I asked Jose Luis de Vicente, who I have met in person, to comment:
What is going on here is basically the following. Since the events of March 13th had obviously a very big impact on the result of the elections the following day, the conservative party has often implied that those demonstrations were orchestrated by the socialist opposition, channeling them through the PRISA media giant, a company that owns EL PAIS (the most read paper in Spain), and SER, the biggest radio stations chain, and that has traditionally been closer to socialists than to conservatives.Remember that from March 11 to March 13, the conservative government claimed that the basque separatist terrorist band ETA was behind the attacks. The PRISA media were the first to break the story that the government was probably not telling the truth, and were the first to stand behind the claim that a)it was alquaeda and not ETA b) the government knew it and they were lying on purpose not to lose the elections. They pursued that story very aggresively, sometimes too agressively:at one point they claimed there were suicide bombers on the trains, something that was just not true. But I would say the mostly stayed on the right track.
It was in this climate,with the information being broadcasted by the SER conflicting with the official information coming out of the government, that the smart mobs exploded. Obviously out of frustration and anger. Obviously influenced by the permanent reporting at the SER But saying that they were orchestrated is a very big claim that, until today, has not been supported with a single valid proof. Former government members mention it on media, conservative pundits pretend to pass it as fact, but there is no evidence, independent investigation, or smoking gun that has confirmed this. The closest they could find was the claim that members of the opposition received and forwarded emails and SMS calling for this demonstrations (I mean, what’s surprising about it? I can see why they would be forwarding them.)
But with all my respects, [your informants] claim that ” it was not spontaneous at all, but a very well orchestrated campaign to overturn the Government, in which both El Pais and SER radio network played a significant role” is a completely biased analysis, closer to the conspiracy theory discourses of ultraconservative media in Spain (claiming now, for instance, that the terrorist attack was orchestrated by the Marocco Intelligence Services, in collaboration with ETA) than to the actual facts.
I am not saying that PRISA’s stance was completely uninterested and unbiased either: they were obviously the first ones to celebrate when the conservatives fell. But I honestly believe that the former government doing such an awful job at explaining what was going on, in a country traumatized by the terrible attacks, and in a climate that was also strongly anticonservative (remember Aznar led Spain to a War that 90% of citizens were opossing)…they were just the natural conditions for something like that to happen.
Obviously this whole thing is getting very nasty. There is a commision in parliament working right now to stablish what really happened, and the general feeling is that no one, neither the former nor the actual government, are interested in the whole truth coming out.
I am very interested to see how the edition of Smart Mobs will be received and interpreted by people in both sides of the fence.
And, credit due to [your informant], it is completely true that the serious PR fuck-up El Pais has committed with that unfortunate publicity campaign has been a success of the blogosphere, who broke the story, researched to counterclaim hints that it was a hoax, and made EL PAIS apologize from their front page today.
PS:Full disclosure: I opposed the war, opposed the former conservative party politics, and consider myself leftist-liberal, but I am in no way affiliated with the Socialist Party, and have never worked for PRISA. I actually worked for four years as a technology writer for EL MUNDO, El Pais’s main rival, and closer to the conservative party.
Comments
@ 12:11
Your professor correspondent forgets that the same day of the bombings a van was found parked near one of the stations were the bombers boarded the trains. It contained a tape with arabic verses. The next two days the police were doubtful, but the evidence pointing to islamist grow with time. The 13th itself, the demonstrations day, the police arrested 5 islamists. During ALL those days the public TV stations, the papers and the radios close to the government downplayed the islamist clues and overplayed the ETA evidence. There was substantial evidente pointing towards the islamists from day one. Consecuently, a lot of people were very angry with the Partido Popular on the 13th, because they feeled they cheated on them for electoral gain. The exact charge a lot of conservatives now make against the new government.
@ 01:48
Hi, Howard. I am the author of Barcepundit, one of the blogs who covered the controversy arising from the ad from El Pais. This conversation on the spontaneity of the Spanish smart mobs in March is interesting. Can I point you to this post of mine (scroll down to “Final update”) where I comment on this?
