Monday marks twenty years since the dramatic 11-M attacks in Madrid and the event has been warming up for days. A week later, Jordi Évole’s program on La Sexta the night before last dissected how the PP government tried to keep the authorship unknown to tie up the result of the elections that were held three days later, on March 14.
It had a comfortable lead over the PSOE, but if ETA was the perpetrator of the massacre, it would surely sweep the polls because the PP was the heavy hand against terrorism. But if it was Al Qaeda, perhaps they were not going to do so well because the attack was going to be related to that government’s support for the invasion of Iraq.
So the government conspired to maintain ambiguity for three days. Aznar soon gathered his hard core with an absence that was in itself descriptive: the National Intelligence Center was not there. This detail is recalled by veteran SER journalist Iñaki Gabilondo in the documentary, in which seven other journalists appear: also from SER, the head of courts and events, Javier Álvarez, and Mamen Mendizábal; from TVE Josep Puigbó, who presented the news program, Fran Llorente, from the La 2 news program, and Oscar González, coordinator of Informe Semanal; and from ABC its then director, José Antonio Zarzalejos, and its events editor, Cruz Morcillo.
Évole details in a pornographic chronology how in the appearances of President Aznar and his Minister of the Interior, Ángel Acebes, the information they offer does not correspond to what their police services are obtaining.
Those days we already knew a lot about the truth that was being imposed, but twenty years later everything is known, and that government remains –forgive us- absolutely naked. Because it would have been enough to be less vehement in pointing out ETA so that the voter’s indignation would be less.
The documentary is made even more interesting by the mea culpa that some of the interviewees chant.
Gabilondo remembers how they rectified the information that pointed to the presence of a suicide on the trains (and that ruled out ETA).
In the chaos, confusion arose – it is not necessary to go into details – because of how some bodies had been left in the explosions. Gabilondo emphasizes that not everyone corrected their mistakes from that day or those. Puigbó regrets not having been more belligerent, and argues that “asking does not carry poison”, due to his interview with an alleged expert – which he did not choose – who on his set pointed to ETA.
José Antonio Zarzalejos wishes “he had gotten it right from minute one,” from the first cover. Her then events editor Cruz Morcillo explains the anger she felt because, with all her police sources pointing to Islamist terrorism, her newspaper had to believe Aznar.
He understands (today) his director’s position: the person calling him was the president of the government, no more, no less. Can a president of the government lie about such a sensitive matter?
Acebes maintains absolute silence about those days, but Évole rescues in the program a cut from Aznar from 2021 in which he maintains: “That government can be accused of anything but one thing: not telling the truth.” It is true that finally – on Saturday afternoon, with three Moroccans detained – they said that there were two lines of investigation, admitting the option of Al Qaeda, but there had been only one for many hours.
Last week, in Valencia, Aznar gave a speech, this time at an event with businessmen, in which he assured that today we are experiencing “the moment of greatest crisis in Spain since the beginning of democracy” and that therefore a government is necessary. of “competent people.”
He did not specify in what subjects.
