If the Sept. 11 attacks united, for a brief moment, the U.S.'s two political parties in patriotic determination, the March 11 attacks had exactly the opposite effect in Spain. It's been five years since Madrid awoke to the horror of the Atocha train bombings, and 18 months since Spain's national court tried and found guilty 21 people for participating in or abetting the attacks. But the breach the attacks opened in Spanish politics lingers.
The biggest terrorist attack on European soil left 191 dead, thousands injured, and a realization that the country was far more vulnerable than all but a few (mostly ignored) experts had recognized. But its longest-lasting repercussions were political: just three days after the attacks, while the governing Popular Party still insisted — despite growing evidence to the contrary — that the Basque terrorist group ETA, and not Islamist terrorists, were to blame, the country held national elections. In a surprise upset, the Socialist party, headed by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, beat the conservative PP, which had been in power since 1996. (See pictures of the Madrid bombing.)
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