2023-11-07 14:19:11
“Illegal and illegitimate demonstration.” This is how the then PP candidate for the next day’s elections, Mariano Rajoy, described on March 13, 2004, the spontaneous protests in front of his party headquarters throughout Spain due to the management of the right-wing Government chaired by José María. Aznar had made the attacks two days earlier and in which 192 people died. 19 years later, the deputy secretary of the PP, Borja Sémper, has shown understanding with the concentrations in front of PSOE headquarters for the negotiation of an amnesty: “It is normal for people to be outraged.”
The PP accuses the Government of “forcing” the Police to “treat the violent people in Ferraz like CDR” and “unfairly”
On March 11, 2004, the largest terrorist attack in the history of Spain occurred. A chain of explosions on different commuter trains in Madrid caused 191 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The official count of the massacre increases the number of deaths by one by including a police officer who died during the assault on the apartment where the terrorists were hiding.
The attack was carried out by jihadist terrorists who used Spanish participation in the Iraq war as an excuse. But between March 11 and the 13th, both the Aznar Government and the PP insisted on pointing out ETA as the author. Even when the first arrests of alleged suspects had been made, pointing to Islamist responsibility.
On the morning of the 13th, a day of reflection before the elections scheduled for the 14th, the PP candidate still pointed out Basque separatist terrorism in an interview in The world. “I have the moral conviction that it was ETA,” said Mariano Rajoy.
At noon that Saturday, the Islamic trail was already the only one that investigators were working on. Despite this, the then Government spokesperson, Eduardo Zaplana, stated in public that ETA continued to be the main theory. This same thesis was supported by the official media in the news that day.
It was then that protests were called in front of the national headquarters of the PP by SMS (messaging systems such as WhatsApp or social networks did not exist). Hundreds of people gathered in front of number 13 Génova Street in Madrid amid shouts demanding to know the truth about the attacks.
The PP, and the Government it led, reacted virulently to what it considered an attack. Mariano Rajoy appeared at the national headquarters of the PP, where he said that the demonstrations were “illegal and illegitimate,” and demanded that they be dissolved because they were “undemocratic acts of pressure on the elections” scheduled for the following day.
Rajoy also asked that no one attend the rallies that were taking place in the PP’s territorial headquarters. The candidate denounced the “illegal and illegitimate demonstration that surrounds all our headquarters, charging serious crimes.” Rajoy appeared, he said, to “denounce” events that he described as “seriously undemocratic.”
Rajoy also spoke of an “undemocratic act of pressure”, of a “display of intolerance”, denounced them before the Central Electoral Board and demanded that the rest of the political parties “disavow” the “intolerable protests”. “We are not going to tolerate this manipulation,” he said.
On the same day the 13th, the leader of the PSOE Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba also appeared, who said that “citizens do not deserve a Government that lies to them,” and then addressed “in a special way to the citizens so that they maintain the serenity that they have shown in recent years.” days”.
After these statements by Rubalcaba, the Minister of the Interior, Ángel Acebes, announced to the media the arrest of Moroccan citizens for their possible involvement in the attacks. Acebes, however, expressly said that there were “other lines of investigation open,” in reference to ETA.
The Government spokesperson, Eduardo Zaplana, intervened next. From the headquarters of the public news agency EFE, the PP leader responded to Rubalcaba, whom he in turn accused of lying.
19 years later, these are the PSOE headquarters where concentrations are taking place against the negotiation with the Catalan independentists of ERC and Junts. In a statement, the PP has compared both situations and has ironically stated that “it is possible that some of the people who gathered yesterday [por el lunes] before the headquarters of the PSOE, in November 2023, he would also do so before the headquarters of the PP in March 2004.” The statement claims, erroneously, that “it was the PSOE that sent people to protest in Genoa saying ‘Spain does not deserve a Government that lies to it'”, but that phrase from Rubalcaba occurred when thousands of people were already demonstrating against the PP.
In 2014, elDiario.es published the story of how that call was produced through text messages (in 2004, WhatsApp-type messaging systems or social networks did not exist, as reported by the author of the SMS himself.
In the same statement, the PP has accused the Government of “forcing” the Police to “treat the protesters at the PSOE headquarters in Madrid as CDR” and “unfairly”.
Against Surround Congress
The PP also attacked another social protest against its Government years later. In 2016, Mariano Rajoy himself sought his re-election as president. Rajoy won at the polls both in December 2015 and in the repeat election in June of the following year, but did not achieve an absolute majority.
After the electoral repetition, King Felipe VI sent Rajoy to try to form a Government. But the numbers did not give him just an agreement with Ciudadanos, and he needed the help of the PSOE.
Help from the PSOE came in October in the form of abstention, after the coup that forced Pedro Sánchez to resign as general secretary at the beginning of the month. Rajoy was inaugurated on October 29, 2016. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated at the doors of Parliament in a protest called ‘Surround Congress’.
Criticism from the right against this social mobilization was also diverse. The former deputy secretary of the PP, Javier Maroto, criticized the leaders of Unidos Podemos for wanting to “camouflage” that they did not have “enough voice” in the Lower House with a “photograph in the street.”
The Vice President of the Government, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, also spoke: “We have always greatly respected freedom of expression, but you cannot pretend to be inside and outside at the same time because what they are really doing is criticizing themselves.”
The criticism of Surround the Congress of 2016 has reached the present day. The current president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, compared it at the beginning of 2023 with the attempted coup d’état in Brazil after Lula da Silva’s electoral victory.
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