@ 05:26
Hi Howard&Co:
It”s a pleasure to see your interest in Spanish 13M flashmobs has not died, as I can see for the foreword you wrote for yhe Spanish edition of Smart Mobs.
I wrote to you several months ago to recommend http://www.13m.org, the web site some friends and I have made around those demostrations. I”m glad you posted a link.Thanks. As it was followed with a huge increase of visits from the US, I think there”s some cause-effect thing around. Just after we tried to translate some of the contents to English.I made a terrible pre-translation, which is yet waiting to be corrected by a better English speaker. Anyhow I think if not correct it is at least understandable and can provide you a little more context. How it happened and how we lived it ( I was there, and being a non partisan liberal citizen, I think I can give an interesting point of view). I will post it later
Appart from that, there are some data none of your spanish writers have mentioned.( Be cafeful with “The anonymous professor in Spain” , there”s a huge right wing propaganda blog movement right now in Spain. And, on the other hand you should mention F. Pisani writes in El Pais, the newspaper of the PRISA media group that has been blamed to ).
The conservative politics and media are in a huge offensive to blame PRISA, (and specially SER radio station, as we should point out that the behaviour of the media from the PRISA group were not homogenous) to “be behind the agit-prop campaign”, mainly because a wrong information about suicide bombers in the trains.SER has appologized about this report, arguing haste (it was sais on air on 12M evening , and it took weeks to identify some of the bodies in the trains, so the hypothesis of the suicide was not that mad as it suggested in some cases an extreme proximity between the bombs an the body) and that the information came from antiterrorist police informers which had been consistent before.
Appart from that, SER and PRISA report of the smart mobs were not continue. I had SER mp3 files of all 13m and they connect no more than 4 times with the mobs , mainly in it early state ( they lasted till 5 am, and there were no connections after 1 am), and the first report was at 7 pm, when there were already 5000 people in the street.There are even some calls to calm from the presenters. Not reporting it would have been lying, as well as absurd, as there were lots of international media in PP headquarters as they were preparing to cover electoral day, 14M (I myself was interviewed by RAI (italian tv), a canadian radio station, Madrid regional TV and a nationwide economy radio station). This was also a major factor that avoided a violent repression like the ones we suffered on antiwar demonstrations
What became a major movilizing factor was the tv appearance of Rajoy, PP presidential candidate, “sending the demonstrators home”, and the broadcast on State tv of a documentary film about ETA murders, which had also been showed by Madrid”s regional tv (both controlled by PP). Those attempts of manipullation were, paradoxically, catalyzers of the reaction, as David de Ugarte ( who has posted regularly here) says in his article “Rajoy lost call” .Many people came after that to demonstrate, specially the elderly.
Other factor is the counting of the demonstrators: you should find everywhere a estimation of 4000/5000. Thats is only a rough truth. That could be the peak, but as the demonstration lasted from 6pm till 4am,and it moved ( from PP headquarters in Genoa St to Sol, Madrid”s geographical and symbolic center, kind of Times Square, then to Atocha, where the bombings took place, then to the COngrees and then back to Genoa St) you can easily guess that the people used to come and go. I myself left the mob for a couple of hours to have some dinner and warm up, as it was cold that day
So were the mob spontanous?. I should say so. They were organized by a quite small Madrid group of non partisans left wing activists, which efficiently spread the original message to communication nodes (nodo 50, indymedia, and lots of blogs in internet, foreign media), as well as the citizenship net of SMS ( increase of the traffic in 40%) worked extremely well due to the experience: we have been demonstrating for a year against the war.
