The Spectator talks to Jose Maria Aznar...

A nice interview with the former Prime Minister of Spain.

It was ‘scandalous, outrageous’ that Spain’s socialist leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, should have blamed him for the Madrid bombings, and he cannot imagine any political leader in Britain suggesting that his friend and soulmate Tony Blair was responsible for the London attacks because of his support for military action in Iraq. Now, in the minutes after the London attack, he hopes British public opinion ‘will strongly support the Prime Minister’.

Aznar recalls with obvious distaste a meeting he attended of the European Council of Ministers about two weeks after the Madrid attacks and shortly before he handed over to Zapatero. His European partners were effusive in their sympathy for, and solidarity with, Spain. But then came what he calls ‘the reflection’. And, after reflecting, his partners concluded that they should ‘examine the roots of terrorism — poverty and injustice in the world’.

‘That,’ he says, ‘was the expression of Europe. I thought it was a very serious mistake because it reflected a lack of determination to fight terrorism. So I asked them, “What is the connection between the attacks on Madrid and poverty and injustice?”’ It was the terrorists, not poverty or some notion of injustice, that had caused the slaughter. But Aznar’s protests were not considered to be within ‘the spirit of Europe’, and were politely turned aside. ‘It was easier,’ he says, ‘for them to look at the sky.’