In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Muslim Spain, then called Andalusia, and claimed it for Catholicism. Muslim expansion into Europe was halted, and pushed back. It's considered one of the greatest defeats in the history of Islam. Osama bin Laden began one of his post-9/11 videotapes by declaring, "Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia would be repeated in Palestine."
Just now, the NYT reported that
Police probing the Madrid terrorist attacks found a van with detonators and an Arabic-language tape with Koranic verses, and officials said they are not ruling out any line of investigation.
Describing the differences between this attack and other attacks by Basque separatist terrorists, the NYT reports
The group has never made civilians a target on this scale, and has often phoned in warnings before attacks. In addition, it has been suppressed militarily in recent years.
Way back in October of 2001, Slate's Chris Suellentrop speculated:
If Bin Laden truly wants to restore the original geographic dimensions of the caliphate, he may eventually look toward Spain.
Is this part of bin Laden's deluded attempt to resurrect a Muslim caliphate, and redress a 500-year old grievance against the West?
It is, of course, far too early to tell. But today's savage violence in Madrid certainly has the look of the mindless hatred we've come to expect from Koran-quoting murderers.
---
Via Instapundit, Josh Chavetz doesn't think so:
Some are skeptical that this was the work of the ETA. That's ultimately for the police and intelligence services to figure out, but I'm skeptical of the skeptics. ETA hasn't always announced its attacks ahead of time, and Spanish authorities had been worried about an ETA attack ahead of this weekend's elections. Given ETA's history, it seems to me that the default assumption should be that it was them.
The "some" in this case, is Joe Gandelman, who writes:
MY FEELING AS SOMEONE WHO COVERED SPAIN: Not immediately taking credit is NOT ETA's modus operendi. And they usually DID phone in advance...although not always. As far as the explosives, any other group could get them, too. And would ETA time it immediately before elections? Possibly...but then........
We'll see.
In one sense, it doesn't really matter whose hands are stained with the blood of nearly 200 civilians...it's an evil deed no matter how you look at it.
