Joaõ Miguel Morais Barata Da Silva Diniz

This author's articles

• From S-11 to M-11 : Effects of conservative political management of terrorism

  26 November 2004
  The attacks of S-11 only had an indirect influence on the criminal policy of the Spanish government. At most we could talk of an accentuation of its line of toughness and of the legitimisation received from the international participation of J.M. Aznar, beside G. Bush and T. Blair, in the fight against terrorism. But the determining factor of that increase in toughness came from its victory by absolute majority at the general elections of March, 2000. From then, Popular Party (PP) left any policy of consensus and started to criminalize political problems making reforms of the penal criminal code as needed in order to be able to condemn the political behaviour of their opponents. Some of those reforms were made by democratically doubtful means. In any case, the way to fight terrorism, which for them was the main problem affecting Spain, seemed to be more inclined towards obtaining political advantages than solving the problem, as it is shown in a series of events that culminated in Madrid, M-11.