The anti-terrorism policies pursued by Spanish Prime Minister José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero since he took office in March 2004 have been greeted with a mixture of astonishment and disbelief by political and intellectual circles in Europe and the United States. First he gave in to the demands of Islamic terrorists and precipitously withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq; then he proposed an ill-conceived ‘Alliance of Civilizations’ to institutionalize a formal dialogue with dictatorships worldwide; and at home, he initiated a dialogue with the ETA terrorist group, without requiring that the Basque separatists first give up their weapons. Zapatero’s policies have not only contributed to the steady erosion of Spanish influence abroad, but have also left his government increasingly internationally isolated, as political leaders and policy intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic struggle to understand the direction in which Zapatero is leading Spain.

 

What explains this radical policy shift away from the traditional Spanish position? Three main reasons can be identified: First, a particular ideological worldview that is global in scope and seeks to explain humanity, history and politics. Second, tactical political requirements derived from the support Zapatero sought and found in the radical and anti-constitutional Left after he was elected. And third, Zapatero’s obsession with differentiating himself from the center-right government of José María Aznar. Of these three circumstances, the first is by far the most important and the one that most completely explains Zapatero’s anti-terror policies.

 

 

For the theoretician of politics, progressivism is the ideology that tries to explain human history in terms of historical progress. It has its roots in the utopianism of Charles Fourier or Henri de Saint-Simon, and it links to Marxism on a fundamental point: it imagines a glorious future, where all problems will be solved in a totally democratic and peaceful way. For progressivism, perpetual peace is, contrary to what Immanuel Kant believed, possible and attainable, as is justice and social and human equality.

 

Progressivism conceives of a dark past that has been gradually abandoned thanks to ‘social conquests’, a logic that was impeccably formulated by Marx. According to this worldview, the history of mankind is a clash between rich and poor social classes, between developed and undeveloped countries, and between dominant and subservient civilizations. This vision corresponds both to the Bolshevik in the first half of the 20th century as well as to the ‘do-gooder’ in the 21st…and also applies to the September 11 and March 11 terrorist attacks, and to global warming. Zapatero’s public statements and speeches since his appointment as leader of the Socialist Party consistently point in this direction. In Europe, however, Zapatero’s views have largely been met with incredulity: On the Continent today, only the former Communist parties in France and Italy, as well as some radical Islamist groups, will publicly applaud Zapatero’s policy positions.

 

In his speeches, Zapatero frequently speaks of a present that should be rejected and left behind. This world, according to Zapatero, is undesirable in every conceivable respect: social, legal, military, environmental and moral. Thus he believes it is necessary to improve the current human order in order to replace it, progressively, with that which will definitively solve every problem faced by humanity. Above all, Zapatero believes there is one main culprit that is responsible for impeding his vision for the future (albeit in several manifestations): the liberal democratic political order; the capitalist economic system; Western civilization; all of which are encapsulated in one country, the United States of America.

 

In the Spanish context, this is how Zapatero portrays national history. Conceiving it as a fight of good versus evil, democracy versus dictatorship, and Left versus Right, the so-called progressive has his historical myth par excellence in the Spanish Civil War of 1936, because there is where the left introduces itself a victim, hero and martyr, while the right is introduced as a criminal, coward and twig.

 

Today we know it is not like that; there were heroes, victims, cowards and criminals on both sides. But completely detached from naked facts, the historical myth of the left creates its own heroes, its own evildoers, and its own memorable facts. One side grabs every virtue; the other every vice. In the progressive mind, the Spanish Civil War was not a hollow and internecine conflict; it is the story of the fascist beast attacking the republican, virgin democracy. It is an aggression for which the right is still required to pay amends.

 

And for this reason Zapatero’s main characteristic attitude is today’s need to fight yesterday’s battles; indeed, he believes that his government is the trustee of a historic fight against the enemies of popular freedom. Moreover, he believes that center-right parties obstruct democracy, and what’s more, that democracy is only possible when center-right does not participate in the political system. ‘I’m Red! The right taught me nothing’ Zapatero told Marie Claire magazine in October 2005. A few months later, in March 2006, he told the center-right El Mundo newspaper that: ‘The right in this country taught me that the left is what makes this country advance towards democracy’. Zapatero identifies democracy with the left and regards liberalism as reactionary.

 

What role does terrorism play for this strand of leftist ideology? According to their way of thinking, terrorism will disappear as history moves along. The root cause of terrorism, Zapatero once told the United Nations and the Arab League, lies in the present moment in history; the current political and economic order in the world today is generating a violent reaction. Terrorism is part and parcel of the ‘violence’ written in the laws of history and in an unfair liberal order; thus terrorism will be overcome as soon as today’s conditions, which make terrorism possible in the first place, disappear. These conditions are none other than the usual culprits: the liberal parliamentary political order, the capitalist system, and Western democracy. Thus, according to Zapatero, the only way to be rid of terrorism is to change the existing order and the pluralistic constitutional political system.

