An analysis of the ultra-left and ultra-right groups shows that the polarization of politics leads them to claim their spaces and their social leadership in front of those who are within the system.
Those on the extreme left, much more numerous and organized online, are now returning to demand the release of rapper Pablo Hasél, imprisoned a month ago for glorifying terrorism in the lyrics of his songs.
The epicenter of the protest this past Saturday was Madrid, but with aftershocks in other areas of the State.
The announced police deployment (less than a thousand agents) greatly lowered the number of expected attendees, and there were no altercations or serious acts of vandalism, as had occurred in previous calls.
"Our demand has nothing to do with or is linked to Pablo Iglesias' movement to leave the vice presidency and run as a candidate to preside over the Community of Madrid after the elections on May 4," warns Marco Fernández, from the Madrid Anti-Repressive Movement ( MAR), who made the call.
"In fact, it has been a government with Podemos that has imprisoned Hasél for singing," he adds.
For its part, on the extreme right, undercapitalized after the political irruption of Vox in the parliamentary arch, the new generations take over from the old ones.
Young groups that emerged on social media and in the midst of a pandemic such as Bastion Frontal, which define themselves as "nationalists, in the sense of 19th century German romantic nationalism", seek their own speech with young people such as Isabel Medina Peralta, the girl who offered a A sort of anti-Semitic rally in honor of the Blue Division on February 13 at the Almudena cemetery in Madrid.
Both she and the group are now being investigated by the Prosecutor's Office for alleged hate crimes.
The ultra-left, anatomy of a 'spark'
Dozens of groups are latent waiting for an event that will give them the opportunity to revolt against "the oppressive state" and promote revolution.
A spark.
An event.
A specific event.
It does not matter who summons, a group or several.
This is assemblyman.
It may be due to the construction of an underground car park in the Gamonal neighborhood in Burgos (2014), due to the judgment of the
procés
(2019), due to the eviction of a family, due to the arrest of the activist Alfon (Alfonso Fernández Ortega) in the times of 15-M (2015), for the conviction of the rapper Valtònyc (Josep Miquel Arenas) in 2017, or for the imprisonment of his friend Pablo Hasél (Pablo Rivadulla Duro) a month ago, sentenced to nine months and one day in prison for the crimes of exalting terrorism and insults against the Crown and the institutions of the State.
Someone lights the fuse and the ultra-left movements are activated and all move together, as if electrified, spreading response actions through the networks and replicating them in the more points of the geography the better, with two main purposes.
One is his constant denunciation of "the repression of the State" and of power in general in any of its forms or versions: the police, the banks, the Crown, the Congress.
And another is the creation of icons, references, heroes,
revolutionary
martyrs
, symbols of liberation that give meaning to their struggle.
The last appointment was on Saturday afternoon, with an unauthorized demonstration that went from Atocha to Cibeles: “For our rights and freedoms, total amnesty!
Freedom Pablo Hasél ”, read the call that for weeks ran through multiple messaging platforms.
The organizers are once again the digital platform of the Madrid Antirepressive Movement (MAR), which brings together “a dozen groups” –according to its predecessors– and which was born less than three years ago on Twitter, where it has 11,300 followers.
“We arose as a result of the Valtònyc case, when several groups joined together to show solidarity with him in Madrid, and took to the streets to protest against his sentence [to three and a half years for exalting terrorism and insults to the Crown in the letters of their songs] ”, says Marco Fernández (29 years old), one of the founders of the group.
"We realized that it was necessary to create a generic anti-repression movement to denounce the lack of rights and freedoms that exist in this country, instead of a platform to support each case, that way we would always be prepared," he says.
"It was in La Ingobernable [occupied social center evicted in 2019], there he started walking," he recalls after leaving his job as a warehouse waiter.
On this occasion, the protest would have the capital as its epicenter, although there were many other groups that announced that they would join with simultaneous calls in Barcelona and the other three Catalan provinces, Gijón, Málaga, Alicante, or Zaragoza.
