democratic PSOE stepped up its pro-Spanish imperialist anti-Americanism and won the elections. Social-democratic and other “left” forces argued that Aznar was to blame for aligning the Spanish government with the “U.S.” war and occupation of Iraq, prettying up the role of Spanish imperialism in the Mideast, central Asia, Morocco, and other parts of the world.

During his election campaign and since his electoral victory, Rodríguez Zapatero has stated that the 1,400 Spanish troops that are part of the occupation of Iraq may be withdrawn unless the imperialist forces there come under the formal aegis of the United Nations.

It was under a UN mandate that Washington, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, London, and other imperialist powers imposed brutal economic sanctions against the people of Iraq—preparations for last year’s U.S.-British invasion of the country.  
 
Bipartisan ‘antiterror’ drive
Immediately after his victory, Rodríguez Zapatero made it clear that his government will step up the Spanish rulers’ offensive waged under the banner of the “war on terror.” He said he would “cooperate with the outgoing government to ensure the effectiveness of the fight against terrorism” and went out of his way to express “full support for, and faith in our police and state security forces.”

During the campaign Rodríguez Zapatero reminded PSOE members in the Basque country that he had co-signed with Aznar the Pact for Liberties and Against Terrorism, drawn up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

On March 17 Rodríguez Zapatero told reporters that his government’s goal was “to finish off terrorism, and ETA is not going to get a minute’s rest.”

ETA has repeatedly issued statements denying that it was involved in the train bombing. After the elections, the ETA leadership offered to enter talks with the incoming Socialist Party government. Rodríguez Zapatero dismissed the offer out of hand.

The stance of the social-democratic prime minister-elect is consistent with the previous PSOE government of Prime Minister Felipe González, which waged a brutal military-police campaign against the national aspirations of the Basque people.

In the 1980s, the PSOE government waged a “dirty war” against the independence movement. Revelations about the killings of at least 27 independence fighters by Madrid-backed death squads were a factor in the defeat of the government of Felipe González in 1996 elections.

The Basque people, an oppressed nationality in Spain, faced decades of brutal repression under the fascist dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, which was responsible for the deaths of 200,000 Basques, and the jailing and exiling of tens of thousands more from the 1930s through the mid-1970s.

Following the end of the Franco regime, the Basque people fought for and won a measure of autonomy, but continue to be denied full self-determination. Nearly 600 Basque political prisoners are still in French or Spanish jails, while Madrid still refuses to recognize the Basque tongue as an official language.

With the mass political organizations of the labor movement, including the Socialist and Communist parties, playing a key role in mobilizing anti-Basque sentiment, successive Spanish governments have branded ETA—the principal armed formation—as “terrorist,” stripping those arrested as ETA members of their rights in “national tribunals” and whipping up massive, reactionary public demonstrations to condemn its military actions and win backing for the dirty wars of Madrid.  
 
Madrid targets N. African immigrants
Alongside the Basques, who number 3 million among a total population of 40 million in Spain, immigrants from Morocco and other North African countries are being targeted by the police in the aftermath of the bombings.

Millions of workers have made their way to Spain from Morocco to work in the country’s large agricultural concerns and other industries. Most are concentrated in Catalonia, Andalusia, and Madrid.

In February 2000, Moroccan and Algerian farm workers in El Ejido, a small Andalusian town, led a week-long strike—the first action of its kind in Spanish history—in response to racist terror attacks. The authorities had looked the other way during two days of assaults on shops, houses, and mosques, which were segregated from the town itself and located near the fields.

The 15,000 immigrants in the town demanded new housing for those who had lost their homes, compensation for damage, the legalization of workers without permits, and compliance with their labor agreements.

Secretary of State Colin Powell was among the U.S. officials who declared support for Madrid’s actions in its “investigation” of the bombings. “ETA is still a candidate for responsibility,” he said in a March 14 interview with Fox News, adding, “but now with these new developments of the arrests of the Moroccans and the Indians and the [alleged al Qaeda] tape, I know that the Spanish authorities have to consider that.”

The U.S. government immediately offered help with the Spanish “investigation.” In New York extra surveillance was mounted in the subway system. The New Jersey Star Ledger reported March 18 that state police mobilized the previous day for the extra traffic going into New York for the St. Patrick’s Day parade by deploying “helicopter patrols, bomb-dog units and dozens of uniformed and plainclothes troopers.”

“Riders might as well get used to the sight” of cops patrolling the corridors of trains and stations, commented the Star Ledger.

U.S. officials told their counterparts in European Union (EU) governments that “security” at U.S. airports would likely soon include requirements for all visitors to have their fingerprints and photographs taken. To date, visitors from EU-member countries, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia have been exempt from such requirements, imposed in January on citizens of most countries.

The European imperialist powers also moved to take advantage of the Madrid bombings in their continuing attempts to curtail basic rights. The French government announced that it was investigating an organization called “The servants of Allah the Powerful and Wise,” which had allegedly sent a threatening letter to Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. To justify their ongoing crackdown on Muslims, French officials said they expected to be targets of Islamic attacks following the government’s reactionary banning of Muslim head scarves in French schools.

The Financial Times reported that the German government “could launch a shake-up of its domestic intelligence activities under proposals by government and opposition politicians following the bombing of commuter trains in Spain last week.”  
 
Zapatero on Spanish troops in Iraq
The Spanish prime minister-elect gained most publicity for his criticism of the U.S. and British-led occupation of Iraq. Rodríguez Zapatero said March 17 that he would “stick by his decision to pull 1,300 Spanish troops out of Iraq unless the United Nations takes control of peacekeeping.”

Rodríguez Zapatero set June 30 as a deadline for the unspecified increase in UN involvement, taking a position that leaves considerable room for keeping Spanish troops in Iraq.

He argued that “combating terrorism with bombs, with operations of shock and awe, with Tomahawk missiles, is not the way to beat terrorism.”

Rodríguez Zapatero added, “We’re aligning ourselves with [John] Kerry,” the Democratic Party challenger to incumbent George Bush in the November contest for the U.S. presidency. Kerry, however, said March 16, “In my judgment the new prime minister should not have said he was going to pull out of Iraq.”
 
 
Related article:
Fight for a ‘new Europe’ and a ‘new America’
Spanish imperialism steps up ‘antiterror’ offensive aimed at rights of workers and oppressed peoples in Spain
National oppression and Spanish Civil War  
 
 
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