The events in Spain this month have changed the face of democratic politics in Western Europe and across the world. The Madrid train bombing on March 11 killed 190 and injured more than 1200. Three days later, Spaniards turned out in record numbers to elect the Socialist Party and throw out of office the ruling Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, one of the strongest proponents of the Bush Doctrine in Europe.

Incoming Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced that he planned to pull Spanish troops from the American-led “coalition” in Iraq by June as promised in his election platform.

U.S. President Bush presented his doctrine succinctly with his post 9/11 statement: “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists.” Not surprisingly therefore, this week’s events have prompted attacks from supporters of Bush and his policies on the Spanish people.

Right-wing New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote, “Some significant percentage of the Spanish electorate was mobilized after the massacre to shift the course of the campaign, throw out the old government and replace it with one whose policies are more to Al Qaeda’s liking.” Former Bush speechwriter David Frum added, ”terrorism has won a mighty victory in Spain.” And on and on it goes from the Daily Telegraph to the National Review.

Let’s set aside the timing of these comments as Madrid continues to recover from the horrors of 3/11 and the contempt for democracy barely hidden in such criticisms. Accusing the Spanish people of appeasement misses the point of these elections; the defeat of the arrogant Aznar government revealed the strength of Spanish democracy.

Firstly, the elections were close before the Madrid bombings. The Socialists had been leading in the polls in 2003 and were down by less than four per cent in the most recent public opinion poll before the election. Zapatero had campaigned effectively on the decline of public services and the impact of the government’s right-wing policies on Spain’s economy. Unemployment in Spain for example was 11 per cent during the election campaign. And the government has consistently centralized political power in Madrid and expressed haughty contempt for regional aspirations in the country.

Prime Minister Aznar himself, sensing political trouble, chose not to seek a third term and turned over leadership of his Popular Party to his chosen successor Mariano Rajoy, a more moderate, less polarizing personality.

Secondly, Spanish voters’ overwhelming opposed the war in Iraq, by as much as 90 per cent in some public opinion polls. The decision of the Aznar Popular Party government to support the American-led invasion of Iraq with 1300 Spanish troops was widely unpopular and reinforced the impression that the government was out-of-touch. Government-controlled media largely ignored massive public protests against the war.

Thirdly, the Spanish government’s reaction to the Madrid bombing was to repeatedly blame the Basque separatist group ETA. Aznar himself phoned media outlets to assert that ETA’s responsibility for the bombings was a fact and instructed the Foreign Ministry to pass this message on to governments around the world. The Popular Party feared that any link between the terrorist attack and the war in Iraq would damage it politically and wished to place the blame squarely on internal enemies to mobilize political support.

Aznar’s self-serving attempt to blame ETA brought back memories of the evidence presented to justify the Iraq war itself. The Popular Party based its support for the war on the existence of “weapons of mass destruction” and refused to allow a parliamentary debate this year once its claims and those of the U.S. and the UK had been discredited.

By election eve, with five suspects under arrests apparently linked to Islamist movements and repeated denials from ETA, it was clear the government had been at best incompetent and at worst attempting to mislead the public and take political advantage of Madrid’s horror. The vote was a repudiation of a high-handed and desperate attempt to highjack democracy by the Spanish government itself.

Writing in Salon, Georgetown University Professor Norman Birnbaum notes that “Spain is a society with an enormous amount of historical memory. The Popular Party is not a gang of fascists. However, its hyper-nationalist ideology, its authoritarianism, and its self-righteous lying were nonetheless unpleasant reminders of the past.” The victory of Zapatero’s Socialists showed the commitment of the Spanish electorate to the country’s hard-won democratic institutions. It is also a lesson to politicians who would use collective anguish for partisan gain.