"Its objective is to spread to the maximum, to give the sensation of a lot of mobilization, to become visible the more the better," assure security agents who have been following, analyzing and studying these groups and their members for years.
"They know that in order to sow chaos in a country, what is needed is for protests to take place in several areas at the same time," say the same sources.
"Revolutions are not prepared, they arise: the Arab Spring began because a Tunisian street vendor [Mohamed Bouaziz] had his position confiscated by some municipal officials," he recalls.
"Of course, you have to be prepared to react," he adds.
Extensive device
Police and Government Delegation of Madrid expected a significant turnout, despite the fact that they had not even requested authorization for the demonstration.
"Now they avoid it, there is no request for permission so that there are those who may suffer the consequences of potential breaches," say sources from the Madrid government delegation.
The planned security device was for a thousand agents and it was announced "intransigent": "We are not going to allow acts of vandalism of any kind," warned police sources, alluding to the actions of some rioters in the recent concentrations (not authorized) in Puerta del Sol and surroundings.
The march was uneventful.
San Blas Canillejas en Lucha, Hortaleza Antifascist Youth, District 14 Moratalaz, D-104 Aluche, Alkorkón Combativo, Yesca Vallecas… There are dozens in Madrid alone, many of them arising from or as neighborhood or neighborhood associations.
Those who know well the functioning of these groups from the inside assure that “the violence they use at certain times is only a strategy of struggle;
and the street, a tool ”.
It's your way of achieving greater impact, greater visibility.
“Control the violence? Ask Marlaska [Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Interior Minister] or Franco [José Manuel Franco, Government delegate in Madrid], is it the police who are causing the disturbances, that they let us demonstrate in peace and nothing will happen ", defended Fernández, who assured that the protest was being" criminalized in advance "and that" it would be called to comply with all the security regulations "imposed by the pandemic.
The mobilizing capacity of the anti-fascist and ultra-left groups lies in the generic nature of their demands and slogans, as well as in the dominance they have of social networks and the media and information channels.
"They are much more agile than the extreme right: where some mobilize 200, others attract 2,000 people, ten times more, because the spectrum they cover is very broad," the researchers point out.
Atomization and militancy
The atomization of the extreme left into multiple groups generates a voluminous expanded militancy as in successive concentric circles that overlap each other, forming a vast conglomerate.
"The hard core can be two or three people, sometimes friends from the neighborhood who have taken over a space / headquarters, sometimes people from the same family, or the same soccer team," say the agents;
and the rest are people "who attend the calls or assemblies because they can sympathize with an ideological aspect, with a motivation that they consider fair or unfair," they describe.
As a general rule –although they are quite ephemeral and changing collectives–, behind that salad of acronyms and geographical areas (large and small) of the entire national territory, the same protagonists are usually always there.
For example, Alejandra Matamoros, Pablo Hasél's lawyer, "comes from [Moratalaz] District-14," say the researchers, one of the most combative and radical groups in Madrid,
regular
clients
of the Provincial Police Information Brigade, located in that neighborhood.
Another example: one of those arrested for the assault on a taxi driver during a cacerolada last May in the vicinity of that police complex is Karim Benamar, D-14's usual lawyer, who coincidentally is defended by Erlantz Ibarrondo, also a lawyer. Alfon or
Jimmy's
family
, the Riazor Blues fan (from the extreme left of Deportivo de la Coruña) who was beaten to death in a fight in the Manzanares with ultras from the Athletic Front (extreme right).
There are multiple links of the ultras, from one extreme to the other, with football clubs.
Among the most radical leftists in Madrid, the Bukaneros of Rayo Vallecano stand out, whose headquarters have been searched multiple times by the police.
"The so-called social centers of the ultra-left groups are often meeting points to organize concerts or boxing evenings, where they make collections for their resistance funds," say police sources.
Links with the independence movement
In the same way, clear links between these groups and the Catalan independence movements are perceived in the many crossed messages that are dedicated in the networks.
Thus, for example, the researchers recall that one of the schools in which they voted during the illegal referendum of October 1 in Catalonia was guarded precisely by members of D-14.
