William R. and Carlos A. are the first Spanish white supremacists to sit in the dock for preparing for a "race war." Barricaded in a remote farmhouse in a village in Lleida, the two men, aged 30, had become radicalised and fantasised about committing attacks in the manner of two of their idols: Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch (New Zealand) and Anders Breivik, author of the largest terrorist attack (77 fatalities) in Norwegian history. William and Carlos drew up a racist manifesto and spread their ideology in Telegram groups before deciding to set up shop in a farmhouse with the intention of forming a "militia".
The Prosecutor's Office is asking for six years in prison for William for a crime of incitement to hatred and another for drug trafficking, since in the farmhouse they grew cannabis as an alleged formula to finance a white rural community. The request for his colleague Carlos rises to 11 years in prison because he was the owner of the prohibited weapons that the Mossos d'Esquadra found in the farmhouse when they searched it, in September 2020: a revolver, a sword and two machetes, among others. The investigators tried to have the case investigated as glorifying terrorism by the National Court, but in the end it remained in a court in Lleida: despite expressing their desires for blood on the internet, they did not devise or prepare any particular violent action. The arrest was precipitated by an incident of a different nature: the police learned that William intended to supply a woman with chemicals in order to sexually assault her.
William and Carlos met on the internet. William, whose father was an American, had written a manifesto he titled Iron Pills: A Heroic Life Project, in which he advocated "materializing actions" that would culminate in the "race war" between whites and ethnic groups he considered "inferior." The first step of the plan was to gather the whites in small rural communities, where they would be self-sufficient through drug trafficking and, when the time came, they would take up arms to stop the supposed invasion of foreigners into Europe.
"There is a Tarrant in each of us"
The text was disseminated by both on an internet portal (burbuja.info), but also in Telegram groups where William called himself Lycurgus — the Spartan legislator credited with introducing eugenic concepts — which reached almost a thousand members. The manifesto alludes to a far-right conspiracy theory known as "the great replacement": "There are already enough non-whites with a fast-paced demographic to replace us on our own turf. The solution has to be one that sends non-whites back to their home continents." William invited whites "of legal age, in optimal health, and willing to commit themselves to all consequences" to join rural communities that would be "militia-like."
Material seized from supremacists arrested by the Mossos.Mossos d'Esquadra/ Guardia Civil
On Telegram, the two defendants disseminated messages in videos and images that "attacked the dignity", but also "against the physical integrity and life" of certain groups, such as "Kill all niggers for climate" or "the traitorous Jews will have their time and they will be hanged in the public square". On these channels they also took the opportunity to broadcast photos of their idols, in particular Brendon Tarrant, the perpetrator of the massacre in New Zealand. "There is a Tarrant in each of us," William wrote in May 2019, also distilling his hatred on the burbuja.info forum, where he wished for "the most infamous death" for women who had sex with men of other ethnicities. "How bad Hitler was. It's a good thing they defeated him and so we can live in the Catalonia of faggots, cripples, criminality, moronegrada and other blessings."
William and Carlos created a private channel to share, with a smaller group of followers, actions that sought to make the manifesto a reality. They allegedly captured two people: J.E. and M.J.N., who will also sit in the dock this Thursday, in the trial to be held in the Court of Lleida. The four "agreed to create a small residential nucleus in the rural area with a vocation to expand" and develop there "a system of cannabis cultivation", according to the accusation of the Prosecutor's Office. M.J.N. was in charge of buying the estate, a small stone farmhouse in La Pobla de Cérvoles (200 inhabitants), in the region of Les Garrigues, and rented it to William and Carlos. For his part, J. E. was in charge of advising them to grow about 150 cannabis plants.
The supremacist adventure came to an end on September 12, 2020, when the Mossos broke into the small stone building, in an isolated and remote area, and arrested William and Carlos. In addition to the weapons, they found a multitude of books of National Socialist ideology. Although jihadist terrorism remains the main threat to the Mossos, white supremacism is a growing concern. Of the nearly 200 alerts about possible cases of violent radicalisation in Catalonia, 12.5% are related to the far right.
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