SEVILLE, SPAIN -- Spanish soldiers stationed in the Gulf may make up only a negligible percentage of allied forces in the region -- but their presence is anything but token as far as Spanish voters are concerned. That's because among the "Coalition of the Willing," the Spanish are the most unwilling. Even as the war has effectively come to a close, the political fallout from the Spanish government's unpopular alliance with the United States is threatening to put the left back in power for the first time since 1996. And that could move the Spanish government out of the ranks of those European countries that have cast their foreign-policy lots with the United States.
In Britain popular opinion -- which had been against the war -- flip-flopped once the fighting began. Not so in Spain, where the public continues to think the invasion was ill-conceived. In a poll conducted after the Iraq War began by El Pais, Spain's leading newspaper, 91 percent of Spaniards said they were against the war. And on the same weekend that George W. Bush finally announced that Iraqis are "free, and freedom is beautiful," I witnessed a raucous demonstration in Granada where protesters called for Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose María Aznar to be tried as war criminals.
The war has politically reinvigorated the country as a whole, and especially this southern region called Andalucía, which lies far from the traditional power centers of Madrid and Barcelona.
In Seville, Spain's fourth largest city and Andalucía's grandest, the war and its aftermath have become the main objects of conversation, much of it one-sided. People here are uniformly against it. Not self-righteously so, but simply as a matter of fact. And for them it is a fact worth announcing. Hanging in bus stations, from clotheslines and at soccer stadiums are "No a la guerra!" signs. "Dinero," "Petroleo" and "Guerra de Papa Bush" are the ulterior motives many Sevillanos suspect were behind the war.
Even conservative Spanish traditions such as machisimo have been pressed into service of the anti-war movement. The running, oddly homophobic joke here is that Bush and Aznar are not only allies but also lovers. A banner hanging in the Plaza de la Corredera in Córdoba -- several hours northeast of Seville -- proclaimed, "Aznar: Lewinsky de Bush." At a demonstration in Granada, giant puppets of Bush (dressed like a sheriff with a badge, a cowboy hat and an American flag for a tie) and Aznar (dressed like a bride in a white gown with flowers in his hair) were held aloft -- and, inevitably, began mimicking the consummation of the Spanish-American alliance. In the national magazine El Jueves, an editorial cartoon showed a semi-nude Aznar offering a semi-nude Bush a backrub; their political talk was peppered with double entendres.
But perhaps more importantly than spurring political conversation, the war has mobilized a largely dormant left. Aznar's conservative Partido Popular (PP) won consecutive terms in 1996 and 2000, and had been seeking to take advantage of its majority in parliament. But now the immediate future doesn't look so promising for the Spanish right. "The left has been in free fall for five years," says Antonio Marquina, director of the Research Unit on Security and International Cooperation at the University of Madrid. "The war is the card the left needed."
The PP was in some trouble with voters before the war. For one thing, many here were upset by how Aznar handled the sinking of an oil-tanker last November, failing to visit the oil-slicked shores off the coast of Gallicia in northwestern Spain until nearly a month after the disaster. His apologies for his tardiness -- and the government's perceived inefficiency in cleaning up the mess -- prompted calls from Gallicians for Aznar's resignation. Last year, the PP also faced outrage over a new law the party had pushed that would have required the unemployed to accept government-designated jobs up to 18 miles from their homes. Following a one-day general strike last June, Aznar withdrew the legislation.
But despite these setbacks, the PP appeared strong -- at least until it cast its lot with Bush on Iraq. The party's overwhelming victory in 2000 marked the first time the right wing had held a majority (183 out of 350 seats) in parliament since 1976, the first year of Spanish democracy. Aznar won because his administration had cut employment by 5 percent and had sparked annual growth of 4 percent -- enough to qualify Spain to adopt the euro. It didn't hurt that the main left-of-center party, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) -- which had won four general elections dating back to 1982 -- had suffered an enormous loss of reputation during a series of corruption scandals.
Aznar's alliance with the United States over Iraq, however, has led to a drop in his party's ratings. Over the last two months, the PP has gone from being even with the PSOE to trailing by 6 points, according to an El Pais poll. Meanwhile, Aznar's own approval rating dropped 10 points in three months, and now stands at a mere 31 percent. Suddenly, with provincial elections looming next month and national elections next year, the PSOE finds itself in a strong position to take back power for the first time since 1996.
That's good news at the Unión General Trabajadores (UGT), a huge union here that has been a historically strong political player and has the ability to mobilize millions of Spaniards. At UGT's Seville headquarters the corridors are bare except for anti-war posters and a thin fog of cigarette smoke. Much of the group's energy has recently been devoted to anti-war efforts. Two weeks ago, for instance, the union organized a one-day general strike in protest of the war. "The left has definitely benefited from the war," says Eduardo Leiva, secretary-general of the UGT in Seville. "The left is going up."
All of this may have far-reaching consequences for Spanish-American relations. While Aznar claims he will not run for re-election, his party may represent the best hope for the United States to maintain a major ally on the European continent. "The relationship will not be so fluid as it is now," Marquina says of how the Spanish-American alliance would look under a PSOE-led government. "[The PSOE] will support a consolidated Europe. Spain will be a key country in Europe's common defense and foreign policy." In other words, Spain may find itself siding in the future not with the United States and England but with such continental powers as France and Germany.
In a preview of the sort of anti-American stance a left-wing government might take, PSOE leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero criticized Aznar before parliament in March. "[Y]ou are determined to strike whatever happens, invade Iraq, change the political regime, turn it into a country and a territory under the superpower's orders, all outside international law and the authorization of the United Nations," he said.
That alliance shift could extend beyond military matters. One reason the UGT is backing anti-war initiatives is economic. For one thing, the UGT fears U.S. economic imperialism. For another, it recognizes the importance of Spain maintaining good economic relationships with other European countries. Work on the transnational (with Spanish, German and French workers) Airbus jumbo jet project -- which is expected to compete with Boeing, an American company -- paused when the three countries involved parted ways on the war, Levia says.
And as the PP looks ahead, it should not expect help from the media. Columnist Javier Pradera recently wrote scathingly of the current government in El Pais: "[T]he political responsibility for this mutation of debate does not belong to the opposition forces -- as the PP pretends -- but to the reckless megalomania of Prime Minister Aznar, who has compromised Spain in a war for a plate of beans: the infantile desire to immortalize his image as a subaltern companion of Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair, rubbing elbows with them in the photo taken in the Azores."
Indeed, many journalists seem to have truly soured on the prime minister. A little more than two weeks ago, Julio Parrado, a Spanish reporter embedded with the American Third Infantry, was killed south of Baghdad. Two days later, reporters and photographers in parliament protested Parrado's death by standing and turning their backs to Aznar. That same day, just minutes into a joint press conference by Spain's foreign minister, Ana Palacio, and Britain's foreign minister, Jack Straw, about 20 journalists abruptly put away their pads, turned off their cameras, and left. Increasingly, there is reason to believe that their disgust is shared by the Spanish electorate as a whole.
Asher Price studies comparative social policy at Oxford University. He is a former editorial assistant at The New Republic.
