Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror

Mass-Mediated Social Terror in Spain

187 Mass-Mediated Social Terror in Spain Nicholas Manganas On 11 March 2004, ten bombs exploded in and around Madrid's Atocha station, killing 191 people and wounding another 1,500. The 11 March attacks were executed by thirteen Islamic "terrorists" 911 days after the 9/11 attacks, whose modus operandi was imitated (four trains paralleled four planes) (Calvo 9). The attack occurred three days before the 14 March national election when it was generally believed that the then Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar would lead the conservative Partido Popular (PP: Popular Party) into its third term in office. In a narrative of events that will go down in popular Spanish history, the PP promptly blamed the attack on the Basque Separatist group Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA). Although within hours the evidence indicated that an Islamic group had most likely perpetrated the attack in the context of the wider global war on terror, the government continued to tell the story that ETA was responsible, as the following statement by Aznar attests: "March 11, 2004 has taken its place in the history of infamy . . . There are no negotiations possible or desirable with these assassins that have so often sown death through all of Spain. We will defeat them. We will succeed in finishing off the terrorist band, with the strength of the rule of law and with the unity of all Spaniards" (qtd. in Tremlett 1). Three days later, in a climate of civil division and suspicion, the people unexpectedly ejected the government from power and elected the Socialists (PSOE: Partido Socialista Obrero Español) under the leadership of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero. The PSOE, in turn, withdrew immediately Spanish troops from Iraq and in the process was perceived by conservative political commentators around the world to have sabotaged its relations with the world's sole superpower—the United States of America. In this study, I locate the narratives that Spanish citizens use to commonly "know" themselves (as historical subjects) during periods of social terror with particular focus on the narratives related to the 3/11 attacks. Spain's constitutive cultural and political narratives are many and complex, and they vary significantly according to time and place. However, some official "narratives" that emanate from the Spanish government are crucial in understanding recent developments in Spanish 188 Nicholas Manganas political culture, particularly as they relate to discourses of terror, even if these narratives are not always coherent and can be arbitrary and contested. The 3/11 attacks present an opportunity to study how these narratives circulated publicly in a moment of terror and how the Spanish government attempted to turn a moment of fear into one of political gain by using a particular narrative that actually backfired. The essay seeks to demonstrate that the 3/11 attacks in Madrid led to a clash of narrative efforts to make sense of the event. I also posit two related points: 1) that societies and individuals need narratives to make sense of themselves, that the media plays a role in these narratives, and that regimes of social terror and political parties benefit from these narratives and 2) that mass-mediated narratives of social terror that emerged in the aftermath of the 3/11 attacks in Madrid can be understood as a site of struggle both to negotiate current political battles of national identity as well as to renegotiate previous narratives of national identity, especially in this case the narratives that emerged from the Franco dictatorship (1936-1975) that constructed national identity similarly out of a context of social terror. The Spanish state has a long and persistent history of conflict that could fit into a broad definition of "terrorism." Forms of "terrorism" and "social terror" were utilized during the Spanish Civil War and under the Franco dictatorship as well (notably by the Basque separatist group ETA). That history can also be traced to the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from Islamic control, a struggle that ended in 1492. But, although it is acknowledged from the outset that such a long historical trajectory exists, the focus here is on the events surrounding the 3/11 attacks in Madrid, particularly the three days between the attack and the national election on 14 March. Those three days constituted a unique form of social terror unleashed upon the Spanish people. Aside from the fact that a series of bombings threatened the stability of the country, the ambiguous nature of the attack and the politicization...