It's easy to be José María Aznar. The key is not to let your guard down and not let the person endanger the character. At 72 years old, he is not going to allow the profile he built for decades to suffer any cracks. An interview for a television series? Sure, why not. Do not expect it to tell something new or reflect any weakness. Something like apologizing. He made no mistakes. It was reality that was wrong on some occasions. The world changes. Aznar, no.
Aznar and the other three former presidents have agreed to be interviewed for the four-episode series 'The Last Call' that is now broadcast by Movistar Plus+. No matter how much power a leader has, how much he believes he controls the situation, he is always one phone call away from entering an unknown world, one marked by uncertainty and in which only he can make the final decision. There is no need to hide behind the party or the advisors. There are exceptions, of course. There are some who preferred to hide in El Ventorro.
The idea is not bad, but it is still a scenario that cannot compete against the image that Aznar has of himself. The documentary also includes the opinions of four of those who were his most relevant advisors in Moncloa, in addition to his wife, Ana Botella. Nobody appears to deny the description that the former president makes of his Government. Everything is admiration and flattery.
Aznar achieved what the right had been pursuing for more than a decade, defeating Felipe González at the polls. It cost him three elections. There was a lot of talk then about his lack of charisma, even more so after his defeat in 1993 when everything seemed to favor him. Short. Always too serious. A smile that seemed forced. Monotone voice. Mustache when it was no longer in fashion. Looking with a sinister point at anything that was displeased. “It didn't enter through the eyes,” remembers Javier Zarzalejos, who has been with him in Moncloa and the FAES. The handsome ones have advantage in politics, some studies say. That may be true, but you don't always win at the polls based on physical appearance.
The only original comment is that of Botella. She says that she sent her husband to El Corte Inglés to buy something – to his surprise – when she returned from José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's inauguration. The time had come to put an end to that isolation from reality that gives you power and get in line at the checkout.
Impassive in his gesture, and almost everything else, the former president passes over his most controversial decisions without being in any way interested in reviewing them or offering a different opinion so many years later. Everything he did is justified by his attempt to place Spain among the most important nations in Spain and the world.
His commitment to the relationship with the United States led him to show George Bush his most enthusiastic support after 9/11. The same before the invasion of Iraq. “There are two types of countries. Those that go around the table and see how others decide, and those that are sitting at the table deciding,” he explains, to summarize his obsession with being on the front line at any price.
“Spain was sitting at that table,” he says. That's what it all comes down to. For this reason, his presence seems to him an incontestable success, also at the Azores summit with George Bush and Tony Blair, an image that followed him until the end of his presidency, as did all the occasions in which he assured the Spanish that Iraq had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that were never found because they did not exist.
“Spain would not have gotten into that photo even if France and Germany had been in their place,” says Alejandro Agag, his chief of staff and future son-in-law. Aznar took advantage of what he has always considered a historic opportunity. Bush did not have enough European allies.
The Spanish did not think the same. In the documentary, Tony Blair appears, who remembers a detail that he also talked about in his memoirs. “I remember a survey that said that 4% of Spaniards were in favor of military action to oust Saddam and I remember telling Aznar that in the United Kingdom there are surveys with that same percentage of people saying that Elvis is alive.” It was not something that disturbed Aznar, but it did disturb many leaders of his party. He was sure that 96% of people were wrong.
In reality, nothing was decided in the Azores, because everything was decided. The summit was a personal favor that Bush lent to Blair, harassed by the internal division among British Labor in the face of the imminent invasion of Iraq. The impression had to be given that a last-ditch effort was being made to prevent war and to blame Saddam Hussein if it occurred. It was made in the form of an ultimatum knowing that at that point the Iraqi dictator was not going to back down. Aznar was a front-row spectator of that maneuver.
In relation to 11M, the former leader of the Popular Party shows the same attitude. “What I want to say with the greatest emphasis is that the Government told the truth at all times,” he is heard saying. This was not the case when his Minister of the Interior, Ángel Acebes, appeared at a press conference five hours after the attack to announce that the perpetrator was ETA and that the security forces agreed with that version. Police experts in jihadist terrorism, intelligence services and foreign governments were convinced otherwise. The documentary makes no effort to confront Aznar with that fact.
Yes, there is a singular moment that perhaps helps to understand Aznar's personal obsession. He says that just before 11M at the end of his second term, there was an idea that he couldn't get rid of. “During those days, I thought (a long pause): how strange that, having tried to kill me to avoid coming (to power), they let me leave in triumph.” He was referring to ETA's attempt to assassinate him. “They weren't going to let me leave quietly.” It had to be ETA, because he was their biggest enemy.
For Aznar, decisions are made at all times based on the information that reaches you. There is no point in revisiting that legacy years later when you know things you didn't know before. “That type of reasoning seems useless to me,” he says. And they are also a perfect excuse not to touch the portrait you commissioned during your time in power. You can end up like Dorian Gray.