And another thing: there were some attemts of creating a chain of SMS by PP supporters, and they didnt work: Mainly because of the core of the matter: it was clear to the majority of the people the government lied; but also, and this should interest you, because of the way: the SMS came from non familiar numbers, unlike the ones in the other net, so the didnt have the credibilty to be re-sent
Well, I spect this can lighten a little bit this topic
Sorry for my english
@ 05:27
Announcement SMS & Account of 13,March 2004 night in Madrid
In Spanish
¬¨√∏Aznar de rositas?¬¨√∏Le llaman jornada de reflexi‚–n y Urdaci trabaja? Hoy 13M, a las 18H. sede PP C/G‚àö¬©nova, 13.Sin partidos. Silencio de la verdad. P‚àö¬∞salo!
English traslation (as it is posted on http://www.smartmobs.com)
Aznar getting away with it for free? They call this the day of reflection and Urdazi is working? Today 13M, at 18 hours. Headquarters of PP Genoa Str. 13. Without parties. Silence for truth. Pass it on!
As too much context is needed, here there are some explanations
Aznar was Spanish PM from 1996 until 14 Mar 2004, general elections day. He voluntarily was not candidate on that elections, as he promissed. That”s why ‚Äö√Ñ√∫de rositas‚Äö√Ñ√π, ‚Äö√Ñ√∫getting away with it for free‚Äö√Ñ√π
Day of reflection is the day before general elections, on which according to Spanish Constitution there are no acts, concentrations nor propaganda allowed, so that the people take their decision about who to vote without influence.
Urdazi was the anchorman of the main national public TV station during the PP administration , who was sentenced recently for missinforming during the ecological disaster of the Prestige oiltanker, but still continued performing the role of spokesperson for the government for months. He was also sentenced because of the media coverage during a general strike in Spain, that according to Spanish TV did not take place, but millions of people had participated personally at it. He became the symbol of informative manipulation on PP”s behalf, specially hard as most of the spanish media are PP supporters
PASS IT ON!. That”s how the SMS I received around 3pm ended, announcing a silent concentration for the truth in front of Headquarters of PP Genoa Str. As’ comenzaba algo que con el paso de las horas iba difundi‚àö¬©ndose minuto a minuto. For each SMS received, 10,15, 20 messages more were sent. There were people that received up to 10 messages from differebt groups: family, work, studies, old school friends, neighbours, and those messages multiplied, spreading as fire flamesin the wind. By 6 pm a riot police squad guarded the party”s headquarters and the cops were asking for identification to every demonstrator that arrived. Half an hour later, however, the arrival of so many Madrid citizens exceeded police capacity, and an hour later Genoa St. was a hotbed of people shouting of anger and asking for Government explanations.
There were people crying, others who expressed their indignation shouting “liars, killers, we told you “no to war”; your war, our deads; were are not all, there are 200 missing; you have a chauffeur, we go by suburban train; everybody knows but us; Deads can”t be used, stop manipulation; we want to be at La Primera ‚Äö√Ñ√∫
The press on the other side of the police cordon was majoritarily foreign correspondants, and there was a huge set up of satellite dishes from european TV. From the streets around and from the entrance of the tube mor and more people of any age and race were joining the concentration, that at the end was no silent because it was difficult to be quiet when a minute of silence. It was always broken by somebody:” liars, assasins”. Tears and indignation spread as information. People was sticked to their radios and mobile phones rang without stop to transmit information to somebody who also spread itm, news went mouth-to-mouth
When Rajoy (PP”s candidate) declared to the media that the concentration was illegal and unlawful, and accused the PSOE ( the opposition party) of having organized it, the crowd roared and answered back: ‚Äö√Ñ√∫we”ve been summoned by the victims; people”s voice, is not illegal‚Äö√Ñ√π. How colud we be illegalsm when the Government went on lying, hiding information and infringing people”s most ellementary rights: the right to expression and the right to the information
On TVE1, a film. On Genoa St, the hours were passing and the y los √°nimos se iban encendiendo cada vez m√°s. People kept coming, y there were no flags from political parties or trade unions . Only improvised banners with pen and cardboards. People was not singing; everything was shouts of pain and indignation. The police squad boss confessed to a journalist from SER radio station that they couldnt dissolve the concentration because we were more than 5000 people there, and they couldnt charge against a crowd where there were children an old people.
