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The current leadership of the PP came out this Monday in defense of the Government of José María Aznar in the face of the “attacks” that it claims it receives for its controversial management of the attacks of March 11, 2004, exactly two decades ago today. “20 years have passed since a very hard day for Spanish society and democracy. I absolutely agree that today is not the day for you to dedicate yourself to attacking the person who was in charge of the Government and, with it, all those who had to face those days,” stated the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, when being asked at a press conference if she shares the terms of the statement that FAES has released on the occasion of the anniversary of 11-M. The foundation chaired by Aznar gives a self-exculpatory account of that administration and complains about the “slanderous reproaches” directed at the former president and his team, in reference to the information that these days has once again revealed that that Government lied, attributing to ETA the authorship of the attack when the bulk of the evidence already pointed to jihadist terrorism.
The number two de Feijóo has not responded, however, to the question of whether the current leadership of the PP is proud of the Aznar Government’s management of the attack. Sources from Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s cabinet have also declined to answer. The popular leadership assures that today they do not want to fuel controversies, and that is why they have also tiptoed around the fact that Feijóo has not been invited to the institutional event for 11-M that the President of the Government attended. Sources from La Moncloa have explained that “it is an act of the European Commission and it is the Commission that has issued the invitations,” reports Miguel Gonzalez. Feijóo has attended the event organized by the Government of the Community of Madrid, and that of the AVT victims’ association in the so-called Forest of Remembrance in the El Retiro park in Madrid.
While the current leadership of the PP tries to lose profile due to the controversial management of 11-M by Aznar, the former president has defended himself in a long statement through the foundation he directs, FAES. In the document, Aznar does not assume any error for the communication that his Government made in the moments and days after the attack – when he insisted that the most probable authorship was that of ETA despite the fact that the evidence pointed to jihadist terrorism – nor for the decision to embrace the so-called conspiracy theory that for years continued to place ETA as the author or accomplice of the massacre. Furthermore, the text prepared by his foundation disconnects the attack from Spain’s participation in the Iraq war.
“Twenty years later,” FAES defends, “we reiterate that that Government did not ignore any police or intelligence report that contradicted its attitude or its communication policy during those days.” “No official document ever came into the hands of the Government that definitively ruled out ETA authorship and unhesitatingly affirmed jihadist responsibility,” he emphasizes. In those days, however, the version given by the Executive was not that ETA authorship was one of the possibilities, but that it was the main hypothesis.
Aznar, through his foundation, complains that he continues to be accused of having lied about the attack for electoral calculation, something he describes as a “story.” The statement concludes: “Not even the Government of that time was aware of the evidence that it is accused of hiding; nor in his actions did he fail to pay attention to the indications that he had at his disposal at all times, nor does the equation that functions as the premise of the thesis (Iraq = attacks) hold up at all. “The slanderous reproaches leveled against that Government have never been proven,” FAES maintains.
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Aznar’s foundation accuses, for its part, the Government of Pedro Sánchez of lying to the Spanish people. “Twenty years later we must recognize one of the slogans coined that Black March by the left as extremely topical. Agreed: today, more than ever, ‘the Spanish deserve a government that does not lie to them,’ the text states.
Gómez de Celis: the lie is “in the marrow of the PP”
The twentieth anniversary of the attack has once again highlighted the deep gap that 11-M caused between the PP and the PSOE. The socialists have today accused the PP of having committed “the greatest infamy and the greatest lie.” “The Government of José María Aznar put its electoral interest before respect and the truth, playing with the fear of all Spaniards,” said Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, head of institutional policy for the Socialists. “The PSOE asks the PP to apologize to all citizens,” he added at a press conference.
Javier Lizon (EFE)
“Even today we sadly observe that the PP, through its FAES foundation, continues without asking for forgiveness, citing in a statement up to five times the terrorism of ETA and, however, only on one occasion the real jihadist terrorism, which “Our country suffered 20 years ago,” continued the also first vice president of Congress. “Lies and infamy remain in the core of the PP as a way of doing politics.”
“The exemplary solidarity of our country did not deserve the manipulation that the PP did to the Spanish citizens. He was opportunistic and lacked all ethics. While all of us Spaniards mourned the victims, the PP only thought about how to win elections by conspiring and lying,” continued Rodríguez Gómez de Celis. The PSOE leader concluded: “Today’s PP has been built on that big lie and continues to act with the same pattern. Obtain the Government, whoever falls, even if those who fall are the Spanish.”
Institutional offensive of the PSOE due to the PP’s veto of the path of stability
Last week, the PP overthrew the Government’s path of budgetary stability for the second time, which in practice will mean that communities and town councils will no longer have 4.5 billion euros in their 2024 accounts. The PSOE will present motions in all town councils of Spain and in the regional parliaments to confront the PP with this contradiction: it governs in 12 autonomies and thirty provincial capitals, in addition to hundreds of smaller town councils.
The objective of the socialists is that each city council and each community “report on the real consequences of the boycott on the path of stability of the regional and municipal budgets,” Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis indicated this Monday. The PSOE estimates that Málaga could build almost 400 officially protected homes with the 36 million it will lose; Barcelona, with 101 million, 200 kilometers of bike lanes; Seville (42 million), the tram expansion works; In Coruña, without 15 million, the home help service and the dining room scholarships; and Las Palmas (23 million), the equivalent of home care for the elderly.
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