Making history: Aznar, Eta, al-Qaida

It's possible the glaring omission in this excerpted article arose from dodgy editing, but it is still incredible that an account of Aznar's ignominious exit from office can contrive to ignore the mass mobilisations that preceded it.

In the end, it was not al-Qaida that brought down the People's Party (which was fielding Mariano Rajoy for prime minister, as Aznar stuck to a pledge not to serve more than two terms). It was Eta. Or, rather, it was the party's obsession with Eta which meant it could not - or did not want to - see that the real culprits lay elsewhere.

First, this is a brazen effort to absolve the People's Party of their responsibility: attempting to hide the consequences of the invasion of Iraq behind Eta was a sick piece of spin. Second, this is - in a typical dodge - attempting to write activist politics out of history; in this case, to the point of total implausibility. Here's another view.