Everytime somebody in the PP headquarters was on the windowm the people roared and demanded the truth, and meanwhile news kept arriving from spontaneous concentrations in every city of Spain
9pm and nobody had moved, despite it was cold. A note that was passing hand to hand came to us ” at 12, in Sol. Pass it on ”
Sudenly another new spreads between the people: 2 hindis and 3 moroccans had been taken early in the morning for their relationship with the supposed assasings of bombings. Intelligency services in one side, and Government in the other. Spanish people abroad, friends from everywhere in the world kept on sending news from the main TV channels in the world: Bush regrets that spanish support to his Irak`s war had had consequences for Madrid. On the other hand, the Government does not regret, but hides information and calls for calm, and insists that in the day of reflection perople is not allowed to take on to the streets to express. We roared even lowder:” We dont leave, get out to the balcony, face the consequencesm PP responsible, PP guilty, your war, our deads, you, fascists, are the terrorists”
10 pm and people goes to Sol taking the streets without permission. I go to Lavapies to have some dinner, and take som winter clothes because I dont feel my hands due to the cold. The square is empty, and in Cabeza St we find a young girl that in the thresold of her house bangs a saucepan with con la cabeza alta y el semblante grave. Shyly, neighbours get out to the balconies and bang their saucepans. Firstly is a soft jingle, afterward balconies of every street start to open an deafening buzzing expands all over theneighbourhood. we go down to the square that is beginning to crowd of people banging saucepans, frying pans and instruments of any kind with strength. A german TV camera appears, and the square and the streets are filled with people protesting without words, and in a beautyful moment it seems that everybody follows the same rhythm. A mournful,strong, dry,hard rhythm plenty of fury and solemnity
And we all march to Sol, where we can”t even getm because Madrid is in the street. News keep flying, solidarity messages keep multiplying with the protests of other cities, news kept spreading, Police has charged in Zaragoza and Barcelona.
Its being studied the cancellation of the elections, it has appeared suddenly a video taoe in which Est‚àö¬∞n Al Qaeda reivindicates the bombings and people talks surprised and indignates about that we are not in the media. On SER radio station they comment that despite the take of the streets by the citizenshipm they will no longer broadcast to preserve the calm and not . 21st century censorship. Cameras, microphones, and lights disappear; there only rest german reporters who work without stop, and we keep shouting and every street aroun Sol are collapsed. No flags, no parties, no magnetophones, no organizers, no orders. The crowd starts moving spontaneously to Atocha and police retires with discrection. The street is ours and we walk by wherever we want, stopping the traffic. Nobody breaks glasses, nobody breaks urban mobiliary, Madrid advances civically and Ansu‚àö¬∞tegui orders invisibility. Police turns off sirens, and ‚Äö√Ñ√π milk delivery vans ‚Äö√Ñ√π are barely perceived. “Come with us”, somebody shouts to the ones in uniform, that do not dare to lok to our eyes. The fury is in the shout, in the words. People requests the Government to inform, the media to inform, the Government to face its responsability and stop lying the whole country, thats by Internet and mobile phones is connecting with the rest of the world. National media understimate the protest and set up clear which side they are. People high their phones to let the ones in the other side hear the envoronment in Madrid. Lots of people came down by Prado and Atocha St. And other paper passes by: at 2 am, 5 minutes of silence. Pass it on. Everybody to the ground. Grave silence. No cameras. Thousands of lightened candles, and a shout, full of pride, breaks the silecs: ‚Äö√Ñ√∫viva Madrid‚Äö√Ñ√π, and ‚Äö√Ñ√∫everybody shouts, viva, viva Madrid‚Äö√Ñ√π. ‚Äö√Ñ√∫Aznar, listen, the people is on fight‚Äö√Ñ√π, and the human river advances to the Congress. On the radio there is only music and Real Madrid”s match summaries.