 

 

On March 13, 2004, during the middle of a solemn period of national mourning over the Madrid train bombings that had occurred only two days earlier, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, today’s Interior Minister, appeared on Spanish television and accused the Aznar government of lying about the investigation into who carried out the terrorist attacks. Neither then nor now has anyone ever been able to prove Rubalcaba’s assertions, but within hours hundreds of people gathered to protest in front of Aznar’s Popular Party headquarters, which called in the police for protection. It was the night before the March 14 general elections, and Spain was engulfed in an atmosphere that was heavy with confrontation and confusion.

 

In the elections on March 14, the ruling Popular Party (PP) ended up with 148 deputies, a loss of 35 seats compared with the previous elections in 2000. At a result, the PP lost its absolute majority. Meanwhile, the Socialist Party won 164 seats; the CIU Catalan nationalists won 10; the ERC national socialists won 8; the PNV Basque nationalists won 7; and the IU communists won 5. Spain’s nationalist and regionalist parties had already established their anti-PP credentials by organizing demonstrations against the Aznar government for its slow response to the 2002 sinking of the ‘Prestige’ oil tanker off the Galician coast, and for its support for the war in Iraq. Thus Zapatero, who did not win enough votes in the general election to rule the country on his own, decided from the very beginning to ally himself with some of the more radical parties in Spanish politics in order to form a government.

 

What are these groups? The ERC has a puzzling platform: it is separatist and revolutionary, nationalist and socialist. The IU, which has recently changed its name from the ‘Communist Party of Spain’, continues to follow a strict Marxist-Leninist platform. The PNV Basque nationalist party is nationalist, expansionist and anti-liberal. Not one of these parties has ever accepted the Spanish constitution, and their leaders are not afraid to say so whenever they have an opportunity to do so. Their political platforms explicitly call for the need to replace the pluralist constitutional arrangements set forth in 1978 Spanish constitution, and to substitute it with a regime that would be inadmissible in any other European country. As a result, they are traditionally and firmly situated in the ideological extremes of Spanish politics.

 

It is true that following the elections, there was a momentary political need for Zapatero to establish an alliance with these groups, or perhaps even an ideological need to do so given that he is a ‘progressive’ politician who believes that the primary dimension in politics is the distinction between the left and the right, and not between democracy and totalitarianism. But some of these groups have made ‘nationalism’ the primary distinction in politics. This has, for example, given the PNV Basque nationalists the political cover to dialogue with ETA for many decades. Other parties, like the ERC Catalan national socialists, have made anti-liberalism the primary distinction; this was crystallized in the famous Perpignan meeting where the Catalans reached a political agreement with ETA in which the terrorist group pledged not to attack targets in Catalonia. In summary, then, Zapatero, who regularly declares himself to be the successor of the Spanish left as it was in the 1930s before the Civil War, has at the beginning of the 21st century sought to revive the image of the Popular Front, the left-wing coalition formed in 1936 to confront the right.

 

In a difficult parliamentary balance, the recently established coalition government—which binds socialists, communists, and revolutionaries—has had a political asset that the Popular Party could never have imagined during its eight years in government: a wide array of anti-liberal and economically opportunist television, radio and print media that are close to the Socialist government and are happy to do its bidding. Today, none of the six television channels that operate on the national level transmit center-right positions; instead, all of them swing from superficial political coverage on one side to the extremely aggressive left on the other. And all of them have been hysterical in their attacks on Aznar’s position on the war in Iraq by supporting anti-American demonstrations. Their unanimity betrays the pluralist anomaly in a Spain where there is no center-right television that in terms of public opinion acknowledges the fact that half of the country consistently votes center-right.

 

With these formidable media assets at his disposal, Zapatero has implemented his twin policies for dealing with terrorism. Supported by groups which had previously negotiated secret agreements with ETA (PNV, ERC) or with groups that have justified Islamic terrorism on ideological grounds (IU), Zapatero announced that he would put an end to terrorism via the same ideology that he held before and after taking office. Since then, in terms of foreign policy he has promulgated the twin policies of appeasement and understanding for Islamist terror. And in terms of domestic policy, Zapatero has tried to accommodate ETA based on his notion that he agrees with the root causes of what motivates ETA to kill; and on this point, the Spanish left has celebrated and supported his position.

