One of the most prominent memories in the Spanish scrapbook, along with the picture of the caudillo under the heading ¡Españoles, Franco ha Muerto! and another of the rebel Guardia Civil Antonio Tejero firing his revolver into the ceiling of Las Cortes, the Spanish Parliament, would be the smiling and unctuous photograph of José María Aznar along with Tony Blair and George W Bush at their meeting in the Azores on the eve of the (Second) American Gulf War and invasion of Iraq twenty three years ago this month.
Aznar paid dearly (as did Spain) for getting this country involved in a foreign adventure, especially so a year later on March 11 2004 when Arab terrorists planted some bombs in the local Madrid railway system, killing 193 people and wounding some 2,000 more.
Aznar compounded his error by blaming the wrong set of assassins, the Basque ETA group rather than Al Qaeda. This cost his party the general election just two days later, allowing the PSOE leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to become the new president of Spain.
One of his first acts was to reverse Spain’s participation in the war against Saddam.
The question of course now arises – what policy would an actual PP/Vox government have taken following the current Israeli/American attack against Iran?
As we don’t have such a leadership, let us look instead at Pedro Sánchez.
I like a quote of his: ‘Spain opposes this catastrophe. Because we understand that governments are there to improve people’s lives, to solve problems, not to worsen them. And it is unacceptable that leaders who are incapable of fulfilling this task use the smokescreen of war to mask their incompetence and line the pockets of a select few’. Donald Trump answered this by saying roughly – ‘who needs Spain anyway?’
That remains to be seen; as much of the European Union, after a certain hesitation, now appears to agree with Sánchez. Although, you see, there’s Feijóo ‘and his Mariachis’ who of course continue to see themselves as vassals of Trump. A plan which is not playing well with much of the Spanish electorate.
Why do the conservatives here (with their allies in the Media) always try and sink the Spanish ship of state?
68% of Spaniards, says El País, say they are against Trump and Netanyahu’s war, with 23% being in favour. Even El Mundo (a conservative newspaper) can’t do much better, with 62% against the war (although we are told in the same headline that those respondents prefer China to the USA).
We see that the right-wing’s patriotism, it seems, has exceptions. It works against immigration, against separatists, against the left, against anyone who doesn't subscribe to the right's short-sighted view of Spain. But it vanishes the moment a thug with an American flag arrives and orders everyone to stand at attention.
Sánchez says – before we all cry ¡No Pasarán! – ‘The people must be aware that what may happen to their wallets has nothing to do with the decisions of the Spanish Government, but with a war in Iran that is illegal and that will bring much suffering.”
We’ve already seen the rise in petrol prices and the next electric bill won’t be far behind.
The Guardian reckons that Pedro Sánchez is ‘one of the very few European leaders to openly and emphatically reject the demands of a US president whose trademark negotiating style is an erratic mix of bullying, humiliation and self-aggrandisement’.
The war (or invasion) has had some bad press, from torpedoing an apparently unarmed Iranian frigate in international waters, to callously bombing a girls’ school with at least 165 children dead. Then there was the obscene prayer-meeting in the Oval Office (our fundamentalists are better than their fundamentalists) as ‘non-commissioned officers were elsewhere being told that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth”’. Not my Jesus, Buddy.
Let’s give Sánchez the last word: ‘Es un orgullo ser español. Por defender lo que defendemos ante la barbarie y ante la guerra’. It is a source of pride to be Spanish. For defending what we defend in the face of barbarism and war.
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