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Ghosts of the Spanish Civil War

Wednesday, 14th June 2006

Dan Hannan says that Zapatero’s divisive government is reviving memories of a conflict that most Spaniards would much rather forget

Madrid

Spain is inhabiting a counterfactual. The last election result wasn’t meant to happen. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the saturnine socialist leader, should be in opposition now, railing against an exhausted regime. Mariano Rajoy, the uncharismatic chief of the Partido Popular (PP), should be heading a government of worthy technocrats.

Everything was thrown out of kilter by the Atocha bomb — an atrocity to which Madrileños, following contemporary custom, refer by its date, 11–M. The blast took place three days before the poll, and blew apart the predestined result. Voters were disoriented, and lashed out at the PP for having backed the Iraq war. A government that had been cruising for an easy victory, based on its economic record, was dumped in a fit of funk. The lawyers and professors who had been given safe seats in the expectation of ministerial office found themselves thrown into the coarse business of opposition.

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