Deny when you win, deny when you lose

(Calvià, Mallorca)

July has been a particularly bloody month in a particularly violent year for Spain. Bombs in Durango, Burgos and today in Mallorca have left two dead, forty-eight injured and extensive physical damage to surrounding buildings.

Every time there is news of another bomb attack in Spain people’s thoughts inevitably turn to the bombings at Atocha Station in 2004, the worst attack the country has suffered on its soil (Franco’s atrocities aside) since Napoleon’s troops retaliated against an uprising in Madrid in May 1808.

My window at work looked out over the station; it also looked out over the sea of umbrellas as a million and a half people flooded the streets of the capital to protest not only against the bombings but also against the right-wing government’s handling of the affair.

Of course, the Atocha bombings had nothing to do with ETA, in spite of the best efforts of Aznar, Zaplana, Pastor and the comic-book simpleton Acebes to convince the world otherwise. We all knew almost immediately that it wasn’t ETA – it didn’t feel like them, it didn’t sound like them. ETA generally give warnings, and while it’s true they don’t always do so what they never do is deny responsibility afterwards, and Arnaldo Otegi’s words after news of the bombings had hit the television screens were the equivalent of a denial.

There was also the small matter of the reaction of the Spanish police. Nobody but the most deluded ever took Aznar’s regime seriously, but the police are not generally considered to be fools. The government could bleat what it liked, but the police had a serious job to do, and already on the Friday morning (the day after the attacks) there were lecheras blocking the streets around Lavapiés and north African men lined up facing the wall as the anti-terrorist brigade tracked down the people who had provided the mobile phones which had been used in the attacks.

In 2007 I was chatting to a young Spanish professional when the subject of Atocha came up. He was a nice enough bloke in his late twenties, smartly dressed and well-spoken, university-educated and well-travelled. However, this apparently educated man tried to convince me that the bombings were instigated by Zapatero, in collusion with ETA, in order to fool the people into thinking that it had been al-Qaeda so that they would vote against Aznar.

He tried to lend weight to his theory by stating that as he was a member of the Partido Popular he was privy to such intimate details of the Spanish political panorama. This theory, he claimed, was gospel among the ranks of pepeístas.

Today I was chatting to another Spanish person, a young woman who would fit the general description I have just given of the young man. She tried to convince me that Franco had never been all that bad, and that the atrocities that the “reds” would have committed had they won the Civil War would have been “worse than a hundred Francos”.

The Spanish are predominantly (and peacefully) socialistas and republicanos, and yet this country of contrasts never ceases to amaze me as it throws up the sort of person who would make not just Franco but Hitler proud.

Every aspect of modern Spanish history is tortuously complicated, but basically ETA was founded as a direct challenge to the brutality of Franco’s totalitarian regime and the organisation still generally targets the Civil Guard, seen by Basque nationalists as the inheritor of Franco’s men. Socialist governments tend to favour dialogue whereas the PP tends to favour torture and oppression. So if the PP with its intransigence, lies and dictatorial attitude were ever to get back into power Spain could expect even more blood and violence. And more denial.

Waste not, want not

(Dublin, Ireland)

The financial situation in Ireland is well-known around the world; all the neighbours have watched as the failing banks have hung the country’s dirty knickers on the line. This week the extravagant junkets of former tourism minister John O’Donoghue and his wife have come to light, straining the ability to be shocked at government incompetence to the limit.

This squander by the ruling regime is akin to the father of a poor family going out to buy expensive alloy wheels for his car while his children go hungry. Government ministers should be working on the same shoestring as the people, and their partners should stay at home instead of going on holiday at the expense of the Irish workforce.

The likes of O’Donoghue should think on – come the next election he’ll be out of a job too. Then he’ll be bleating about how much the next government is wasting. And his tongue will be nowhere near his overfed cheek.