MARCH 11th SPAIN

A Certain Hope
Instead of giving in to the destructive impact of the Madrid terrorist attacks, the shock of terror has challenged the reality of the Movement to a stronger unity, a deeper faith, and a public presence, becoming a possibility of dialogue with fellow workers and students, with family and friends. And it communicates a certain hope, necessary for starting again. On the road toward the education of the “I,” and thus of the entire people, more necessary than ever in the face of the nihilism that rejects a positive ideal horizon

by José Luis Restán*

Nine o’clock p.m., Saturday, March 13, 2004. All of Spain mourns the dead of the cruellest terrorist attack of its history. A few hours before, the Minister of the Interior communicated the arrest of five individuals implicated in the attack, three Moroccans and two Indians. The suspicion of Islamic terrorism has already become the most likely hypothesis for the police, while ETA responsibility is abandoned.

Ideological support
The tension in the streets is tangible. Popular Party headquarters are besieged by numerous protestors who accuse the government of having lied and of being responsible for the attacks because of its close alliance with the Bush Administration. This movement is not spontaneous at all. Rather, it is fed by the declarations of the PSOE leaders and amplified by the formidable machine of the Prisa group, the main Spanish communications group, voice of the radical bourgeois culture that has provided ideological support to the Spanish left for the past twenty-five years. All this is happening during the day of reflection, when all political propaganda should be prohibited.

Transfer of blame
In the Génova headquarters, the Populars realize that the situation is slipping from their grasp. The fear and anger of an important part of Spanish society have found an effective conduit for expression in castigating the PP government, which, up to the eve of the tragic Thursday, seemed in all the projections to be the sure and easy winner. The “transfer of blame” operation is reflected bitterly in some protestor slogans: “The bombs you released on Iraq are now exploding on us.” And almost no condemnations are heard against Al Qaeda and its followers. It is the beginning of a long night, the prelude of a historic electoral cataclysm.

The roots of the upheaval
The results of the March 14th elections leave no doubts. The dramatic situation that characterized the elections produced the mobilization of two and a half million voters who hadn’t shown up at the urns in the previous elections. The PP loses a million votes and 35 seats, remaining with 148, while the PSOE conquers almost three million new votes and attains the figure of 164 representatives. A suffering and divided nation, prey to its old ghosts and stereotypes, in its need for a kind of catharsis after the horrors of the trains, transforms its cry into a political upheaval that was unimaginable only three days before. But this phenomenon, which has stupefied sociologists of half the world, has deep roots in a nation that has always seemed to have difficulty coming to terms with itself.

A typically progressive hate
In a March issue of Time magazine, Spain, which has always loved paradoxes, is presented as a nation that is “strong, decisive, and self-confident.” The prestigious American weekly acknowledges that “its influence in the world is unequalled since the age of its empire,” and praises its economic growth, artistic creativity, and its prominence in sports. How strange–this new Spanish emergence has come about during the years of Aznar’s government, the same years that a certain progressivist mentality has detested as dark years in which freedoms were supposedly limited, exasperation supposedly replaced dialogue, and obscurantism and reaction supposedly held back any advances. One of its raving spokesmen, the director Almodóvar, even went so far as to hail the result of March 14th as a “recovery of democracy.” The reality of Spain, though, has nothing to do with this hate for its own sake, so typical of an intellectual fringe of our country.

Strong contradictions
All this notwithstanding, the image of a country in permanent expansion, with a kind of untiring will to win and a tough and transgressive look, hides the deep current of weakness and disillusion that exploits any fissure to re-emerge. The tragedy of March 11th threw these contradictions into stark relief. Spain grows, ferments, and agitates, but more as the reflection of a living root that still exists than as the expression of a common work. It lacks a clear consciousness about the nucleus of our spiritual, cultural, and moral patrimony, which can be built upon and which, thus, is worth defending. This was clearly manifested in the social reaction to the terrorist attacks. On the one hand, they produced a spontaneous response of generosity and solidarity with the victims, yet almost no one picked up the gauntlet thrown by this attack at the heart of our identity. It was preferable to sling mud at the government, without understanding that, independently of the errors that may have been committed, Islamic terrorism struck us precisely for what we are– a nation forged in the Christian tradition, whose society is articulated on the recognition of freedom and human rights. This was said, for example, by Gilles Kepell, the French political scientist who opposed the Iraq war, but who now faces us with what we don’t want to see.

