Twenty years later, Spain is still struggling with the political lies about ‘Atocha’

Daniel Paz, a physical education student, was twenty years old when he was killed in one of the deadliest jihadist terror attacks on European soil. Twenty years later, his father Eulogio is still searching for answers.

On March 11, 2004, explosives hidden in ten abandoned backpacks were detonated on several trains during Madrid’s morning rush hour. 191 people were killed and more than two thousand injured. The ’11-M’ attacks, as they are called in Spain, would become for Europe what ‘9/11’ is for the US.

In Spain, attention for the victims was quickly overshadowed by political maneuvers to avoid electoral damage from the attacks. Gross lies were spread, which are still believed by some Spaniards twenty years later. That makes his loss even more painful, says Eulogio Paz, who speaks of “double victimhood.” “There is the pain caused by the death of your loved ones and there is the pain caused by the constant lies.”

After that fateful morning, it was on Daniel Paz’s bedside table The process found, Franz Kafka’s book about a citizen crushed by the bureaucracy of the state. From the looks of the bookmark, the student had almost finished it. After all this time, his father is still fighting to be seen by the government. Eulogio Paz is president of an organization for surviving relatives. The almost two thousand members can go there for psychological help or seek support from each other.

Three days after the tragedy, on March 14, 2004, parliamentary elections were scheduled. The then government of Prime Minister José María Aznar (Partido Popular) had made the highly unpopular decision the year before to participate in the American invasion of Iraq. The suggestion that jihadists had committed the attacks in revenge for Iraq had to be quickly suppressed, and so the Basque terrorist organization ETA was immediately pointed to.

Guilty

“ETA wanted to cause a bloodbath in Spain and they succeeded,” said then Interior Minister Ángel Acebes, immediately after the attack. “If it’s ETA, it hurts the left. If it is Islamic terrorism, then it harms my government,” Aznar – who is still an honorary member of the Popular Party – is said to have said.

Aznar personally called newspaper editors to tell them that ETA was behind the attack. Jesús Ceberio, then editor-in-chief of a quality newspaper El Pais, twenty years later, guiltily turns his hand to his own bosom. “Unfortunately, I also fell for it. I changed the front page and incorrectly attributed the attack to ETA.” Aznar’s plan failed, because in the days after the attack it quickly became clear that it was a jihadist terrorist cell of Al-Qaeda. The Partido Popular lost the elections, but the doubts sown would never completely disappear.

Atocha station in Madrid, March 11, 2004. During the morning rush hour of that day, ten bombs exploded in four trains in and around the station. Nearly two hundred people were killed, hundreds were injured.

Spanish media extensively discuss the consequences of spreading disinformation after the attacks. In a production of El País various terrorism experts, judges and prominent politicians tell their stories. For example, judge Gómez Bermúdez says that the later trial about the attacks unraveled unprecedented scenes: “He (Aznar) deliberately lied. Not a single conspiracy theory has been substantiated in fact and the truth has been kept secret.”

Researcher and documentary maker José Gómez spent ten years investigating the attacks and made the documentary 11M, available on Netflix. The documentary will be shown during the commemoration ceremony on March 11 this year. “Often when it comes to fake news, people say that Donald Trump was the inventor,” says Gómez. “No, it was the attacks in Madrid where it started. Madrid is the birthplace of modernity fake news.”

Mastermind

According to him, this shows how Spain has still not processed the trauma. “The misery is that after twenty years, Aznar still maintains that ETA was the mastermind behind the attacks. He doesn’t want to admit his mistakes,” says Gómez.

Paz: “That has had a huge impact on us, the surviving relatives, to this day. Lack of recognition makes it impossible for many relatives, even twenty years later, to give this terrible event a place.” Gómez: “When you are the victim of a crime or a terrorist attack, there is only one question you want an answer to and that is: why? If the government is unable to give you that answer in a clear way, it creates uncertainty and distrust and prevents you from moving forward.”

The judge ruled in 2007 that the attacks were committed by a jihadist cell of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda and that there was no indication of ETA involvement. To restore trust, the trial was conducted in complete transparency. Everyone could watch and the evidence was projected on large screens. But the doubts remained. And while in France, for example, the discussion after the 2015 attacks was directly about tackling terror by jihadist groups, in Spain this discussion did not take place due to political scheming. According to professor of political communication Víctor Sampedro, one in three Spaniards believes that ETA is behind the attack, he writes in his book Voces del 11M.

Because of that division, Paz has an important request during this year’s memorial service. “After twenty years, we will again ask society to recognize what happened, namely that it was Islamic terror. There should be an objective account of what happened in the history books. That is crucial for our collective memory.”

Breach of trust

According to documentary maker Gómez, Spanish society is already very divided. “About politics, about the weather, about football,” Gómez laughs cautiously. “And people here watch politics as if it were a football match. It doesn’t matter what happened, but my team is my team.”

The attacks caused a breach of trust between the people and the government, but also resulted in new security measures. For example, it became easier for intelligence services to eavesdrop on terrorist suspects, checks at train stations and airports became stricter and identification became mandatory in hotels.

Most Spaniards seem to agree on one thing: the willingness to participate in conflicts abroad is very low. That has always been the case, but the 2004 attacks have made that sentiment even stronger, Paz notes. “Wars cause terrorism. The war in Iraq caused the March 11 terrorist attack. The current situation in Gaza, which is terrible for the residents there, will also have consequences for the international community in the long run. We have to be aware of that.”

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