Peace without honour

Saturday, 20th March 2004

Dan Hannan says no one could have foretold in the immediate aftermath of the bombs that Spain would vote for appeasement

At this stage, the PP made a mistake. Its prime ministerial candidate, Mariano Rajoy, who pulls off the extraordinary feat of being even less charismatic than Mr Aznar, appeared on television. These demonstrations were illegal, he said pompously, and the crowds had been stirred up by parties whom he did not wish to name. He called on such parties to respect the democratic process and call off their mobs.

It is the first rule of politics never to engage your opponent on ground of his choosing. Half an hour later, the PSOE replied that Mr Rajoy was disgracefully exploiting the terrorist outrages, and that people deserved a government that told the truth. The subtext was clear: this was al-Qa’eda, not Eta, and ministers knew it.

There was a paradox here. Ever since the Iraq war, the Left had claimed that the threat of Islamist terror had been exaggerated. Now they expected the suspicion of an Islamist bomb to help them at the polls. And, to Spain’s shame, it did.

There are more charitable ways of putting it, of course. One could say that 11-M served to remind Spaniards of how much they had resented the war. Or one could argue that what changed their minds was not so much the bomb as the suspicion of a government cover-up. But for at least some Spanish voters, I am afraid the late switch in voting intentions was pure cowardice. As a teenage girl told me on polling day, ‘When we supported the Americans, we made ourselves targets.’

It is always hard to explain what motivates voters. But consider two separate pieces of evidence. First, opinion polls in almost every country tend to register a ‘shy Tory’ factor: in other words, the raw findings overstate the support for the Left, because some people are ashamed of admitting that they vote for the Right. This time, though, PSOE outperformed all the exit polls. People were evidently reluctant to admit that they had changed their minds because of the bomb. Second, the Catalan politician who had controversially discussed with Eta the possibility of a truce in Catalonia saw his party increase its representation eightfold. It looks as though at least some Spaniards chose to vote for peace without honour.

The result caught the politicians off guard. Mr Rajoy, finding an eloquence that had eluded him throughout the campaign, made a model concession speech. He congratulated his opponent, said that his party was leaving office with the accounts in good order, and pledged his loyalty to the King. Mr Zapatero, his pale eyes glittering with joy, looked even more devilish than usual. But he, too, was gracious. Standing in front of an EU flag, he promised ‘to put Spain in the first line of the European Constitution’ and to withdraw the 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq.

Congratulations all round, said the press. A high turnout. A reaffirmation of democratic values. Spain had shown that it wouldn’t be cowed by terrorism. Yet one can’t shake off the feeling that this is precisely what did happen. If, as left-wingers claim, the attack was planned by Islamists who objected to Spain’s participation in the occupation of Iraq, then, by their own logic, it worked. Instead of re-electing a pro-American regime, Spain has voted for a party pledged to pull out of Iraq. If al-Qa’eda is looking for a textbook success, this is it.