Madrid Terror
Bombings
Strengthen The Right-wing
By Vicky Short
and Chris Marsden
13 March 2004
World Socialist Website
Thursdays
bombing atrocities in Madrid will inevitably dominate the March 14 general
elections in Spain. The outrage they have provoked is expected to benefit
the right-wing Popular Party of the outgoing prime minister, José
María Aznar, and its candidate to succeed him, Mariano Rajoy.
Widely described
as Spains own September 11, the blasts, which have thus far claimed
nearly 200 lives, will be employed to similar effect as the destruction
of New Yorks Twin Towers. On the international front, they will
be used to justify Spains militarist foreign policy and, above
all, Aznars support for the US-led invasion and occupation of
Iraq. Domestically, they will be used to legitimise the further erosion
of the democratic rights of the working class in the name of combating
terrorism.
If further proof
were needed of the role played by terrorist outrages in sowing political
confusion amongst working people and thereby strengthening the hand
of right-wing forces, the events of March 11 have provided it. The coordinated
rush-hour blasts at three Madrid rail stations have left the countrys
people in a state of trauma. This is being used to good effect by Aznar,
who has called for three days of mourning for those who died in bombingsthe
worst in Europe since the Lockerbie airline bomb that killed 270 in
1988.
The millions of
Spaniards who have taken to the streets to protest the bombings are
expressing their entirely justified anger and revulsion over Thursdays
mass homicide. They have a legitimate concern over their safety and
security, and correctly see those responsible for the bombings as criminals
who should be brought to justice.
The cruel irony
is that the government, with the support of the opposition Socialist
Workers Party (PSOE) and the media, will seek to exploit these feelings
to intensify the very policies of imperialist war and neo-colonialismcynically
presented, under the banner of the war on terrorism, as
a defense of democracy and civilizationthat foster the conditions
of oppression and poverty upon which terrorist outfits depend to draw
their recruits.
The Madrid atrocity
is a tragic demonstration that the eruption of imperialism, led by the
US, undermines the safety and security of the working masses in every
part of the worldin the imperialist centers of North America,
Europe and Asia, as well as in the Middle East and the rest of the Third
World. Inevitably, the human cost is paid overwhelmingly by innocent
people who have no hand in the reactionary policies of their governments.
This is perhaps nowhere more clear than in Spain, where the overwhelming
majority of the population is opposed to the governments support
for Washingtons war in Iraq.
Aznar portays himself
and his party as the most steadfast bastion against terrorism, whether
that of Al Qaeda or the Basque separatist organisation ETA (Euskadi
Ta AskatasunaBasque Homeland and Freedom). For some time, he has
been successful in manipulating popular outrage at ETAs bombing
campaigns.
Aznar, who will
be standing down after the elections, had already insisted that he intends
to finally crush the proscribed ETA and to resist calls for greater
separation by maintaining the regional autonomy as defined by the 1978
constitutionthe Carta Magna.
The Popular Party
is aided by the fact that even before the events of March 11, all the
main political parties and the media agreed that the war against
terror and the unity of the Kingdom of Spain were the two main
issues to be debated at the exclusion of all others. Its opponentsthe
Socialist Workers Party, the Stalinist-led Izquierda Unida (IUUnited
Left) coalition, and the nationalist partieswould all rather debate
terrorism and regionalism than unemployment, health, education, the
environment, attacks on democratic rights and the other key issues that
concern the majority of the population.
But the artificial
suppression of difficult political issues is not the same thing as resolving
them. Whatever the scale of the Peoples Partys expected
victory, it will emerge from the election as the ruler of a nation beset
by pronounced social and political divisions for which it has no answer,
other than repression.
Europe or America?
One of the main
issues underlying the elections and of central concern to different
factions of the Spanish ruling elite is what side to take in the increasingly
bitter division between America and Europe. The disagreements within
the Spanish bourgeoisie on this question are becoming more open because
of the approaching expansion of the European Union.
Aznar represents
that section which believes the interests of Spanish capital are best
served by a close alliance with the United States. This, it is hoped,
will help Spain become a leading player in what US Secretary of Defence
Donald Rumsfeld terms the New Europe.
The PSOE and the
nationalists speak for those who are convinced a closer alliance with
Europe is a better means of advancing the interests of Spanish imperialism.
Last year, Aznar
supported the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq against the opinion
of most of the Spanish population. He has aligned his countrys
foreign policy closely with Washington, yet to this day he has not provided
any substantial public case for his support for the invasion of Iraq.
He travelled around
the world, assisting Bush in patching together a motley coalition in
support of the colonial war. As he did so, on February 15 last year,
over two million protesters brought all of the major cities of Spain
to a standstill. Since then Aznar has made 16 trips to the US.
In repayment, Bush
placed the Basque separatist organisation Batasuna (the political arm
of ETA) on Washingtons list of parties sponsoring terrorism.
The Spanish government
also sees the US as guarantor of political stability in Latin America,
where it has large investments. Spain and the US are together the biggest
investors on that continent. There are also 35 million Spanish-speaking
people living in the US.
