'It Has To Be Al Qaeda'

They are obviously the people who must know the most about this. But the Spanish government does have a vested interest in the ETA [having done this], and not Al Qaeda, because of the elections this Sunday. If the ETA did this, it favors the [incumbent] government because they have been the toughest [on them]. Their main opponents, the socialists, got into a government of coalition with a Catalan independence group whose leader did the incredibly nave thing of getting together with ETA leadership in January; they were just blasted by that. If ETA [is guilty of this], it looks like those socialists are, by logic of contamination, aligned with ETA, whereas [Prime Minister] Aznar can say, "We are the only ones who oppose anything having to do with terrorism." In the post-9/11 global terrorism discourse, this really works very well for the governing party.

And if Al Qaeda is responsible?

If it is Al Qaeda, it is a totally different story. More than 90 percent of the Spaniards were opposed to the war on Iraq. Still, Aznar, who had a political upper hand and absolute majority, just went with Bush. He didn't care about public opinion. This will be a reminder to all of those 90 percent who didn't want [war in] Iraq who will say, "Look, here is one more offshoot of that war that we didn't have to fight." So that would be negative for the government in this election.

Why would the ETA still be active today? What is their complaint against the Spanish government?

It is a long story. With the return of democracy [after Franco's death in 1975] there was this statute of autonomy that granted the Basques their own parliament, their own government, their own taxation system--which is remarkable; it's the only region of Spain that can levy its own taxes--their own police, their own university and media. What happened was that a small percent of the Basque population was broadly sympathetic to ETA, the so-called nationalist left that never approved of this autonomous situation.

But they weren't exactly oppressed any more, were they?