The contest in Spain had always been close between the governing Popular Party, which backed Mr. Bush's policies, and the Socialists, who opposed them. Other issues at stake before the bombings were unemployment, a housing shortage, women's rights and social benefits.
In March 2003, at the height of opposition to the Iraq war, the Socialists were ahead in polls. With the economy roaring and the Socialist Party in disarray (see my earlier post on the ETA-Catalon scandal), the Popular Party pulled ahead. On March 7, the last date in which polls were published, an Opina poll showed that the gap had narrowed, giving the Popular Party 42 percent, compared with 38 percent for the Socialists.
Four days later, terror struck. With Madrid under siege, voters were expected to rally around the flag and stick with the party that had talked the toughest against terrorism, at least initially. Even the Socialists braced themselves for that outcome, said two senior party officials.
But interviews with scores of Spaniards of both parties indicated that a number of things happened after the attacks that shifted the balance to the Socialists. Voters flooded the polls on Sunday in record numbers, especially young people who had not planned to vote. In interviews, they said they did so not so much out of fear of terror as out of anger against a government they saw as increasingly authoritarian, arrogant and stubborn. The government, they said, mishandled the crisis in the emotional days after the attacks.
Voters said they were enraged not only by the government's insistence that the Basque separatist group ETA was responsible, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, but they also resented its clumsy attempts to quell antigovernment sentiment.
For example, the main television channel TVE, which is state-owned, showed scant and selective scenes of antigovernment demonstrations on Saturday night, just as it ran very little coverage of the large demonstrations against the war in Iraq last year. It also suddenly changed its regular programming to air a documentary on the horrors of ETA.
That was the last straw for some Spaniards, who said it evoked the nightmare of censorship during the Franco dictatorship little more than a quarter of a century ago.
Prime Minister José María Aznar personally called the top editors of Spain's major dailies twice on the day of the attacks. In the first round of calls, Mr. Aznar said he was convinced that ETA was responsible.
"He said, `It was ETA, Antonio, don't doubt it in the least,' " said Antonio Franco, editor in chief of the Barcelona-based El Periódico de Catalunya, in an interview.
Mr. Franco's newspaper published a special edition based on Mr. Aznar's call, then Mr. Franco published an editorial rectifying the mistake as new information came to light. "It was shameful to me that the whole world was taking precautions and debating about Al Qaeda except in Spain, where the attack occurred," he said.
At the Spanish news agency EFE, Alfonso Bauluz, a correspondent and member of the agency's union, said, "I received information from my colleagues, who have good sources, about the Al Qaeda hypothesis, but the editor said we don't want that, don't pay attention. On Saturday, the editor wrote a story with his own byline saying all possibilities of an Al Qaeda connection were thrown out."
During Mr. Aznar's second call that evening, he acknowledged that other avenues were being investigated, but discounted them, Mr. Franco said.
Meanwhile, within 24 hours of the terrorist attacks, the Socialists, through their own intelligence and diplomatic contacts in the Muslim world, were already leaning toward the theory that Al Qaeda and not ETA was responsible, two senior Socialist Party officials said.
Spaniards are still struggling to absorb both the shock of the terror attacks and interpret the result of the upset election on Sunday.
"The terrorism attack has changed the result of the election, but the people were also deceived by the government, so it's a combination, a mix of the two of things," said Elena Roldán, a 28-year-old law librarian who voted Socialist.
At the bus and train terminal at Plaza de la Castilla in northern Madrid, Alberto Martín, a 31-year-old nuclear physicist who voted Socialist, said, "If the government had said, `We don't know who did it,' nothing would have happened and Zapatero would not be there. Aznar was making decisions without any consideration for people's concerns. Look at the war in Iraq. Aznar thought he was God! There was no dialogue."
The election, Mr. Martín added, "is a victory for the people, not for terrorism. You see, I'm now going to take the train."
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