The voices are cracked as hours go by, Feet ache, and there is no fear, no police, only a hellicopter over hour heads, and an euphoria feeling when we see how many we are, we are uncountable. “We also were at yesterday”s demosntration”, some cardboard banners said. In front of the Congress, ‚Äö√Ñ√∫milk delivery vans‚Äö√Ñ√π protect the sacred place where a few take the decissions without asking. People shout again, we said No to war, we said No to war, your war, our deads, an oil well by a blood well, liars, TVE= NODO, Urdaci nazi,we want the truth. We pass by the Congress, take Gran V’a, follow up Hortaleza St. People get out of the bars, pubs and discos. Some they join, some provocate asking what”s going on and why do we tajke the streets, and Madrid advances unstopable under the look of the hellicopter. Disco”s door men look at us hallicinating. We get back to the PP headquarters, and people, despite tireness, keeps oin howling: 4, 5 am, and people shouts ‚Äö√Ñ√∫today we protests, tomorrow you will be fired; it has to be noticed at the time to vote; murderers, liars‚Äö√Ñ√π
Exhausted, y come bak home. In Sol the are hundreds of lightened candles, tens of bunches of flowers and banners, letters, paper shouts where people show their solidarity and their. People kneel down, lightens up more candles, and everything is quiet. Banners are all around Sol; cleaning services respect this time the pain of a whole city that cries its deads. Flags from all over the world, arabic writings, ‚Äö√Ñ√∫no to terrorism, PP answer‚Äö√Ñ√π messages from the victims families, ‚Äö√Ñ√∫it”s enough horror, we want the truth, tv= manipulation‚Äö√Ñ√π and four beggars, leaning on the wall, surrounded by candles, in silence. ‚Äö√Ñ√∫The people cry, the Government lie. Luc’a we wont forget you; Dad I love you; This is not our war‚Äö√Ñ√π. Exhausted, I cant move from there. Because, as in Genoa St is where the fury is expressed, there is where pain, silence concentrate, candle lights and frozen flowers.
That”s what happened in Madrid, on the general election”s eve, on 3/13 (13M. And if the media didn”t want to reflect how the streets were taken by the people, let us at least spread it by the Net what it tries to be silenced and hidden. Because something has change after last night: we are no longer afraid. Nor in Madrid nor in any other city or village: and we need no parties to organize demonstrations, we now know that internet and the phones tell what the media do not, and we now know we have a communication tool, mouth to mouth, to express ourselves. Our fundamntal rights our Constitution recognises have been denied, and the people has paid way too expensive the raid of its Government in a war for oil. People that has never had problems with the arab world, people that is indignates by lies, and the insults of a presidential candidate. Madrid showed that is full of people of any nationality, age or social condition that”s sensitive, and last night was the real democracy, the one of the people sovereign,on which people expressed freely
@ 05:28
About us
13M tries to be a memory of an action of civil society that saw how sistematically ,and specially from 2002 to 2004, its demands where not heard by power, its protests where ignored, and even, in Madrid”s region parliament scandal (1), the popular will was betrayed. Civil demonstrations, that started on June 2002 general strike, uderstimated by public media (2) ; that continued with those organized by Nunca Mais collective against the wrong Government management of Prestige”s crisis (3) , and that reached its bigger strength on those of February 2003 in the attempt to stop Aznar”s alliance with Bush to participate in Iraq”s illegal war (4), crystallized on 3/13 (13M). That saturday, after an avalanche of news, thinkings and emotions after the 3/11 (11M) Madrid train bombings and the later attempts of ruling Popular Party (PP) to assign its authory to ETA (5) to gain profits on sunday”s general ellections, se produjeron las there started concentrations that, despite not being so massive as those agaist , represent in a better way the fact that although power, any power, always tries to keep citizenship subduedm missinformed or narcotized, sooner or later it awakes