 

 

There is, in any case, more: Emerging from the twisted metal of March 11, and converting March 12 and 13 into myths of progressivism, Zapatero became obsessed with distancing himself from anything that had to do with Aznar’s way of governing. The leftwing media converted Aznar into a bloodthirsty monster who for progressives has become the ultimate target of revulsion. The leftwing film director, Pedro Almodovar, who is popular in the United States even though he considers it to be a ‘criminal’ country, even accused Aznar of a coup d'état. And after waging a criminalization campaign against Aznar to influence Spanish public opinion, Zapatero’s distancing himself from Aznar was not only an ideological impulse, but also a tactical necessity.

 

With respect to security and defense issues, Aznar’s politics were clear and unambiguous:  terrorism would be eliminated only through a careful application of the rule of law. In stark contrast to a series of criminal policies perpetrated by former Socialist government, some of whose members are still in jail, Aznar established three main policies: social mobilization, judicial activism and police professionalism. The combination of these policies resulted in the marked decline of ETA by the end of Aznar’s term in 2004.

 

In terms of foreign policy, Aznar supported the war against terror launched by US President George W Bush after the September 11 attacks. Indeed, Aznar for many years had said that the scourge of terrorism must be fought to the end. He also supported initiatives at the United Nations to prosecute terrorists and supported the American intervention in Iraq based on the conviction that terrorism poses a massive threat that is global in scope.

 

Since March 2004, Zapatero’s government has sought to distance himself from Aznar’s anti-terrorism policies. Indeed, as an integral part of his policy of rejecting Aznar, Zapatero for months on end blamed the United States for inciting terrorism. In a move calculated to pander to Spain’s extreme left, he also refused to stand in front of the American flag during an annual military parade. And after winning elections, he quickly withdrew from the international coalition in Iraq, and encouraged those remaining countries to reject the war against terror. As Aznar represented transatlantic alliance, Zapatero’s sought to show exactly the opposite. He distanced Spain from the United States and moved closer to Cuba, Iran and Venezuela. It was the beginning of his ‘Alliance of Civilizations’.

 

In terms of domestic policies, his first contacts with ETA, the Basque separatist group, took place well before he took office in 2004. At the same time, however, Zapatero proposed an anti-terrorist agreement to politically isolate ETA and all those who collaborated with it. Meanwhile, Zapatero’s PSOE shared secrets regarding the government’s anti-terrorism policies with ETA. Within a few months, ETA reached an agreement with the ERC not to carry out any more attacks in Catalonia if it was ruled by Socialist parties. At the same time, the PSOE signed an agreement (known as the Tinell Pact in December 2003) to expel the PP from all Spanish institutions.

 

Tactical requirements? No doubt; the onslaught of ‘progressive’ propaganda turned the Aznar government into a semi-dictatorial monster, even though Aznars policies were strictly liberal-conservative. Once Zapatero took office in 2004, he presented himself as democratic by being anti-Aznar, while joining in a coalition with the communists and national socialists. In this way, Zapatero’s ideological beliefs linked together with his political and electoral needs, as well as with the tactical need to obsessively distance himself from Aznar.

 

 

The death of almost 200 Spaniards in March 2004 was accompanied by the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, which was exactly what the terrorists sought to achieve. Three years earlier, Al-Quaeda attacked the United States as punishment for American policy. But the American response was just the opposite of what the terrorists wanted. One year later, the London attacks provoked a similar response as that of 9/11. Great Britain was not ready to appease the terrorists and it redoubled its involvement in Iraq.

 

Zapatero’s response was exactly the opposite. The first thing he did was focus his efforts on the supposed lies told by the Aznar government in the wake of the Madrid train bombings, although neither he nor the leftwing news media ever supported their accusations. Then, Zapatero placed 9/11 within his own ideological concept: Bin Laden’s terrorism was provoked by Western policies in the Middle East, by imperialism, by colonialism, as well as by the liberal parliamentary system, the free market and by American and European history. Those were the reasons that gave Bin Laden a license to kill all around the world.

 

So the Alliance of Civilizations, which is Zapatero’s answer to Islamic terror, implies that Europe and the United States must change their attitude towards Islamic culture. According the logic he inherited from Lenin, the West is the aggressor, corruptor and cause of all the wars in the world. The proposal launched by Zapatero in September 2004 at the UN General Assembly includes all of these ideas. Moreover, only dialogue between cultures will end terrorism, but this dialogue demands that the West respect all of those ideas and cultural attitudes that have never been European or American. According to Zapatero, this respect is necessary to avoid frustration in the Muslim world.

 

According to Zapatero, what should be the answer to the Islamic terrorism? A change in attitude by Europe and the United States regarding the existing political and social order. The paradigmatic case, the situation in Iraq, was summed up in a speech Zapatero gave in February 2007: “There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; the hate provoked by an illegal war.” For the progressive today, the war in Iraq war is not the answer to the phenomenon of terrorism, but terrorism is the answer to the war in Iraq that the United States and Europe are dishonorably conducting in the Islamic world. 

