Spain Unites in Anger, Grief Over Attacks

MADRID —  From this traumatized capital to the conflicted Basque region, millions of Spaniards filed into streets and plazas Friday to show defiance in the face of Spain’s worst terrorist attack and to pay tribute to the victims.

As Basque separatists denied involvement in Thursday’s synchronized bombings, which killed nearly 200 people and wounded 1,500 others, a stunned nation was struggling Friday to raise its head and proclaim its determination to overcome the previous day’s carnage. In every major city and town, residents paused for a 10-minute observance of silence at noon; in Madrid, spontaneous shrines of candles, flowers and handwritten messages sprouted at train stations where men, women and children lost their lives.

In the evening in Madrid, an estimated 2 million Spaniards marched under a driving rain through fountain-adorned plazas, up the wide Paseo de la Castellana boulevard, past the Prado Museum and to the steps of the Atocha train station, to demand an end to political violence. They were led by members of Spain’s royal family and senior officials from all over Europe. A sea of umbrella-topped masses filled Madrid’s streets for miles.

“We must show the world we are not afraid,” said Maria del Carmen Lopez Lopez, 46, who provides care to the elderly.

“Murderers! Murderers!” chanted a crowd both angry and somber. “We were all on that train!”

Debate raged over who was responsible for the 10 blasts that gutted four commuter trains during Thursday’s morning rush hour. The government said it continued to favor the theory that Basque separatists staged the attacks, while others suggested that Islamic extremists might be at work.

The militant Basque organization ETA formally denied responsibility Friday evening in a communication with a Basque-language newspaper, as the debate was becoming entangled in election-era politics.

As a host of crestfallen families staggered to an ad hoc morgue on city fairgrounds to identify their relatives’ shattered bodies, the death toll climbed Friday to 199 when a 7-month-old Polish girl died. A reporter announcing the baby’s death on state television broke down in tears.

Authorities said the dead identified thus far included people of 12 nationalities. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar announced that illegal immigrants who had been injured in the bombings or whose relatives had been killed would be granted Spanish citizenship; heretofore, Aznar’s government had been fairly tough on immigrants, many of whom were too afraid to come forward to seek information on missing relatives after the bombings.

In a day of nationwide mourning and protest, the outpouring in Madrid was phenomenal. Families, couples, workers, entire student bodies -- all braved the frigid rain and marched toward the Atocha station, where two trains blew up, in a procession that began at dusk and continued into the night.

Police estimated the crowd, at its peak, at 2 million people, making it one of the largest demonstrations here in a very long time. The city came to a standstill. Nine million more demonstrated across the nation, by police count, from the northern Basque region to Barcelona, to the ancient pilgrim city of Santiago de Compostela, and even the Canary Islands. Spain is a country of fierce regional pride and division, bound now by tragedy.

“Whether it was ETA that did this, or Al Qaeda, the important thing is to show solidarity with the victims,” said Daniel Berengue, 22, a history student at Madrid’s Complutense University. “This could have happened to any one of us. There’s a real sense of rejection and condemnation here. And then we have to move on. We can’t allow ourselves to be sunken by fear.”

Luis Caro, a 29-year-old bank teller, expressed the new vulnerability felt by many in the surging crowd. “Here in Spain we’ve been accustomed to attacks but never indiscriminate ones against civilians,” he said. “I didn’t used to come to demonstrations against ETA, but this has been a very harsh blow, and just as these people were killed, this kind of violence can reach anyone who gets on a metro, a train, a bus.”

The demonstrators held candles, waved Spanish flags and some wrote slogans on their foreheads: “No to ETA” and “Peace.”

Aznar led the process alongside Prince Felipe, heir to the throne, and Princess Cristina -- the first time in Spanish history that members of the royal family have joined in a demonstration.

Many participants in this and the other demonstrations across the country painted their hands white and waved them above their heads, a gesture that gained popularity after the 1997 slaying by ETA of Miguel Angel Blanco, a minor official with Aznar’s party whose kidnapping and execution outraged Spaniards and Basques alike.

In Bilbao, the largest of Basque cities, demonstrators were also out in force. An enormous crowd heavy with youths gathered on the steps of City Hall and chanted: “Madrid, amigo, Bilbao esta contigo!” -- Madrid, friend, Bilbao is with you.

The mood of Spain on Friday ran the gamut of emotions: indignation, fear, stoicism, outrage, resolve.

A few hardy commuters were back on the trains early Friday, barely 24 hours after the bombings.

“Am I afraid? I’m terrified,” said Maria Callisares, 42, a nurse who was catching a train to work. She stood on the platform at the Atocha station where workers a few hours earlier had used heavy machinery to remove one of Thursday’s crippled trains. “But I have no choice, I have to get to work.”

Passengers waiting on the platform stepped gingerly around freshly scrubbed spots. Janitors in fluorescent yellow mopped and swept. The smoky, slightly bitter smell of a bomb’s aftermath, a hauntingly distinctive smell mostly of melted plastic, hung in the air.