Repudiation and vulnerability
Is there something worth suffering for, worth working and building together? As Time reports it, according to the actor Javier Bardem, the creativity of Spaniards is moved by the desire to find the maximum pleasure to free us from the guilt feelings supposedly produced by our Catholic tradition. Here we see again this repudiation of our own identity, so dear to various kinds of artists, but here we also, and above all, have the cause of our terrible vulnerability. We lack a positive, ideal horizon in common, a love for which it is worth sharing the sacrifice. The Islamic terrorists have stressed more than once, “We love death more than you love life.” Herein lies the root of the West’s profound weakness in facing them, in that our love for life (which is very different from our unhealthy attachment to economic well-being) is not sufficiently great, because we have broken the links with its sustenance–the relationship with the Infinite that has involved itself in our history in order to save it.

A real battering ram
The culture of nihilism in its various versions has won over the crowds, using instruments such as the State schools (emptied of the ideal proposal and spineless after the socialist reforms) and a good part of the means of communication, which have joined the battle against a tradition considered anti-modern and incapable of permitting the development of Spain, which, according to their myths, has been entrenched too long in the dark pit of history. An “illuminated vanguard” has made this widespread culture into a real battering ram in political debate, questioning from the very beginning (1996) the legitimacy of the center-right united around the PP to govern Spanish democracy. These are the same figures who have repeated ad nauseum the stereotype that the Aznar Executive has limited freedoms, provoked civil conflict, and brought us back to the times of the Inquisition–heavy artillery against a government that has made the “reformist center” its trademark. Naturally, varied voices make up this vanguard, including those of the Cebrián-González tandem at the helm, and those of the cineastes who directed the Hay motivos video-pamphlet to convince society that the Aznar government not only was a political adversary, but also a latent danger for democracy. And thus, the terrorist attacks of March 11th were the brutal spark that ignited the flammable liquid that had lain there for a long time.

Censure
Naturally, in one way or another, the Church had to be in the cross-hairs of this ideological process, even though it opposed the war, and notwithstanding the fact that its relations with the PP had gone through difficult moments. It is not strange that laicism in its various manifestations should have been one of the key elements of the left’s program in the recent campaign. But what should draw attention above all is the censure of religious sentiment that happened in the days following the terrorist attack. The view of the immense commotion transmitted by the various means of communication was reduced to emotional solidarity with the victims and to political revenge, without allowing, even weakly, the emergence of questions about the ultimate meaning of life, without which it is impossible to have the courage to rebuild and fight. The religious dimension of every human life and of every society, which was so present after September 11th in New York, was hardly noted in the coverage of these bitter days, depriving them of the deepest resource for dealing with the tragedy. There was even an attempt to hush up the presence of about a hundred priests in the improvised morgue in Parco Juan Carlos I to accompany the families of the victims. The funerals celebrated in various places in Madrid were moving and demonstrated the Christian hope with great clarity, but they did not reach the point of constituting the framework of the response of the whole people, as happened, in contrast, in the State funeral for the Italian carabinieri killed in the Nassiriya terrorist attack.

The task of educating
The intense and spontaneous solidarity of millions of Spaniards demonstrates that there is a live root to this germ of a people. But more than ever, it needs a guide that plays an educational role and opens consciousnesses to the meaning of life, to its radical positivity, to the irreducible value of reason and of liberty. Hannah Arendt said that totalitarianism triumphs when truth is indistinguishable from lies, reality from fiction. We must recognize that terrorism has wounded us in this as well.
A bit more than a year ago, after months of harsh conflicts following the sinking of the “Prestige” and the Iraq war, the presence of John Paul II in Madrid constituted an unexpected point of unity for Spanish society, a moment of intense consciousness about the common good that we have been called to care for, a path for identifying the road of growth for our people. That experience now takes on a unique value, but lacks a subject who might take it in his hands to translate it into an educational principle.
In a note entitled, “Hope in the Face of Terrorism,” the Bishops concluded that in the hard task awaiting Spanish society, (we) Catholics “will contribute with a strong soul that is nurtured by a hope that does not betray.” In fact, we have already seen these days that, instead of giving in to the destructive impact of the terrorist attacks, the shock of terror has challenged the entire reality of Communion and Liberation to a stronger unity, a deeper faith, and a public presence through acts such as the Eucharist celebrated March 11th itself, the prayer of the Rosary for the victims, the united participation in the manifestation of the 12th, and the debate immediately after the election results. The judgment we have transmitted through a pamphlet has proven decisive in the dialogue with our colleagues at the university or at work, with family and friends, communicating to everyone “a certain hope,” necessary so that our nation can resume the road of a common construction.
* Director of Social-Religious Affairs at Radio Cadena-Cope