| "No, no! Certainly not!" |
Spain's prime minister, heckled Monday by opposition lawmakers, angrily denied his Socialist party instigated anti-government rallies on the eve of a general election to reap political benefit from the Madrid train bombings. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero also accused former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of misleading Spaniards by blaming Basque militants for the bombings, even after evidence of an Islamic link emerged and accumulated. Thousands of demonstrators — spreading the word by cell phone text message — convened protest rallies outside then-ruling Popular Party offices in Madrid and other cities on March 13, two days after the bombings that killed 191 people. They accused Aznar's pro-U.S. government of making Spain a target for al-Qaida by endorsing the Iraq invasion — and the next day, the opposition Socialists won the election. Under Spanish law, political rallies are banned the day before an election. "We did not know about, plan, participate in, instigate or support the demonstrations on March 13," Zapatero said at a raucous session of a parliamentary commission probing the bombings.