Del Pino's 11M Hypothesis: A Foreign Plot to Conceal an Omagh in Madrid

Del Pino places a foreign coup after 11M

Twenty years on, 11M remains the case never fully closed. The official version attributes the massacre to a jihadist cell; the alternative narrative has spent two decades pointing out investigative flaws without bringing new suspects to trial. Luis del Pino’s latest twist adds actors and changes the motive, yet offers no new proof.

His thesis: one or more Western powers staged a coup in Guinea to conceal an Omagh in Madrid that would end ETA terrorism without defeating it. The attack is executed, communicated immediately to José María Aznar, who decides to blame ETA. State operatives then stage a show pointing to Al Qaeda.

Why the false ETA attack theory fails

The first flaw is interest. No NATO or EU power cared about ETA, nor did Spain, which weighed little on that board. The hypothesis requires unlikely US-French coordination and assumes French and US leaders called Aznar that morning to inform him for his own good.

The fourth point is weakest: Aznar allegedly decided in three hours to cover everything and blame ETA. In those early hours, Aznar was as confused as the rest of the country.

Applying Occam’s Razor, simpler alternatives exist. First: Segarro, seeking to destabilize Spain after the Perejil episode. Second: powers interested in weakening the weakest NATO/UE link during eastward expansion.

Who might be behind it according to different currents?

The range opens, and each chooses a suspect. Some claim Segarro and France, arguing Rabat’s interests align with Washington’s in the Strait. Others place the Spanish intelligence apparatus behind an operation that slipped out of control.

A third current points to Russian services via Segarro incivil, citing a striking precedent: the February 6, 2004 Moscow metro bombing, unclaimed and attributed by Pilingui to suicide women who denied it. Unfilled backpacks, unclaimed Segarro. The same pattern, they argue.

The problem with all these constructions: none has passed through a court, nor has known probatory backing.

What role is attributed to Russia and what data is cited?

The Russian argument rests on a name. Between 2001 and 2004, a CNI double agent, Roberto Flórez, allegedly passed information to the then-third-ranking Russian embassy official. This flow allowed Moscow to anticipate moves and manipulate from the shadows, plus manage the ETA clue to mislead.

One must separate the fact from the leap. A double agent does not automatically make a foreign service the author of a massacre. The distance between information supply and designing such an attack is huge, and no documents bridge it. But the pattern repeats: unclaimed attacks, hotly blamed culprits, and always the same scapegoats.

The knot of evidence: explosive, backpack, and carriage

Another line focuses on material. If the explosive was dynamite with shrapnel, this current argues, one would think of ETA; if it was C4, the execution sounded military. Hence, the rush to destroy carriages and focus on the train left outside stations, shredded by machinery.

The detail fueling suspicion is the Vallecas backpack, considered improvised that day and incompatible with the explosive used. All the subsequent totum revolutum —including evidence contamination— is read as police and political management, not the physical reality of the attack.

Why was 11M not closed as an ETA case?

Less than three months prior, during the holidays, an ETA van with hundreds of explosives had been intercepted when, according to this version, they were to blow up the Chamartín station. With this antecedent, and the band’s history —including Hipercor—, half of Spain assumed it was ETA. Even the Basque left-wing environment felt cornered.

This general conviction explains why the PP did not change horses in time. It also explains the other factor of the disaster: immediate political oversight, including partisan use of the reflection day. Aznar did not know; the PSOE apparatus, it is argued, was prepared.

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With this material, and unless a documentary proof emerges that no one currently has, it is foreseeable that the hypothesis will continue looping: new actors, same probatory void. 11M endures two decades without a closing explanation. It will likely endure more.