Two banks, which
are the most profitable in the euro zone, now dominate Spain: Santander
Central Hispano (SCH) and BBVA. The first is very active in Brazil.
The second has two-thirds of its assets in Mexico, after buying up that
countrys largest private bank. Both banks have $25 billion invested
in Latin America. SCH, BBVA and Telefonica make up half the capitalisation
of the Spanish stock market. One third of their profits comes from Latin
America.
Additionally, Washington
is spending hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading its facilities
at its naval base in Rota, on Spains Atlantic coast. It is rumoured
that the US is discussing moving its fleet from Italy to Spain, although
this would encounter a number of problems.
Aznar is also hoping
that the power of the US will open doors for Spanish interests in the
Middle East and areas of Morocco where Spain also has sizeable investments.
Spains special
relationship with the US, however, comes at the expense of its standing
in Europe, and sections of the ruling elite are becoming extremely concerned
by this. At the beginning of this year, Aznar voted against a new European
Constitution, which would reduce Spains voting power to more closely
reflect its population. This put him in direct conflict with France
and Germany and allied him only with the East European applicant states
and Britain. Máximo Cajal, a retired Spanish ambassador and former
envoy to Paris, summed up the concerns this raised in the Financial
Times:
The problem
with the transatlantic relationship is that it leaves us exactly in
the middle of nowhere. Spain used to punch above its weight in Europe.
It was regarded as a credible, predictable and loyal partner. Aznar
is a Eurosceptic and he deliberately went about breaking that trust.
It will take a long time to repair the damage done.
The PSOEs
opposition to the Iraq war has nothing to do with any concern for the
rights or welfare of the Iraqi people. It should be remembered that
the PSOE was in power in 1991 when it lent Bushs father a supporting
hand in the first invasion of Iraq. It is, rather, rooted in concerns
over Spains own imperialist interests.
Since Aznar announced
his commitment to the Bush administrations preparations for war
against Iraq, the PSOE has attacked the Popular Party for abandoning
the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy that is as
old as Spains transition to democracy. PSOE leader José
Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has promised to bring Spain out of the isolation
into which it has been led by Aznar. I want to be president of
a government that will take Spain out of the Azores trio. I want to
see my country allied to Lula, Kofi Annan, Lagos and Jacques Chirac,
he declared.
Sections of the
press and, in particular, the influential liberal newspaper El Pais
support Zapateros campaign. El Pais declared that Aznar had falsified
the case for war and systematically deceived the Spanish
people. It demanded that Aznar substantiate his claims of Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction.
How Aznar has maintained power
If the Popular Party,
as expected, wins the election on March 14, it will have accomplished
a feat that would appear, on one level, as incomprehensible, given the
hostility amongst the Spanish population to the war in Iraq and the
widespread disaffection with the governments economic and social
policies. But while the anger that poured onto the streets of Spanish
cities last year certainly reflected a deep dissatisfaction at the conditions
confronting the mass of ordinary working people, this does not automatically
provide the means to redress those conditions.
In the aftermath
of the demonstrations, the working class was once again confronted with
the lack of a political alternative to represent its interests, in either
domestic or foreign policy. Moreover, certain internal factors have
benefited the Popular Party. During Aznars eight-year premiership,
Spain has received massive European Union subsidies. This, together
with the holding down of wages by the trade unions, has helped Spain
attract global investment.
Under the Popular
Party, since 1996 the Spanish gross domestic product (GDP) has averaged
four percent growth per year. Even last year, Spains GDP grew
by 2.4 percent, in comparison with 0.5 percent in the euro zone. This
boom enabled Spain to balance its budget by 2001, the only member of
the EU to have done so. Last year, Spain created half of the new jobs
in Europe and took in almost 1,000 immigrants a day.
Cheap labour, cheap
credit, generous tax concessions and low land prices has attracted large
inward investments, with several transnational corporations building
subsidiaries in Spain. Spain is now the fifth largest automobile manufacturer
in the EU.
In the same period,
Aznar privatised nearly every publicly owned enterprise, slashed taxes
twice, and cut public spending from 48 percent of GDP to 40 percent.
These policies were used to increase the wealth of the upper layers,
and to give a better-off section of the petty bourgeoisie and certain
more privileged sections of skilled workers a perceived interest in
the governments economic counter-reforms, or at least to defuse
opposition to them.
In certain key areas,
Aznar has acted to preserve subsidies and carried out other protectionist
measures that have helped maintain a level of support for his government.
While he has lobbied to open up the energy sector in the EU, for example,
he has not done so at home. Spain also has the biggest EU fishing fleet,
and Aznar is lobbying hard to prevent any reform of the Common Fisheries
Policy.
The economic boom
has also meant that welfare cutsthough extensivehave not
had to be as savage as many big business figures would have liked. A
surplus of nine billion euros will make it possible to guarantee pensions
for some time yet. But by 2020, pensions will have increased from 9.4
to 17 percent of the GDP. Attacks on welfare and pension provisions
must, therefore, become more stringent in the near future.
