Spain Follow

CHRISTIAN HOGSBJERG reviews the play Homage to Catalonia, based on George Orwell's book of that name, and MIGUEL ARIAS recommends Orwell's original account of revolution in Barcelona.

Spanish voters kick out Bush's other ally

SPAIN'S ELECTORATE shocked the world by voting out its pro-war government on Sunday. There is no mainstream party you can vote for in Britain that has been unequivocally against the war. The Tories backed the war, the Lib Dems supported the war once it started.

'NO WAR! No war!" the crowd chanted as the Socialist Party leader, Zapatero, made his acceptance speech in Madrid on Sunday. They did so as a shock election result in Spain removed from office the Tory Popular Party of Aznar. Aznar was the one of the key European leaders who most backed the war against Iraq, and a year ago posed with Bush and Blair in the Azores as they launched that war.

"THIS IS not the time for politics. We must show our unity against the terrorists, regardless of class or party." So proclaimed all the mainstream politicians in Spain and Britain after last week's bombings. But the governments supporting last year's war did not lose one minute in trying to squeeze the political advantage for themselves.

THE TERRORIST attacks in Madrid, placed in three local trains, took place around 7.30am last Thursday. Most of the victims were commuting to work and school. The aim of the terrorists, according to the police, was to blow up the trains inside Atocha's station and bring down the whole building.

SPAIN'S TORY government tried to blame ETA for the Madrid explosions as part of its attempt to hang on to power using Spanish nationalism in a completely reactionary manner. Under the Spanish republic established in 1931 Catalonia and the Basque country had their own governments. Franco's fascists destroyed this independence when they overthrew the republic in the civil war of 1936-9.

Despite mass mobilisation against them, the right seem set to win the election in Spain. Andy Durgan assesses the prospects for a revival of the radical left.

LAST WEEK was a pretty bad one for George W Bush and his neo-conservative administration-and not just because of events in London, Istanbul and Baghdad. Bush suffered a bad setback back home in Florida, the state where he secured his dubious victory in the 2000 presidential race.Miami last week hosted a ministerial meeting whose aim was to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas, better known in Latin America by its Spanish acronym ALCA.

MOST OF us wouldn't expect to get paid for running a vital service into the ground and then get paid again to "rescue" it. Not so if you head the government's privatised education inspectorate, Ofsted. The quango became notorious for systematically rubbishing schools and teachers with "inspections" that resembled the Spanish Inquisition.

MANY IN York were shocked by the sudden death of Colin Clark. Colin fought for socialism in the Labour Party and in engineering and council workplaces in the West Midlands during the 1960s and 70s. Let down by Labour, he joined the Socialist Workers Party in York. In his early fifties he successfully studied for a degree in History and Spanish.

REMEMBER THE headlines when in January Spanish police arrested 16 North Africans who lived in Barcelona and Girona? "Major Al Qaida Attack Foiled" trumpeted the BBC. Tabloid papers ran lurid tales and the Guardian declared that "the group was poised to launch bomb attacks in Europe".