MADRID, Spain – In the year since 10 dynamite-filled backpacks exploded on Madrid commuter trains, Spaniards have shifted some blame away from the Iraq war and onto themselves.

Immediately after the March 11 massacre, most Spaniards saw the attack as al-Qaida’s revenge for sending Spanish troops to Iraq. Today there’s a realization al-Qaida’s footprint in Spain is much older and deeper: the country had long been a haven or transit point for Islamic militants.

Officials now believe the main motive for the train bombings that killed 191 people was not so much Iraq as Spain’s arrest of dozens of al-Qaida suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, including three charged with helping prepare them, Reinares said.

Twenty-four suspects arrested in those raids face trial in Madrid, probably next month. The crackdown marked the beginning of the end of Spain’s traditional status as a militant haven.

Until the arrests began two months after Sept. 11, “Spain was a place where individuals linked to al-Qaida operated with ease,” Reinares said.

Investigations elsewhere in Europe have also intersected here, bolstering the chilling conclusion that Spain was not just a one-time target for joining President Bush’s coalition to oust Saddam Hussein – but instead a “crossroads” for Muslim extremists, says Jean-Charles Brisard, a French private investigator.

Spain’s porous southern edge is a short ferry ride from Morocco, home to most of the suspects jailed in the Madrid attack, and from Morocco’s neighbor, Algeria, native country of a ringleader in the train bombings.

As part of its security overhaul, the government has moved to boost its intelligence gathering and sharing capability. It has tightened controls on explosives like the high-grade dynamite used on March 11, which had been stolen from a mine in northern Spain. The staff at the police unit probing Muslim extremists also has been quadrupled – from 100 to 400 personnel – and Muslim suspects have been dispersed to various jails to disrupt their planning from behind bars, Reinares said.

Last year alone, Spain arrested 131 suspected extremists, and only about half were connected to the Madrid bombings. More than 40 were linked to a plot detected in October to blow up the National Court and assassinate judges such as Garzon.

Twenty-two remain in jail over the train attack, and 52 others were released but are still considered suspects. As many as eight are international fugitives. No formal indictments have been issued and a trial is probably months away.

Seven suspected ringleaders blew themselves up April 3 in an apartment outside Madrid as special forces moved in. These were the ones likely to have plotted suicide attacks in the months after the massacre, Reinares said.

He said he was heartened that Spaniards have not shown any significant backlash against their estimated million-strong Muslim community, nor have police engaged in Abu Ghraib-style abuse of jailed March 11 suspects.

Mansur Escudero, a Spanish Muslim leader, agreed. He said there was has been virtually no violence against Muslims, with most anti-Islamic sentiment surfacing among political conservatives and ultra-Catholics speaking out in the media and on the Internet.

“The Spanish people have understood perfectly that these individuals are making an illegitimate use of Islam,” Escudero said of the March 11 cell.