Myrtha Casanova
Founder and President
The European Institute for Managing Diversity
Barcelona, Spain

The silence of Madrid is the loudest scream of terror, frustrations and desolation ever heard in Spain in the last 50 years.

Over 13 Million people filled the flooded the streets of Spain asking "Basta Ya" ( stop it once and for all ). Stop the terrorist daily menace under which Span lives for the past 25 years. It is becoming part of the way of life in the country. In a country where there is freedom to set up political parties, interest groups and all sorts of organisations to channel the ideologies and aims of all. But terrorists do not use the existing tools that democracy gives to include peoples of all diverse cultures and ideologies.

The only aim of terrorism, is terror. Because that is their way of life and their business.

One of the largest multinationals in the world is Al Quaeda.

Its Vision: impose the Islamic way of life to all the world.

Its Mission: to destroy the governance of freedom through man made laws that sponsor the development of the individual; in order to impose the Islamic law to role all aspects of life as well as political and economic activities.

Its Policy: use terror, arms and destruction of peoples and open thinking.

Its Strategy:

• create financial resources through business and distortion
• attract human resource from clusters of unsatisfied people
• buy technical resources to meet their objectives

Its Business Unites:

• training camps for all an any group that uses force and terror in any part of the world
• supply weapons to all these groups to carry out their terrorists actions
• participate in companies that build weapons and create source of financial resources related to their "core business"
• give logistics support to their clients / associated groups all over the world

A case should be written of the Bin Laden financial empire of terror for the benefit of those who think that this is not a global evidence and menace.

Who is responsible for the Madrid massacre? ETA or Al Quaeda? Can they be isolated? All terrorist groups are linked one way or another. Drugs, weapons, kidnapping, distortion... of peoples and governments. It is a gigantic global network that truly understands and leverages globalisation.

So today in the eve of general elections in Spain the people are taking extreme positions. The pain of the massacre has brought all the country together as never before. But the way of achieving the desired "Basta Ya" ( solve this once and for all ) is today more radical than even before.

Voting tomorrow will be exercised in a very different way. People will vote for what they feel is the most radical party to face terrorism. And radical means very different things today.

Considering the complexity of the election process here, the outcome will be not meet the aspirations of the majority of the Spanish peoples. ( there are 3 national political parties and over 50 regional or autonomic parties ).

No political party will gain absolute majority, so the really issue will be the post electoral agreements between parties in order to make a government coalition by adding up the numbers of their representatives in parliament. So we will end up by having a government which will not represent the thinking of the majority of the people.

This will bring high uncertainty, high tension among the Autonomic Regions (17) , and between the peoples themselves. Because the issue of terrorism is core to all citizens today in the country.

What happens tomorrow and in the following days as parties create the government coalition, is going to impact the whole of the European Union and its relations with the rest of the world; particularly in the Islamic world and the US.

If the Madrid massacre is proved to be an action of Al Quaeda, the populations and its agents blame the present party in the government ( the Popular Party headed by Aznar) for being involved in the attack to Irak.

If the massacre is proved to be an action of ETA, the present political system in Span. That is a system by which the country is united or divided in 17 autonomic regions which transferred the responsibilities of local administrations of all functions.

Democracy is undergoing a crucial test.

The sadness can be felt.

Myrtha Casanova is Founder and President of The European Institute for Managing Diversity (online at http://www.iegd.org)