Spain Forgets to Remember Its Past

The unity of anger was not to last. The explosions occurred three days before a general election that the conservative Popular Party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was expected to win comfortably. Within hours of the attack, the government condemned ETA, which only three months earlier had tried to smuggle bombs onto trains traveling to Madrid. Aznar, himself the victim of a prior ETA attack, was convinced that the group was responsible. Denials from ETA sources only increased his anger.

But Aznar's fury was defensive, too. As an ally of President Bush, Aznar had sent Spanish troops to Iraq despite overwhelming popular opposition to the war. So he could not allow himself to believe that the Madrid atrocity was linked to his foreign policy. In addition, he had waged his election campaign on the basis of the government's success against ETA.

Over the next day or so, more evidence pointed decisively at Muslim radicals. Yet Aznar even called newspaper editors personally to guarantee that ETA was responsible. But soon there was no doubt that this terrorist atrocity had been carried out by Muslim radicals, in the name of al-Qaeda. With his denials, which were fully discredited by the time Spaniards went to the polls, Aznar split the country and handed a victory to al-Qaeda. One of the new Socialist government's first announcements was the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq.

The country's exasperation with Aznar also strengthened that enduring Spanish skepticism of armies and foreign wars, which stretched back to the collapse of the country's empire at the end of the 19th century. Aznar compounded the resentment by playing on Osama bin Laden's claim to Spain as an eternal part of the Islamic world. It was a dangerous ploy, if only because it risked perpetuating the old polarization between Islam and Christendom that long predated the manipulated alternatives of communism and Fascism, and may once again replace them.

Nobody in Spain really emerged a winner, except in the very short term. The nation was once again deeply divided over its history -- one more sign that Spaniards have great difficulty separating their political identity from their nation's past. Last September, I was dismayed when Spanish journalists asked whether the current splits were comparable to those that caused the civil war.

Spain now needs a pact of remembering, not of forgetting, but it must be a completely different approach to memory: one that evades the self-perpetuating propaganda ghosts of the past; one that freely recognizes the dangerous consequences of refusing to compromise. Spaniards have many great virtues, particularly generosity, imagination, a sense of humor, courage, pride and determination. But trying to understand an opponent's point of view is not usually high among them. It is an underrated attribute. The tragedy of the Spanish Civil War is surely the most powerful reminder that we despise it at our peril.

Antony Beevor is author of "The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939" (Penguin).