 

What dishonor? The historian and the analyst cannot find any, according to the left, all democratic-liberal regimes throughout Western history have been guilty of a lack of respect for Islam, economic plunder and colonial looting. This sort of diagnosis is what the Islamist and the progressive have in common, for both of them see in Europe the cause of world’s diseases. And from this point of view, Zapatero’s conclusion is clear: terrorism will disappear only when Western countries stop promoting democracy and free markets in other parts of the world.

 

 

During the past 40 years, the ETA terrorist organization has killed nearly 1000 people in Spain:  members of the military and police, politicians, businessmen, housewives, children and the elderly. ETA has three main objectives: 1) A Basque Country that is independent from Spain (although it has never been independent, and half of its inhabitants say they oppose this objective). 2) To annex the neighbouring region of Navarra to ‘country’ (Navarra is a region where 8 of every 10 inhabitants say they are opposed to this objective). 3) The creation of a Marxist-Leninist government for both territories, which would also join several regions from South France.

 

History, according to the world of ETA, is a history in which Spain has always oppressed the Basque Country. According to nationalist Basques, they are different culturally and racially from the rest of Spain. The Roman Empire, the Spanish Visigoths, the Muslim Invasion, the Catholic Kings or democracy in 1978 are different events that hide a metaphysical truth: the constant oppression of the Basque people. And it is this exploitation against which ETA justified its terrorism.

 

So it is not the ETA member who kills, but the history of the Basque people and the list of never- ending Spanish crimes that give legitimacy to those who shoot or set off car bombs. Just like Islamists, ETA kills in the name of a glorious past, lost while trying to build a paradise on earth: What can possibly be outlawed when one is talking about justice against those who have oppressed the Basque people for so long? Why not to set off bombs if it is freedom that we are searching for? Or so says ETA.

 

What is Zapatero’s response to this kind of terrorism? Those who defend negotiating with ETA point to a change in ETA’s attitude in November 2004, although they do not say what exactly that change is about. What is known is that Batasuna, the political arm of ETA at that time, said the pluralist-constitutionalist system in Spain was dead. Moreover, it also said the Spanish Constitution was dead, and yet the PSOE is unwilling to defend the current status quo. ETA has said that the PSOE recognized what ETA has been saying since 1978, that that is that Spanish parliamentary democracy is not a real democracy. Shortly thereafter, Zapatero gave his interpretation of the transition from the Franco regime to democracy: “During the transition the left accepted a Constitution that set out a vision for a mainly uniform Spain, which denied its pluri-nationality, and which included elements that denied the aspirations the left had historically had in Spain (El País, January 18, 2006).

 

As a consequence of this, according to Zapatero’s view, Spain is now in a position to right these wrongs without it being understood as seeking revenge (El País, July 22, 2007). Astonished, center-right and the social democrats within the PSOE began to understand how ETA and Zapatero could say they moved beyond the Spanish constitutional agreement. They say they want a political system similar that of the United States or the rest of Europe. But for Zapatero, it is not enough because during the negotiation of the current Constitution, the right did not allow the left to set up the system it wanted to establish.

 

This implies a democracy concept that is not pluralist-constitutional, and the center-right is the main obstacle to achieve it. And on this issue, Zapatero has the support of extremist groups: Basque nationalists, communists and national socialists. All of them have for years been claiming the need to change the political system, to get their independence on the one hand and a popular democracy on the other.

 

As a consequence, surprisingly, Zapatero shares ETA’s diagnosis, just as he shared it with Bin Laden in relation to the causes of Islamic terror: its reason is that Spain is an uncompleted democracy, because the center-right forced a pluralist-constitutional system when what progressives (and history, according to progressives) claim that something else is needed. Thus there will be no end to terrorism until Spain has a different constitution that ushers in a different political system.

 

Many things have been written in Spain and elsewhere about the causes for the strange way in which Spain has acted in the face of terrorism in Europe and America. The withdrawal of troops from Iraq (while Al-Qaeda cheers on), and a change of political system in Spain (in the face of enthusiasm by ETA), are the fruits of a unique understanding of history, man and politics.

 

The truth is that Zapatero’s ideology explains his decisions and his attitude toward terrorism. In first place, the progressive person believes that the Spanish system and the Western order are unfair. For this reason it generates terrorism. And how to end terrorism? Very easily: not by fighting it, for war is the expression of that very same unfair order, and it makes things worse. Instead, the only way to solve it, the only possible solution for progress is to change the existing social order, to replace the Spanish pluralist-constitutional system, and to change the democratic liberal order in the West.