Closing the Case

Analysts say that the train-bombing verdict will do little to deter future attacks, but Spain's vigorous terror prosecutions have dispelled the "terrorism appeaser" label that the White House and commentators applied after the newly installed prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who withdrew Spanish soldiers from Iraq in mid-2004.

On a local level, however, Wednesday's ruling means more than points on a terror-fighting scoreboard. The decision serves as judicial closure to a political debate that has divided Spaniards since the March 11 bombings: whether the armed Basque separatist group ETA participated in the attacks. "There is no evidence to support the alternative theory from the defense," presiding judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez said of the ETA hypothesis in his verdict. The opposition People's Party--which had backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and was voted out of office three days after the blasts--has always insisted that it was the ETA rather than radical Islamists behind the attacks. Many believe it lost the postbombing vote because Spaniards believed the party was deliberately trying to mislead them.

The PP has since argued that President Zapatero's Socialists conspired to cover up ETA's participation in the attacks for its own electoral gain. Defense lawyers for those accused in the March 11 bombing trial used these conspiracy theories to try to cast doubt on their clients' involvement in the attacks--earning several reprimands from the presiding judge.

"The PP knows perfectly well that ETA had nothing to do with it," said Jorge Verstrynge, a political science professor at Madrid's Complutense University. "If they hadn't used the ETA conspiracy they would have used another. But it has caused a lot of division within the party, and I know a lot of people inside the PP who are quite sick of that trio [party leaders Mariano Rajoy, Angel Acebes and Eduardo Zaplana]." Verstrynge was the party leader of what later became the PP, but left in 1986 after a dispute. He then joined the Socialist party but has no official position.

The court's rejection of the ETA hypothesis could hurt the PP as national elections are due in March, especially because it considers the case unresolved. Following the verdict, PP leader Rajoy told the press that the party "supports any other investigation." The PP's dispute of a High Court ruling is likely to sit poorly with Spanish voters--most of whom have already shown at the polls that they reject that theory.

© 2007