The PP of 11-M remains obsessed with ETA

MadridTwenty-two years after the 11-M attacks, the People's Party (PP) of José María Aznar's era remains obsessed with ETA. Coinciding with the anniversary of that terrible event, the former Spanish Prime Minister presented the new book by Jaime Mayor Oreja, Minister of the Interior from 1996 to 2000 and currently president of the ultraconservative Catholic foundation NEOS. An Inconvenient Truth (Espasa, 2026), Mayor Oreja reviews the "years of lead" and defends the theory that for more than twenty years Spain has been experiencing a "process" that could culminate in ETA's victory thanks to the left's "concession" to its "totalitarian plan." "ETA will win and will have a Lehendakari (President of the Basque Government). [...] We will see ETA govern in the Basque Country and Navarre," Mayor Oreja stated Wednesday night, despite the terrorist group's dissolution years ago.

The former Minister of the Interior presented this theory to Aznar and also to the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who sat in the front row and became one of the main attractions of the event. The leader of the PP in Madrid began the day with an institutional event honoring the victims of the March 11 attacks in the Puerta del Sol and ended it listening to Mayor Oreja assert that the attack "was carried out to change the political direction of Spain." The former Spanish president has remained silent and avoided fueling, though he hasn't denied, the conspiracy theories that still surround the events, despite the fact that it has been judicially proven that the perpetrators were jihadists and not ETA, as his government initially maintained. When Aznar has explicitly mentioned the terrorist group, it has been to recall the attacks directed against him. "I am a survivor," he asserted. Mayor Oreja compared the former conservative president to Luis Carrero Blanco, prime minister under dictator Francisco Franco, who was assassinated in 1973. "ETA has always targeted the successor," the former minister reflected, arguing that the difference between Carrero Blanco and Aznar is that in the attempted car bombing of the latter in 1995, "the plan backfired." "They humanized the face of the right" and propelled Aznar's victory the following year in the general elections, he said. Just the opposite of what happened in 2004 when the conservatives tried once again to play the ETA card.

Aznar and the effects of "polarization"Hours before participating in the presentation in Madrid, Aznar was in Valencia where has justified the United States' attack on Iran And that "Spain must support its allies." The former Spanish president expressed surprise that his words had generated controversy. In his view, it demonstrates the level of "polarization" in the country and that the upcoming elections will have a "constituent" character. "The historical continuity of Spain is at stake," he asserted.