Veronica Arriaga, a 27-year-old salesclerk at the Corte Ingles department store, trembled as she waited. “We must be courageous,” she said. “We can’t let them get us. But I’m scared.” Only by an act of fate did Arriaga and her sister and brother fail to catch Thursday’s ill-fated train, the one they normally took to work.

“Maybe in a very long time we Madrilenos will be able to get over this,” she said.

On the trains, which, like public buildings, buses and storefronts, were adorned with black ribbons of mourning, passengers were subdued for the most part, looking straight ahead or off into the distance. A few had panic attacks and needed to get off.

Upstairs in the lobby of the Atocha station, Spaniards deposited candles, flowers and handwritten messages in tribute to the victims. One woman left yellow daisies; another lighted a candle, made the sign of the cross and prayed.

All over Madrid, workers poured from their offices, patrons from cafes, doctors and nurses from hospitals, all to stand erect on sidewalks in homage. At the Congress of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, construction workers from a nearby site removed their yellow hardhats and stood next to waiters in bow ties and lawmakers in suits. At the end of the 10 minutes, they broke into applause, a traditional way of saying goodbye.

Spanish police, meanwhile, were hunting for three men whom a witness had seen emerging from a stolen white van parked near a train station where the four targeted trains had stopped on their way to Madrid. Police later discovered detonators and an audiocassette containing Koranic verses in the van, which had been stolen Feb. 28.

The three men were each seen carrying something, possibly backpacks, and entering the train station in Alcala de Henares, where investigators believe at least some of the bombs were planted.

The unidentified men were dressed in a way that concealed their appearances, officials said. At least one man wore a ski cap and another had his collar turned up, officials said. The witness did not see the men well enough to get a sense of their ethnicity, a potentially vital question in a case in which leads point to Basque or Islamic terrorists or even a combination of both, officials said.

“We think these three are suspects,” a police official said. “They did not look like Arabs, but with the caps, the clothes they were wearing, they were quite hidden. So it was hard to tell. But it appears they were the bad guys. They are people connected to the van.”

The discovery of the Arabic cassette in the van Thursday evening widened the investigation and changed the tone of Spanish leaders, who earlier in the day had emphatically named ETA as the clear suspect. As the Al Qaeda terrorist network became another suspect , the government deployed investigative teams that specialize in Islamic terrorism to join investigators with expertise in ETA cases, officials said.

Both Spanish and U.S. law enforcement officials said Friday that they still regarded ETA as the prime suspect because of recently foiled plots for major attacks on targets in Madrid, including a Christmas Eve attempt to detonate bombs on a commuter train.

President Bush said Friday in an interview on Spanish television that “people shouldn’t speculate right now” about who was behind the Thursday commuter train attack.

“It takes awhile; it took us awhile to find out exactly who ordered the attacks on America,” Bush told Spanish television. “And once the facts are known and once we find out who did it, America will join the Spanish government to hunt the terrorists down and bring them to justice.”

Aznar also reiterated his belief that ETA, which stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom in the Basque language, was the most likely culprit. At the same time, he acknowledged that the investigation was also looking into other possibilities.

Gara, a Basque newspaper, reported on its website Friday night that it received a call from someone purporting to represent ETA who denied the group’s involvement. Government officials dismissed the denial, but independent experts noted that ETA usually claimed responsibility for its operations and rarely issued denials.

Arnaldo Otegi, leader of an outlawed political party tied to ETA, repeated his doubts Friday that ETA was responsible and accused Aznar of “deliberately lying” about the bombings to gain political advantage in Sunday’s general election.

The opposition Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party made a similar accusation, saying it was suspicious that the government had waited until late Thursday to reveal the discovery of the stolen van and Arabic tape. Aznar, in a news conference, angrily rejected any assertion that he was manipulating information on the bombings.

Spaniards who believe that ETA was behind the attacks, political analysts said, are more likely to vote for Aznar’s ruling Popular Party, which maintains a no-negotiation stance toward the separatists. But Al Qaeda involvement -- a new escalation in violence here -- could turn voters against Aznar’s party because his fervent support for the Bush administration’s Iraq war might be seen as the reason for Muslim wrath.

Interior Minister Angel Acebes reported the discovery of another backpack loaded with explosives, metal shrapnel -- to exacerbate the damage that would have been wrought -- and a cellular telephone to be used for detonation. Police recovered the bag from one of the trains, thinking that it belonged to a victim, only to realize later what they had. It was safely defused and will become important evidence in the investigation, Acebes said.

“So far, none of the intelligence services or security forces we have contacted have provided reliable information to the effect that it could have been an Islamic terrorist organization,” Acebes said of the investigation.

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Times staff writers Sebastian Rotella in Paris and Edwin Chen in Washington and special correspondent Cristina Mateo-Yanguas in Madrid contributed to this report.