Spain’s Anti-Terrorism Agreement: For the People or for the Parties?

The shockwave of the Charlie Hebdo attack is beginning to settle in Europe, but the ripple effects of the terrible event are still fresh in the minds of millions. After weeks of non-stop media coverage on jihadism and countless controversies ranging from the use of the Je suis Charlie slogan to xenophobic reactions, political manifestations of horror are being translated into legislative proposals to combat terrorism. In Spain, the recent bipartisan agreement that was drafted has had major political reverberations, which need to be understood in light of local and European politics. In doing so, the question arises as to whether the political maneuvers that enabled such a pact were directed at defeating jihadist terrorism or was an act of electoral propaganda.

Signed between the Spanish conservative (PP) and socialist (PSOE) parties, the anti-terrorism agreement is specifically aimed at combating jihadist terrorism. This sort of document is not new to Spain, for there have been three anti-terrorism pacts signed and ratified focusing on eliminating ETA, the armed independist group in the Basque Country. The success of these previous agreements, as evidenced by ETA’s disarmament in 2011, is a favorable precedent. Nonetheless, the scope of international jihadism makes the efficiency of a national agreement questionable. Since the 2005 Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism (CECPT), no newer, more focalized, and transversal anti-terrorist agreement has been reached within the EU. It is imperative that new mechanisms and jurisdictions be granted to Interpol and similar organizations, as the challenge of tracking international terrorists groups’ activities in the free-movement zone in the EU is more important than ever before.

The recent pact should be applauded as it successfully provides greater means to prevent, combat, and pursue terrorism and terrorist propaganda through material - in both equipment and manpower - and judicial means. Unfortunately, the Spanish politics

debate around this agreement has been centered not on how to better combat terrorism and other forms of violent extremism, but rather on its political relevance within Spanish politics. The nightmares caused by years of deadly ETA attacks still haunt the psyche of the Iberian citizens. As a result of this, and also because of the Al-Qaeda 11-M bombings in Madrid, which left 192 dead and many more maimed or disabled, Spaniards play close attention to the mentioning of terrorism whenever it is used for electoral purposes or political discourse.

In Spain, as in Greece, new left-wing parties have gained surprisingly large support, altering traditional voting patterns. Podemos is the left-wing party that has recently turned  the traditional Spanish bipartisan model upside down as it is currently expected to surpass the PSOE as the second largest party in Spain in the 2015 general elections. ‘Podemos’ loosely translates into a phrase reminiscent of Obama’s 2008 campaign, “Yes we can”, and encapsulates the party’s attempt to break away from the orthodoxy that has characterized rigid politics in some of Europe’s southern nations.

What is interesting about this pact, which still needs to be ratified by the Spanish Senate, is that it was labeled as a “state agreement”, a term reserved for agreements which feature the consensus approval of all or the majority of the parties. More notoriously, neither part included Podemos or other, smaller parties in the agreement. While Rajoy and Sanchez expressed their “desire” that other parties support the pact, neither leader showed any initiative or genuine willingness to collaborate with other parties. This decision has been seen by many as a political move that has the intention of isolating an increasingly threatening Podemos. By excluding new parties, the establishment coalition formed by the PP and PSOE hopes to show that either party is the most ‘reasonable’ and ‘rational’ alternative to ‘radical left wing alternatives’. Essentially, it is a battle of ‘new’ versus the ‘old’, a challenge that will likely determine the survival of the PSOE, which is currently navigating a political storm: it needs to avoid being shipwrecked on Podemos’ accentuated social-democratic discourse and to steer clear of drowning moderate voters in Rajoy’s sea of austerity-based conservatism.

The failure to create an inclusive agreement –or more precisely, the explicit exclusion of the non-traditional, non-bipartisan parties- on a subject that, theoretically, all parties should be able agree on, is alarming.  However, and perhaps even more worryingly, the means to achieve the ratification of the pact are as much of a disappointment as its proponents’ purpose.

Here again the PSOE’s thorny situation played a large role. With the PP holding a majority of parliament seats, the socialist leader faced a tough decision: to sign a pact with the PP, thereby upholding the party’s legacy for spearheading the anti-terrorism movement, or not signing an anti-terrorism pact and maintaining the PSOE at an arm’s length of the PP. The former would have been seen as a political betrayal by hardline socialists, especially because some form of political consensus would have to be negotiated. The latter, on the other hand, would have been an erroneous choice of priorities -the safety of the citizens is the first duty of any government. A third alternative, which would have required including Podemos-like parties in the drafting of the pact, would have symbolized the acceptance of a new political status quo and, thus, an unacceptable condition to hardline traditionalists.

Meanwhile, two things remain clear: First, that potential terrorists will not wait and will only benefit from agreements that are more focused on political discourse and electoral propaganda rather than on providing pragmatic means of combating terrorism and jihadist recruitment. Second, that the failure to recognize and place the needs every single citizen above the interests of the elite remains a disconcerting reality of Spain’s political panorama. An issue of national security must encompass a dialogue that brings together all of a country’s voices, and petty attempts at exclusion from narrow-minded bureaucrats jeopardizes the lives of the same people they are supposed to represent. Given Spain’s involvement with NATO, the recent activity of European Islamic terrorist cells, and the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the country via Ceuta and Melilla, national security will perhaps become the main issue on the national agenda for years to come.