On Saturday 3/13 (13M), summones in an spontaneous, by SMS and e-mails, people gathered in front of PP national”s headquarters on Madrid”s G‚àö¬©nova street at 6 in the evening. At the beginning we were only a few , much less than the riot police squad that guarded the building, and all of us fearing to be broken up violently as we were the year before on the demosntratiions agaist war. But, gradually, as a constant trickle, with movile phones ringing without stop, we were a crowd. With no trace of violence, people were asking for true. Naional media barely covered the smart mob, but there were a lot of foreign correspondents. Short after, there arrived news from other cities: Barcelona, Bilbao, Donostia, Pamplona …from where friends called asking: ‚Äö√Ñ√∫Are you there? I”m watching it on EuroNews,‚Äö√Ñ√π where people was doing the same: TAKE TO THE STREETS. Dusk arrive, people came by and leave. Rajoy was on TV sending us home and on TVE1 (public channel) a film about an ETA terrorist attack that was already shown the night before on Madrid TV, which provocated protests from film”s director”s and productor”s and that attack victim”s familiars. Concentration started to move: Sol (city center), Atocha (where the bombings took place) , the Parliament, Sol again, G‚àö¬©nova again. And so it went on, till dawn.
(1) On May,2003 Madrid regional elections resulted in 53 MP for PP (right), 46 for PSOE and 9 for IU (both left). Combined, PSOE and IU had the majority. 15 days later of the election, on the inaugural session of the parliament, unspectedly 2 MP ( E. Tamayo and M.J. Saez) from PSOE refused to support their party. As there”s a national pact that does not allow a party to take advantage of this kind of situations, 6 months later the elections had to be repeated. The results were: PP 55 MP, PSOE 44, IU 9. Just as if Tamayo&Saez had changed of party. Thus, some call this el ‚Äö√Ñ√∫Tamayazo‚Äö√Ñ√π
(2) On June, 2002 there was a general strike. Public TV news “informed” at 8am in the morning that the strike was a failure, although millions of people had participated personally at it. Alfredo Urdazi, the anchorman of the main national public TV station during the PP administration , was later sentenced for missinforming during the the media coverage of the general strike ( as well as for the coverage of ecological disaster of the Prestige oiltanker), but still continued performing the role of spokesperson in the main news bulletin for the government for months.
(3) On Winter 2003 Prestige oiltanker broke its hull near Galicia”s coast. PP government missattended it ( one of its ministers was hunting meanwhile) and tried to get rid of it, setting an erratical ( in the best of the cases) course for the tanker that led to its shipwreck in open waters and multiplied the efeect of the spill, causing the worst ecological disaster in Spains history, with oli arriving to french beaches. Public media under political control of PP and frienly media tried to understimate it. The citizen collective Nunca Mais (in galician Never More, as others tankers had already wrecked before in Galicia”s coasts) organized huge demosntration against PP policies on this fact and its media coverage.
(4) Despite the fact 90% of the population was against Irak”s war, Aznar send troops and supported Bush. On Feb 15 2003 there were the biggest demostrations in Spains history, until those of Mar 12 2004, against the Madrid terrorist attack
(5) Basque independentist terrorist group, that has killed 800 people in Spain since the 60″s, and frequently used by PP as its ‚Äö√Ñ√∫favourite enemy‚Äö√Ñ√π.
@ 05:41
Finally, there are cronologies of the facts of the days between 11m and 14m by two newspapers from two different media groups EL PAIS form Madrid ( PRISA grups)
(http://3diasdemarzo.blogspot.com/2004/05/tres-das-de-marzo-el-pas.html), and EL PERIODICO DE CATALUNYA, from Barcelona (http://3diasdemarzo.blogspot.com/2004/05/cronologa-del-silencio.html.Sorry, both in Spanish
Both newspapers denounced calls from PM Aznar to their directors assuring them that ETA was thew author of bombings “at 100%” on 11M.