"The independence movement and the ultra-left have a common enemy: the repressive state", analyzes an agent.
The main fear of the police in the face of the convocation of the ultra-left collectives is the appearance of groups of anarchists.
"They are the most violent, they are opportunistic, they are trained in provoking the revolt, and they are undetectable, nobody ever knows if they will appear or not and where they may come from," says another agent, who recalls that the eight arrested for setting fire the Mossos d'Esquadra van in Barcelona were Italian anarchists.
“The rebellion of the ultra-left movements is necessary because there is repression, in the same way that there are anti-eviction movements because there are evictions”, Marco Fernández sentenced.
"And it is necessary to support the Catalans because we have convergent interests, out of solidarity, because when they try to exercise their right they blow them up," he says, referring to the incidents of the illegal self-determination referendum of October 1, 2017.
This Saturday, assumes Fernández, “the trigger was Pablo Hasél.
But we go out for all our rights and freedoms: because we are tired of the prisons being full of political prisoners, we come out against evictions and dismissals, against 40% youth unemployment, against cuts in Health and Education, for the four million unemployed, because the infantas are going to see their father fled and in the process are vaccinated, due to the lack of freedom of expression, against police violence, because of the attacks by the police in Linares and for those who have taken the look at a protester in Lleida, against torture ... ”.
Vox dilutes the extreme right
New neo-fascist groups with very young people emerge to oppose the "green PP"
Nobody knew Isabel Medina, apart from her family and friends, until a little over a week ago, on Saturday, February 13, she turned the annual tribute to the Blue Division of far-right groups into an anti-Semitic act.
A young woman barely over the age of majority (19 years old), brown hair, red lips and a blue shirt, shouts a microphone in hand in the Almudena cemetery in Madrid: “The Jew is the culprit.
The enemy is always the same ”.
The video went viral and the complaint for the infamy, collective.
Medina went from having 2,000 to 10,000 followers on his inflamed Twitter account: "I keep saying it and I would say it a thousand more times," he wrote after the wave of criticism.
The Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation for an alleged hate crime.
And the same did the Delegation of the Government of Madrid, which had authorized the march: “It is an act that they do every year since 2007 and no incidents had been registered.
It was not banned because it met all the sanitary requirements (separation, masks, less than 500 assistants).
And there were no problems along the route monitored by the police;
It was already in the cemetery that these completely unacceptable messages and slogans were launched.
As soon as we had news, we commissioned an investigation and made the Police report available to the Prosecutor's Office ”, explains the Government delegate in Madrid, José Manuel Franco.
"You can denounce me, imprison me, or even kill me, but I will never, never capitulate," Medina continued heroically on his Twitter, until this company closed his account.
A new account was made, in which she appeared dressed in black leather in front of a mural of the neo-fascist collective Bastion Frontal, whom hardly anyone knew either, and against whom the Prosecutor's Office recently opened another investigation for another alleged hate crime due to alleged attacks against unaccompanied foreign minors.
The investigation was born from a report from the Madrid Local Police, dated July 9, 2020, where the coordinator of the Casa de Campo Youth Shelter reported how a group of “neo-Nazis” planted a banner with the slogan "Let's take back our neighborhoods, deportation."
This was followed by rallies in front of flats and reception centers: “San Blas will be the tomb of the menas [unaccompanied immigrant minors]”, “out of our neighborhoods” or “in San Blas, not a fucking mena”.
Their spokesman, Rodrigo (19 years old), assures that they are “a youth organization of 60 kids” born in the “working class neighborhood” of San Blas during the pandemic, as a consequence of the destructuring of the group (and later far-right political party) Social Home and the rise of Vox.
His account remains active with about 4,500 followers and raises funds "to help Medina."
The Police makes an important distinction “between the extreme right, in reference to groups, collectives and organizations that assume the democratic system;
and the extreme right, those outside the system, is the difference between those who have adversaries and those who only have enemies ", and among the latter they describe a range of individuals" monitored "more or less constant throughout the last five years of "Between 2,000 and 3,000" people.
