Success Quote by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

Zapatero’s line is a warning shot aimed less at terrorists than at democracies in a panic. The provocation is that “victory” isn’t defined by casualties or territory; it’s defined by what a society becomes while trying to stay safe. Terrorism, in his framing, is a strategy of moral sabotage: it seeks to lure the state into overreaction, to make exceptional measures feel normal, and to turn the language of rights into the paperwork of suspicion.

The phrasing is doing careful work. “Risk” signals probability, not melodrama; he’s arguing from incentives and outcomes, not idealism. “In fighting terror” concedes the necessity of action, but the hinge is “betrays its own essence” - an almost constitutional phrase that points to due process, proportionality, and limits on power. He’s implying that the most dangerous moment for democracy isn’t the attack itself but the legal and cultural aftershocks: indefinite detention, expanded surveillance, blurred lines between intelligence and policing, and the political temptation to brand dissent as disloyalty.

Context matters. Zapatero governed Spain in the shadow of ETA’s long campaign and the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and he faced fierce backlash for withdrawing troops from Iraq. That experience sharpened the argument: counterterror policy is also a performance of legitimacy. If a democracy starts operating like the thing it fears - secrecy, arbitrariness, punishment without transparency - it hands extremists their desired narrative: that rights are conditional, and the state’s promises were always a fair-weather myth.