“Even today, Aznar continues to maintain his huge lie about the 11 million”

Spain was emerging from the trauma of Francoism and the difficult transition when this country found itself facing the most serious attack in its history: the Atocha massacre, hundreds of people murdered by a terrorist organization which the government of the time will immediately attribute to ETA. That government was presided over by José María Aznar, of the Popular Party, who days later would have to face another candidate, Mariano Rajoy, of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s Socialist Party.

On that occasion the outgoing leader telephoned the editors of the national newspapers assuring them of ETA’s guilt. A journalist, Jesús Ceberio, who was responsible at the time Villagehe changes the neutral title on the cover and assumes what the President of the Government tells him: it was Eta.

Twenty years later, Ceberio combined memory with facts to explain, in “The Call” (Toro), the root and consequences of that very serious episode which would also have consequences on his work and on the political coexistence of this country.

-First impression of that moment?

– It was so brutal and unexpected, three days before the general election. Aznar and his government were amazed. Aznar’s idea was to organize the largest disinformation operation ever to take place in Spain. With only one goal: to get to the day of classes, March 14, trying to make voters believe that ETA did it. He tried to prevent voters from linking that attack with the policies he had followed in the invasion of Iraq and with his alliance with Bush. He got involved when he called six newspaper editors to sell the theory that it was ETA without having any material evidence pointing in that direction. I think it’s truly a brutal fraud on the public.

-What was the purpose of that call? What title would they call one way or another?

-Decidedly. Unfortunately in my case it succeeded: I titled the special edition of 11M falsely attributing the attack to ETA, following its example. Some even did it, others didn’t assume it, at least in the important title on the cover. The aim was to erase traces of the attack from the Islamists until the elections took place. The truth is, 20 years later he is maintaining that lie. In an American program, about four months ago, he went so far as to say that he had not changed a comma of what had been his statement before the parliamentary commission of inquiry in which he maintained without batting an eyelid that the paternity was unequivocally ETA’s .

-For what purpose, if it had been denied?

-I can’t find out why Aznar supports this thesis. The truth is that he supports it against all odds, against the judicial truth expressed in the ruling of the National Court and against all evidence. All the academic studies that have been done, and there are many on this attack due to its very enormity, lead to a more or less hierarchical branch of Al Qaeda… There is no one who has questioned the authorship of the attack along these lines.

-What consequences did that lie have for this country, for politics and for journalism?

-Antonio Muñoz Molina published an article last year in El País, The Age of Cowardice, in which he highlighted how professional and organized lying had established itself in the political life of Spain and attributed its origin to “two founding lies ” by Aznar: one on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which led to the photo of the Azores [Bush junto a Aznar], to involve this country in the war; and another that of 11M.

Aznar did not completely rectify either of the two hypotheses, at most he admitted that the information his government had at the time on weapons of mass destruction was that Iraq possessed them, that the reality was different but that a politician must act on the information available to him at that moment. In the case of 11M he continues to maintain that the suspicion of contacts between ETA and Islamists, although it seemed like an unfounded theory, had become “indisputable”.

-What encouraged you to do this research?

-I started working on it 10 years after the attack and what encouraged me was reading the second volume of Aznar’s memoirs where, to talk about 11M, he uses a rather complicated technique: instead of searching his memory he resorts to reproducing the diaries he wrote those days. There are a couple of anecdotes about those diaries that suggest they weren’t actually written at all in those days. On April 2, bombs were discovered in a location in Toledo, on the AVE line that passes through Mocejón, which once again increased the level of uncertainty while Aznar was still president, and planted it a week earlier. Reading that second volume encouraged me to work with witnesses of that moment.

The first was Pedro Arriola, its main demographic guru, who was credited with saying: “If it were the Islamists, we will lose the elections. If it’s ETA we win with an absolute majority.” He did not acknowledge his authorship to me, but he assumed that he had used that conjecture in some meetings and that it had been a recurring topic in some commissions. I spoke with Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, Jorge Dezcallar, Eduardo Zaplana…

At that time and for many years Zaplana was his main flaming sword, because Acebes did not have a special role in public opinion, but Zaplana did, who was the biggest propagandist of the ETA theory and what the press had cooked up. led by El Mundo, which published any crazy, absurd or invented theory on the front page with great ostentation.

-What consequences did this episode have for journalism and for you?

-These events left a lasting mark on Spanish political life which was consolidated in questioning the legitimacy of a party, the PSOE, to govern the country. Zapatero was bombed persistently, relentlessly, during his first term, presumably because his legitimacy would have been seriously questioned for coming to power after such an attack. Attacking that, according to Aznar’s theory, what he wanted was to remove the PP from power and that is why everything Zapatero did was supposedly illegitimate.

The theory of someone’s illegitimacy in the exercise of power has been exploited in recent times by the far right, questioning the opponent’s right to govern, ending up delegitimizing him as a candidate to govern. In this country the delegitimization of the political opponent does not happen because this or that policy is wrong or one is against the other, it is the right of every opponent in a democracy to criticize the decisions of the government in power, it is part of the essence of democracy. What is not in the treaty of the democratic Constitution is that someone is not legitimized to aspire to power.

-Have you ever forgotten that call?

-No, I experienced it as direct pressure from a sovereign to obtain (and in this case he did) the version he wanted El País to provide without him having to provide any proof. It was a mere deduction and an appeal to the history of this country. What I regret extraordinarily is that I succeeded. I changed the title of the front page of El País, the biggest mistake I made in my professional life.w