Now it is closer to 2,000: "About 2,200", they estimate.
This is a considerable decrease, within a series of collectives, which include neo-Nazi and fascist groups linked to football clubs (Ultras Sur, Frente Atlético / Out Low, Boixos Nois, Ultra Boys in Gijón, Los Supporters Gol Sur del Betis…) and also the more and less active merely ideological (Social Home, Spain 2000 –in Valencia and Alcalá de Henares–, Falange, Frontal Bastion, Canillejas Youth, Make Nation, ADÑ…).
The growth of Vox, especially since the Andalusian elections of 2018, has decapitalized these fascist groups: "For example, Falange is practically dead, inactive," say police sources.
But also the pandemic, the closure of the stadiums, the bars that these groups use as headquarters and the suspension of the concerts they usually attend has reduced their recruitment capacity.
However, police sources point out that acts such as the Almudena cemetery or the attacks on immigrants in Hortaleza and San Blas reveal that, being less numerous than the ultra-left groups, they are still latent and that "the puppies are taking over."
“The numerous cases of corruption, the growing disaffection with the traditional parties and the configuration in the popular imagination of a predatory and extractive political elite, are key factors in understanding the rise of radical right-wing populist parties.”, Víctor Climent Sanjuan writes and Mirian Montaner Goetzenberge in their study
The far-right populist parties in Spain: A comparative sociological analysis
, June 2020.
Generational leap
“A generational leap is taking place, the old references have grown up, they are fathers and mothers of families, who are no longer so willing to go stick to the streets.
The profile goes from some recalcitrant very veteran for whom the group is their way of life, and a small army of kids, among which there are even minors ”, point out police sources.
Rodrigo, the spokesman for Bastion Frontal, explains: “After the fateful end that Hogar Social Madrid (HSM) had when Vox (the green PP) took away all that nationalist social fabric (in the sense of“ 19th century German romantic nationalism ” , prior to Nazism), we stayed in Madrid without any avant-garde movement and, already with the coronavirus and confinement, a group of comrades gave us to think: we could make it up on our own and take advantage of the social unrest that exists to create a alternative to constitutionalism, which is nothing more than a "partycracy" that does not represent the interests of the people, but of the parties and financial oligarchies.
Vox does not represent us, although we can share some of the points of its program ”.
For her part, Melisa Domínguez, the leader of Hogar Social Madrid, now 31 years old and with a son of eight, assures that they were constituted as a political party "for mere legal security", and acknowledges that they have focused on the social sphere: " Anti-evictions and food distribution every Sunday to some 400 Spanish families, in addition to the fact that we keep a property squatted in Julián Romea 16 ”, he points out.
However, both the police and their previous followers assure that they are almost extinct and put as evidence the last call for protest in front of the Moncloa Palace: "There were four and among them some destitute of those who live squatted", they recall.
Mutation
According to Esteban Ibarra, from the Movement against Intolerance and a member of the Observatory against Violence in Sports, “there is a possibility that the euphoria of returning to stadiums, to the streets, to bars, to concerts ... leads to greater visibility and conflict of these ultra groups ”.
According to Ibarra, who closely follows the evolution of these violent groups and who recognizes that most of the complaints they receive come from alleged crimes of hatred on social networks, "where they have moved for their campaigns and recruitment", points out.
The latest Hate Crimes Study presented by the Ministry of the Interior in 2019 highlighted that the highest number of incidents, 34.9% of the total, were of an ideological nature, followed by xenophobes or racists (30.2%) and referred to sexual orientation (16.3%).
"At this moment all the ultras groups are undergoing a mutation," warns Ibarra.
"Those who accept the system have left with Vox, and those who are in a reaffirmation process need to rejuvenate (new generations), they have to discover profitable elements for their agitation and propaganda (they are going to do a tough and street direct action) and they will try to highlight all the contradictions of the system, whether by using the pandemic (deniers), political corruption or immigration, polarizing and radicalizing from social networks ”, he maintains.
"Vox has weakened them, has undercapitalized them, has taken away social capital and has also covered them in the media," he concludes.