Political issues, personal reflexions and other things from a spanish teacher
It's a minor issue after everything that has happened in the last week at Spain, I know. But I can't take it from my mind.
I think the first time I herd the reasoning was stated by Arnaldo Otegui, ETA's political arm speaker, when one of the arguments he stand against an involvement of ETA in the bombs was that "the victims were innocent. They were workers". On the manifestations around Spain against terrorists acts that happend on friday afternoon, several people chanted and showed the same argument: "they were students, blue-collar workers, innocent people who didn't deserve this".
This reasoning sicks me. Are we trying to say that if they were bankers, the pain would have been less? That if they have planted the bombs on a soccer training camp, killing only millonaires playes, mourn should have been declined? That if the killed were ex-convicteds, it could be somehow justified? And not to mention if they were policemen...
I see two dangerous features on this reasoning. The first one is that, although publically speaking, everyone says that the price of a life is infinite, in our mind there are people who are more innoccent than other, who deserve living more than other. And that appears a very fascist and nazi thinking to me.
The second one is that Spain thinking against terrorism hasn't change as much as we wanted to think from the one we had 30 years ago, when the assasination of a policeman, a member of the Guardia Civil or even a politician was seeen as a minor matter, when their funerals were hidden, as if they deserved it somehow.
I cried for everyone of the victims of the attack, didn't matter if there were homeless or bimilionaires. Wealth won't take their lives back: it's shouldn't make differences in why the died.

Comments
on Mar 24, 2004
You´re right: The pain is the same whatever the victim is.

In fact, the only difference is the one that Otegui does when saying that some of the spanish population is "innocent" and other one is "a target". For is terrible that someone makes that distinction, but we always have to try to get inside the mind and the way people thinks to try to make see them they´re wrong: if you simply say "damm you, you´re a bastard" we are not giving any good point to convince or discuss, we are just putting ourselves to his level.

For example, in an old interview journalist Jon Sistiaga to Ahmed Yasin, Jon asked Ahmed what he thought about terrorism, and he said "I hate terrorism, I really blame it".

To us, it´s a terrible mistake, because until some days ago he was the head of one of the mos (in)famous terrorist group of the world, but for him the are "martyrs" and the terrorists are Israel´s soldiers.

We always have to analize all the angles. We must try to see in 3d and not react immidiatly.

And one thing that we should analize is why when ETA killed president Carrero Blanco or torturer Melitón Manzanas the were aclamed as heroes by a great part of the population and nowadays is that great part of the population blame them. Have they changed their methods or their aspirations? No. What has happened then? And why nowadays we have news about ETA everyday (it really doesn´t matter what they say, but it seems that every newspaper and newscast must talkabout ETA) and some years ago we only talked about them when there was an attack?
on Mar 24, 2004
I made some typos, please excuse me.

"For is terrible that someone " should be "For me is terrible that someone", "head of one of the mos" is "head of one of the most" and I made a grammar mistake when talking aboy Jon and Ahmed.