Spanish leaders bicker as Madrid remembers

By Isambard Wilkinson
March 13, 2005
The Sun-Herald

Millions of Spaniards have gathered to commemorate the first anniversary of the Madrid train station bombings that killed 191 people and injured 1500.

But as the nation listened to the testaments of people who lost relatives or were maimed, the rancour and squabbling the attacks spawned between Spain's Socialist Government and the Opposition centre-right People's Party still simmered.

Amid a heavy police presence, crowds assembled at the three train stations where 10 bombs hidden in sports bags were exploded on March 11 last year.

Juana Leal, a widow, placed flowers, a photo of her husband and two lit candles on the platform of El Pozo, one of the stations struck by the blasts.

"I heard the explosion, I phoned his mobile phone and he didn't answer," said Mrs Leal, recalling the day her husband, Angel Pardillos Checa, died. "He never came back. I am bringing him flowers."

There were two mutually exclusive parties of commiseration: the politicians who attended formal services and acts of remembrance, and ordinary Spaniards who needed no leadership to conduct their grief. A cello piece arranged by Pau Casals was played at a ceremony led by King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, which was attended by Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, and King Mohamed VI of Morocco.

It was held in the Woods of the Absent, a garden created in the Retiro Park where 192 cypress and olive trees were planted to honour the dead.

Twenty-two suspected terrorists, mainly Moroccan, have been jailed over the bombings, the most deadly attacks in Europe since the September 11 assault on America in 2001. A trial is not expected until late this year at the earliest.

Two-thousand church bells rang out across Madrid for five minutes from 7.37am, the time that the bombs exploded three days before a general election. But they failed to drown out the bickering that has marred preparations for the anniversary.

After six months of deliberation, a parliamentary commission has come up with nothing other than basic recommendations. Mariano Rajoy, the Opposition Leader, refused to agree to back the recommendations, which he criticised as "fraudulent".

The schism comes from the Socialists' electoral victory, when voters threw out the government of Jose Maria Aznar, amid accusations that his People's Party tried to manipulate voters by blaming the attacks on the Basque terrorist group ETA even after evidence of an Islamic link emerged.

Many were also venting their anger that Mr Aznar had made Spain a target for al-Qaeda by joining the US-led invasion of Iraq. Mr Aznar's party insists that Islamic terrorists won the election and that Mr Zapatero's subsequent withdrawal of troops from Iraq was an act of appeasement.

Mr Zapatero's assessment is that the timing of the attacks in relation to the elections was coincidental.

The commission's failure to properly investigate the attacks caused Pilar Manjon, the leader of a victims' association, to accuse both parties of "appropriating the commission for playground politics".

Telegraph, London


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