Word: pp
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...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...
...PP found it very difficult to accept their loss," says William Chislett, author of several books on Spain. "They thought the Socialists were able to 'rob' the election because of the bombings. And the Socialists think they won because the Spanish people realized that the PP - their government - wasn't telling them the truth...
...Spain's troops out of Iraq - a measure that was one of the major planks of his campaign platform, but which his opponents interpreted as capitulation to al-Qaeda's demands. In an effort to both clear its own name and, no doubt, undermine support for the Socialists, the PP continued to insist that ETA had a hand in the attacks, and that the government was covering it up. (See pictures of al-Qaeda...
Over the course of Zapatero's first term, the PP requested that the government answer hundreds of questions about the alleged cover-up, while party leader Mariano Rajoy went so far as to suggest that a key piece of physical evidence - a backpack loaded with explosives - may have been planted in order to lend credence to the Islamist theory. These doubts were fanned by the center-right newspaper El Mundo, and Catholic radio station COPE into a full-fledged conspiracy campaign. Yet even after the country's national court found absolutely no connection between ETA and the Madrid attacks, Rajoy...
...describe the hostility between the two parties that prevented both civil discourse and legislative collaboration. On a lot of the issues that defined Zapatero's first term - gay marriage, the liberalization of divorce, civic education, compensation for victims of the Franco regime - it is unlikely that the conservative PP would have reached a compromise with the administration. But the ferocity of their protests suggested to many that more than ideological differences were in play. "Crispacíon was a tactical strategy," says former Socialist spokesman Diego López Garrido, today a deputy in the European parliament. "The PP used...