'Making politics with horror and blood'

Almudena Grandes
Wednesday March 17, 2004
The Guardian

'For a person to exist is something very difficult and complicated ..." I can remember that man's voice very clearly. He was a doctor who lived in the calle Téllez, opposite one of the stations where a train was blown into the air last Thursday. "First, what goes on in the woman's body, all those biological mechanisms that have to work towards perfection for a healthy child to be born ..." He was a young man, dressing for work when he heard the explosion and raced down to the street to help where he could. "And later, all that effort from the parents and the child itself, to grow and study and mature, to become something that exists, that has a name and a history, this is all very difficult and complicated, and it ends here, in a second, for no reason, with no explanations, it's just unbearable, it's too hard, it's ..." He couldn't finish his sentence because he started to cry. In his voice there was such desolation and defeat, such sadness, that I cried with him. It didn't make it any better, but I felt better none the less for having cried.

Since then, what I remember is an immense hole, circular and empty where my body and my head reunited with the outside world. Everything was a hole. That's how I experienced the first few hours. I couldn't believe what had happened, even though I was watching it on television. When I decided I could no longer stand the image of that young guy, practically a child, looking around him like a cornered animal, his head split open, an eye shut with the swelling, his skin dry with the trails of his own blood, I took refuge in the radio and followed in disbelief the words I was hearing. I discovered that morning that incredulity is one of the main components of horror, like a sudden injection of anaesthesia making it bearable for the spirit. But I was unable to formulate that idea or any other, because I was in this immense hole where even the horror of the numbers hardly sounded - 20, 46, 60, 83, 140, 173 dead, a macabre overflowing even in this country, in this city so often devastated by the cruelty of numbers.

On March 11, I had got up with the same presentiment that has accompanied all my awakenings for the past couple of weeks and, I'm sure, of many of my fellow citizens too. ETA had not killed yet, and ETA, as we all know, always kills during the elections. It had always done so and had more than enough reasons to do so now, in a country radicalised like never before since its democratisation. The government of José María Aznar, setting itself up as defender of the motherland in the name of a rancid ultra-nationalism bordering on the most genuinely Spanish fascist ideology, had so tightened the cords of political life that it had created an unbreathable atmosphere for anyone in disagreement with its slogans. ETA had been present in all the Popular party speeches and electoral manoeuvres as one of the party's greatest campaign assets, an effective stroke capable of mitigating any criticism the government might receive for its numerous mistakes.

The strategy is old, dirty, profitable and well known: whoever is not with us is with the terrorists; whoever is not with us is not Spanish. Naturally, ETA benefited from the same discourse. Terrorists do not only kill people. They are also capable of mortally wounding the existence of an entire country in order to find cover in its fractures, to grow and strengthen themselves in the most violent disagreements when they find an adversary prepared to follow their game.

That is why, when ETA made its first denial, I did not believe it. That is why, when the interior minister, Ángel Acebes, with a severity that only now seems to me suspicious, announced that we need not look elsewhere for the perpetrators, I continued to believe that ETA had confirmed my worst fears. Then a different kind of pain took hold in me simultaneously, a moral misery that tore me up inside as effectively as those images and numbers had hurt my eyes and ears.

The figures continued to rise, 400, 600, 900 injured. The city had stopped, as if she herself had received a mortal wound. Cars had stopped circulating in the city centre in order to leave a clear pathway for the ambulances, people refrained from using their mobile phones, having been asked by the authorities not to do so except in cases of emergency, and in Atocha, El Pozo and Santa Eugenia, the telephones of the dead continued to ring. It was really like something from a horror film, one of those chronicles of a catastrophe that could not possibly happen in Spain or Madrid.

But while the bodies were still warm, and so many corpses unburied, it began to become clear that the Spanish government was making politics with horror and blood. All corpses have the same skin, all murderers are equally hateful but nevertheless, a few moments before the pain of 11 million people pervaded all the towns of Spain, Acebes began to juggle with horror. He began to lie, to deceive and to manipulate and he did it badly, so badly, so insensitively and so hopelessly that his action was not just a crime but also an insult to our intelligence.

Perhaps it is necessary to explain that I have dedicated a considerable amount of my time over the past two years to fighting against a government of the extreme right; that is to say, to fighting for the future of my country. I have written manifestos; I have attended small demonstrations and crowded ones; I have explained my position in articles and interviews; I have used the promotion of my latest book as an electoral campaign for myself; I have campaigned for voting for the left in the newspapers, and on the radio, television and internet; I have made many strangers hug me in the street, and other strangers insult me.

And I was one among thousands, tens of thousands, millions of Spanish people - writers, artists, actors, film-makers, lawyers, workmen, masters, housewives, employees, newspaper people, union members, doctors, officials and workers of any other sector - who dedicated a considerable amount of their time over the past two years to fighting against a government of the extreme right. Only this explains the rage, the indignation, the ferocity and, at the same time, the spontaneity of the strangest, most sorrowful and most emotional demonstrations in which I have taken part during my life.

At 6pm on Saturday, the calle Genova was so full of people that I could not even reach the centre. For more than two and a half hours I was at the corner of Genova and Campoamor, with tears in my eyes and an immeasurable rage in my throat. I was not afraid. I was a long way from the front, but from time to time I could see an arm in a plaster cast holding up an improvised placard of cardboard and black felt-tip pen: "I am a victim. I want information." We knew that what we were doing was illegal, but we were not doing anything different to what the government of our country was doing.

To demonstrate on a day of reflection is no more illegal than an unlawful war, it is no more illegal than the lies of the state, it is no more illegal than news propaganda, it is no more illegal than hiding information for party reasons on the eve of elections. You do not play with corpses, and that is what we were shouting, and that we had said no to the war, to that war which had been only theirs, of the government of Spain, but which had scattered corpses in our houses, on our streets and our pavements.

And we were not afraid. There was no room in us for fear. This was our funeral, our personal and furious homage to the victims. We would have felt pain even if ETA had been guilty; we did not hate ETA any more or less than we hated al-Qaida. We hated murderers infinitely, all murderers, and this hate motivated us, not fear.

Before the attacks, I was sure that the defeat of the Popular party was not only possible but also that it was much nearer than it seemed. Now, the certainty that Aznar, the supposedly great leader of a new and strong Spain, is to go down in history as the person to blame for the Madrid massacre, does not even console me. We have got rid of him, and I have a bitter taste in my mouth.

But faced with horror, only honesty is befitting, there is no room for fear. It is important that no one is mistaken. On Sunday, the Spanish people voted bravely, they voted with rage and they voted according to their conscience. Spain has not humiliated herself before the attacks of terrorists, she has risen up against a government which humiliated her every day by using terrorism as an electoral weapon. Spain has shown that she is a decent country. The Socialist party has won the elections, but never was a victory so desired been at the same time as sad as this one.