I received this, in response to my query, from a Spanish source I do not know personally:

Hi, Howard. My name is Jose Cervera, I am a journalist and multiblogger, and I live in Madrid. In fact, I used to live several years ago pretty close to the train line bombed on 11M, and rode it every day. I was here those days, connected to the web, watching TV and listening to the radio. Those were dark days.

I vividly remember that there was indeed an orchestrated campaign to influence the polls; and it was on TV and the pro-government papers and radios. Ministers and the Prime Minister tried to convince everybody that the bombers were ETA, the basque terrorists. Even when evidence was emerging pointing to islamists close to Al Qaeda (days 11, 12 and 13), the government pressed saying it was ETA. Most of the spanish press, even some of the opposition papers like El Pais went with this point of view. As a journalist, when your Prime Minister call the Editor in Chief to personally confirm an information, you tend to believe him. This happened. And the information was false.

I remember a growing sense of frustration and rage against the government and their allies. And it was because of this stonewalling on the perpetrators. The steadily growing evidence of islamist connections was systematically downplayed (not, this is true, eliminated), and the ETA possibility was stressed. Only a radio group (Cadena SER), ideologically opposed to the government, was very actively pursuing the islamist leads. Sometimes, even too enthusiastically; but you know how it is in times like these.

I have in my cell phone what I believe is one of the first wave of SMSs that were all over Madrid that fateful day (13/03/2004). Is dated 13:41 pm, and simply states that the government is withdrawing information. At 14:12, another one from other source, same text. The first one calling for a demonstration in front of the Partido Popular office has a date 16:58 pm. The text states that the government is lying, a journalist notorious for his pro-government ways is working, and you should do something. It adds: without parties, for truth, pass it on.

I was very worried and opposed the actions, thinking that the demonstrations could harden the will of the government supporters. But I personally re-sent those SMSs to my friends that day. That is the way I think it started: people spamming their cell phone books.

People started to send messages, venting their frustration with the official information. Then they became aware of the possibilities, and added the call for a demonstration. I really don’t believe there is any political organization in Spain sophisticated enough for pulling such a stunt. And the sources of my messages are people I know personally, ideologically motivated; not a message center. I sincerely believe it was self-organized.

Some people want to believe that the government was stolen from them, and they go so far as to accuse the party who won the elections of being somehow involved in the bombings, or a least forewarned and prepared to engineer the fall of the government. I don’t think so; but they don’t accept their defeat. Now, I think there are limits in politics; the kind of things you accuse your enemies of doing says something about how your mind works.