A sea change ahead
Spain is now posed
with a deepening crisis due to the ten new countries set to join the
existing 15 members of the EU in May this year. This will involve the
incorporation of 75 million more people, almost half of them in Poland.
Most of the new
member countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus) are former Stalinist states
that have been busy reintroducing the market economy since the collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1991. They are all competitors with Spain for
EU funding and investment by international corporations seeking access
to the European market.
Most of the new
countries are poor. For example, the second richest, the Czech Republic,
has an average gross domestic product less than a third of its neighbour,
Germany. The incorporation of such a huge, skilled, low-wage work force
will undermine Spains position within Europe as the provider of
cheap labour.
Minimum monthly
salaries in Spain are second to lowest (after Portugal) within the present
EU countries: 526 euros, compared with 1,154 in France and 1,105 in
the United Kingdom. Now Spain will have to compete with countries such
as the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where wage rates are a seventh of
those in Spain.
Spain, Portugal
and Greece benefited enormously from joining the EU. In order to bring
their economies closer to the economic standards of the big powers so
that trade could be regularised and a common currency established, huge
subsidies were conceded to help their development. According to a report
just released by La Caixa Bank, EU subsidies were worth nine billion
euros in 2002 alone, or 1.3 percent of Spains GDP.
Some 55 billion
euros of EU structural and cohesion funds for the years 2000-2006 are
coming to an end. As the ten new EU entrants arrive, only the Spanish
provinces of Galicia, Extremadura and Andalusia will retain their favoured
objective one status. This presently allows the authorities
to subsidise new industries by up to 40 percent. In Galicia, there will
have been 11.7 billion euros worth of investment between 2000 and 2006,
half of which has been paid by the EU, leading to a big growth in the
rail network and in motorways. The biggest business is the auto industry,
with Citroen in Vigo being the largest exporter in the region.
Previously, Aznar
attempted to tackle Spains problems by bringing in skilled immigrants
and creating millions of casual jobs (a low birth rate means that the
countrys population could fall to 30 million within a couple of
decades from the current 40 million). But the Financial Times still
denounces the labour market in Spain as the most rigid in the EU. It
describes collective bargaining as tortuous. If Aznars
party is to carry out the demands of its backers for further economic
reforms, then social conflict with broad layers of the working class
is inevitable.
Insecurity in employment
is already a cause of enormous discontent. A two-tier workforce existsone
which is still highly protected and unionized, while the other is low-paid
and on temporary contracts. The 2.4 million jobs created in the 1990s
were predominantly short-term posts that left the old economy
relatively untouched. Part-time jobs make up 30 percent of all jobs.
According to the National Statistics Institute, 4.2 million people are
in temporary jobs. The average length of temporary contracts in Spain
is just 10 days. Such posts are called contratos basura
(rubbish contracts). Foreign firms are responsible for a great number
of these jobs.
Aznar has attempted
to break down the resistance of the organised workers to defend their
conditions on a number of occasions. In 2002, he introduced new legislation
to reform unemployment benefits and confronted a general strike on June
20, which forced the government to make a U-turn and abandon nearly
all of its proposed decretazo, or decrees.
These included legislation
to reform labour relations. Recently, the government said it would introduce
the legislation again, whether the trade unions accept it or not.
While unemployment
has been reduced from 23 percent to 11.3 percent, Spain still has the
highest jobless rate in Europe, and it is set to worsen.
An exodus of transnationals
out of Spain has already begun. Corporations such as Samsung, Alcatel,
Ericsson, Bayer and Phillips are preparing a move into cheaper areas
such as China and Slovakia. SEAT (Sociedad Española de Automóviles
de Turismo), the Spanish car manufacturer, which since 1986 has been
part of the Volkswagen group, is also beginning to move production out
of Spain.
By far the biggest
factor weighing in favour of the Popular Party is the bankruptcy of
the political opposition. Zapatero has stated that he will not form
a government unless his party, the PSOE, receives a majority of the
vote, and that he will not govern in coalition. He wants to convey the
message to the employers that he will not be prisoner to any radical
demands of either the nationalists or the Stalinist-led Izquierda Unida.
He has made great efforts to meet the employers and reassure them that
the PSOE is not anti-business.
Manuel Azpilicueta,
the president of the Circulo de Empresarios, a business leaders
forum, stated recently, The Socialists are more in tune with the
thinking of business people on economic policy than a few years ago.
He added that he welcomed PSOE proposals on tax reform, investment in
new technologies, and the promotion of part-time job contracts.
Workers have no
confidence in the policies of the PSOE, which left government in 1996
in the middle of a financial corruption scandal that ended with many
of its leading ministers in jail. The intervening years and the continued
advocacy by the PSOE of pro-market policies have done nothing to erase
this memory.
In the final analysis,
whichever party wins the elections and forms a government after March
14, none of the many problems confronting working people will be resolved.
On the contrary, as the special circumstances that have kept a modicum
of stability recede, and business seeks to load the burden of its crisis
onto the backs of working people, the necessity for the development
of a genuine international socialist party, independent of all sections
of the bourgeoisie, will become more clear.