[5] A view amongst several political commentators is that the PP lost the election as a result of the handling and presentation of the terrorist attacks, rather than specifically due to the Madrid train bombings.
After 21 months of investigation, judge Juan del Olmo ruled Moroccan national Jamal Zougam guilty of physically carrying out the attack.
The day of the attacks, police officials informed the Government that explosives usually used by ETA were found at the blast sites[citation needed].
Prime Minister José María Aznar even called a number of newspaper editors and publishers personally to ask for their support for this version.
On one hand, José María Aznar was aggressively opposed to any dialogue with ETA, and based most of his campaign on the threat of terrorism (the September 11 attacks in New York reinforced his view of the war against the terrorists).
On the other hand, Aznar's friendship with U.S. president George W. Bush led him to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq against the views of the overwhelming majority of the population (resulting in the biggest demonstrations ever seen in Spain since the restoration of democracy in the late 1970s).
[23][24] This left Aznar in a complicated situation: if Basque terrorists were proven to be responsible for the massacre, it would favour the PP's campaign, but if an Islamic group appeared to cause the blast, people might blame him for earning himself (and Spain) enemies.
[30] Later in 2004, in his appearance before the parliamentary committee of inquiry, Juan Jesus Sánchez Manzano (the head of the TEDAX) stated that traces of nitroglycerine had been detected in the samples recovered after the bombings.
Shortly after the bombings, the group was completely dismantled by the Spanish police and the core members died in an apparent suicide explosion when they were surrounded in the nearby town of Leganés.
This stands in sharp contrast to other large-scale terrorist attacks such as those in New York and London, which galvanized society and political forces towards unity.
These groups have focused their investigation on unexplained details and inconsistencies in the Summary Report and have expressed skepticism about the truthfulness and neutrality of the evidence presented.
Since the bombings, the chief opposition party, PP (which lost power in the election in the immediate aftermath of the bombings), together with conservative media in Spain, have overtly argued the possibility that the Socialist party, the police, the Spanish, French, and Moroccan secret services, and, of course, ETA, had a role in organisation of the outrage.
There is a distinct difference between those who believe that the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) used it for political gain (as it had access to information, either from France or through links to the Police, used to criticise the government in the aftermath of the bombings), and those who believe a consortium of the ETA, some groups in the State Security Forces (possibly related to the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL)), the Moroccan secret services, and the PSOE may have had a role either in organising the bombings or blocking official investigation.
An attempt to link ETA to the bombings occurred in May 2006, when El Mundo published on its front page that a business card of the Basque firm Mondragón Cooperative Corporation (MCC) had been found in the van used by the terrorists.
The rear of the cover had apparently been used by the legitimate proprietor to warn people when he parked in the middle of the street, since it had a handwritten message that read "I am coming back immediately".
Additionally, in December 2004, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero claimed that the PP government erased all of the computer files related to the Madrid bombings, leaving only the documents on paper.
[76] Mobile phones used in the bombings were unlocked in a shop owned by a Spanish policeman (who retired after the attacks) of Syrian descent and former al Fatah militant, Maussili Kalaji.