'The call', by Jesús Ceberio: a 111-second lie for a misinformation campaign that has already lasted 20 years

At some point on the morning of 11-M, while emergency services tried to save lives and the death toll increased, the party strategy teams began to gauge the electoral consequences of the attack.

During those hours, two of candidate Mariano Rajoy's main advisors stated in informal conversations: "If it was ETA, we're off the map, but if it was the jihadists, we're going home."

After 20 years, that syllogism deserves explanation.

The commitment of the Government of José María Aznar to the fight against jihadism led by the United States had implied a strategic shift in foreign policy that had a very strong parliamentary and social response.

One of the main commitments of the candidate José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, synchronized with the “No to war”, was the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

Rarely does foreign policy influence national elections, but on that occasion, as Jordi Xuclà's doctoral thesis demonstrates, it was decisive.

That does not mean that Al Qaeda planned the attack to intervene in the electoral process.

As Fernando Reinares explains in

11-M.

It could have been avoided,

the terrorist group carried out that massacre as a vengeful response to the dismantling of a jihadist cell within the framework of Operation Date in 2001 and because Bin Laden had designated Spain as a target for its military presence in Iraq.

To what extent and from what moment did the electoral calculation determine the Government's communication strategy to inform citizens about those who they believed had been the authors of the massacre?

Answering these questions is the purpose of

The Call

,

by Jesús Ceberio.

At that time the journalist was director of EL PAÍS and in the book he bravely confronts the “biggest mistake of my professional life”: the decision to change the headline of the special edition of the newspaper, which went from “Terrorist massacre in Madrid” to “ETA massacre in Madrid” after two calls from La Moncloa, one of them with Aznar, who, for 111 seconds, between 1:06 p.m. and 1:08 p.m., had enough time to categorically state what the president repeated to others five directors: “I am certain that it was ETA.”

“He deceived you,” Cebrián said to Ceberio after an hour.

To him and a good part of Spain during the following 24 hours and some have tried to perpetuate this self-serving deception.

But, beyond the chronicle, Ceberio, thanks to the legitimacy of the first person, especially the rigor of years of research, achieves something more transcendent.

Once he has responded with data, minute by minute, to those two questions about the government's communication strategy, he concludes with a devastating phrase: “President Aznar intended to use the attack for the benefit of his party.”

Examples of manipulation accumulate in the book: from putting pressure on foreign correspondents in Madrid to getting ETA explicitly named in a UN resolution to vetoing George Bush's interview with correspondent Lorenzo Milá or the “massive deletion of the Presidency computer files related to 11-M.”

The success of this strategy was not electoral, but cultural.

According to some surveys, more than a third of the population believes that ETA had some participation in the attack and these figures can reach 50% among the popular electorate.

Neither the politicians nor the media that benefited from the conspiracy theory have recognized their mistake.

Not recognizing it has also been a communication strategy.

In the second part of the book, Ceberio reflects on the civic consequences of perpetuating lies.

“Aznar's founding lies regarding the authorship of 11-M have poisoned political coexistence in our country to often unbearable extremes.”

Look for it in your bookstore

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