Far-right in Catalonia and Spain February 2020 1 Index Far-right in Catalonia and Spain February 2020 1. Introduction 2. Historical contextualization The Franco regime survives 3. Radical right at the street 3.1 Radical right and hate and discrimination 3.2 Summary of attacks, acts and violent activities 4. Institutional far-right 5. Far-right in executive and judicial powers 5.1 Far-right and security forces 5.2 Far-right and judicial power 6. Conclussions 2 1. INTRODUCTION The 28/2018 Decree, June 7, restructuring the Department of the Vice- Presidency and Economy and Finance created the Civil and Political Rights Office. October 1 of 2018 Government appointed director of the Civil and Political Rights Office to Adam Majó Garriga. During 2019, Civil and Political Rights Office de Drets Civils i Polítics published the Political intolerance’s Cartography, a collection of 655 documented and contrasted cases in which the civil society itself violates, attacks or restricts basic rights, such as political participation, association, meeting, manifestation, or freedom of expression. According to the point 2 of the motion1 subsequent to the Government's appeal on the rise of the far right in Europe, Parliament of Catalonia shows concern for the growth of the extreme right throughout Europe and, in particular, the Spanish State, and: a) Calls to the main institutions, political and social actors of the State to normalize not fascism or to launder its policies. b) Orders to the political forces presents in this Parliament that they don’t collaborate with the far-right, neither actively nor passively, neither counting their votes nor sharing mobilisations at the street. c) Denounces the impunity that so often have the far-right’s actions at the street and that too often they appear to be collusion with judicial institutions, and the State security bodies and forces. In this way finds alarming specially the position of the State Attorney General's Office of considering far-right collectives who are likely to be victims of hate crimes. d) Considers specially urgent that the State Government bet on a policy of dialogue and democratic solutions for Catalonia, leaving the court way, where he shares accusations with the far-right. e) Requests that the State Government abandon the path of authoritarian and repressive policies that are marked by far-right, being the unique offer provided to solve the political conflict in Catalonia by the State Government so far until now. According to the 24.2 point of the Resolution 693/XII of the Parliament of Catalonia, on the recognition and guarantee of women's rights (BOPC 505, January 9 2020), the Parliament of Catalonia has urged the Government: a) To elaborate, by the Civil and Political Rights Office, a report on the rise of far-right in Europe and how this affect to women’s rights. 1 See Parliament 3 b) To elaborate, by the Civil and Political Rights Office, a specific report of women’s rights threatened in the Spanish state and raise solutions to be able to protect them. Article 104, section g). 43/2019 Decree, February 25, establishes that the Office must ensure compliance and drive the measures adopted in the Resolution of the European Parliament 2018/2869 (RSP), October 25, on the rise of neo-fascist violence in Europe, reason why it becomes necessary inform on the actual situation, x-ray under the name Far right in Catalonia and Spain. February 2020. This report, to comply with the Resolution 693/XII of the Parliament of Catalonia, on the recognition and guarantee of women's rights, will be accompanied in the coming months with the more specific reports The rise of far right in Europe and women’s rights, and Women’s rights threatened in Spain. The working methodology of this report is born in the study of media, sources of expertise and data extracted from sector’s, in order to value terms, news and concepts that allow us to grasp, explain and transmit the analysis of reality. Sources for X-ray Reality have taken into account that there is never a single way to tell the facts, but the facts are as they are. For this reason, we wanted to be careful with the words that collect them, and with the objectivity needed to understand the severity and significance of the detected violations. 4 2. HISTORICAL CONTEXTUALIZATION As Isaac ROSA remembers, at the prologue of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them2, “Spanish is the only democracy in Europe that was not built on the defeat of fascism, the only one who was not born an anti- fascist. Even more: the only country in which antifascist (assimilated to violent, radical and undemocratic) raises more suspicion than the term fascist”. Francoists at Paracuellos del Jarama, 1976 © Carlos Bosch THE FRANCO REGIME SURVIVES Nazism and Italian fascism were defeated at II WW. This was not the case with Francoism, which under a dictatorial regime was perpetuated until the death of the dictator, on November 1975, and beyond, becoming a democracy, thanks to the Spanish Constitution of 1978. As FONTANA3 noted “We usually think of a constitution as an instrument of renewal that breaks the past and lays the foundations for a new age. These would be cases like the Constitution of 1812, which liquidated absolutism, or the one in 1931, which ended the monarchy. But the 1978 rule did not meet these conditions, because it was born of an agreement with the old Francoist regime, and not of a victory that would have allowed it to be replaced by an entirely new one”. 2 See How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them;. Stanley, Jason. Blackie Books. 2019. Prologue. 3 See also the article Catalanofobia (El Periódico, August 2 2009) of Carles Duarte. 5 As CUCURELLA 4 remembered, Felipe Gonzalez said in 1984, at Toledo, “Terrorism in the Basque Country is a matter of public order, but the real danger is the Catalan differential”. In an expression that illustrates the difficulty in understanding, accepting and managing the cultural, linguistic and national plurality of Spain, both during the dictatorial period and with the subsequent democracy. Over 42 years after Amnesty Act 1977, it’s advisable to take stock to contextualize where we came from and how we have been born and with what roots the radical right, and the far-right in Catalonia. On the one hand, foundations that glorify the figure of the dictator Francisco Franco and the values of the dictatorship, with the motto “One, Great and Free”, exacerbated by the proposed exhumation of the dictator's body from the Valle de los Caídos, which took place on October 24, 2019. On the other hand, the rise of Catalan independence, which partially replaces immigration as the culprit of all evils, in the role of scapegoat to alleviate fears, justify crises and point “the inner enemy”. A simplistic discourse that points to evils, which does not know how to cure, but positions those who promote it as guarantor of their homeland and their virtues, to the point of encouraging and / or exerting violence to impose the supposedly saving ideas of the Spanish nation. In this context, the economic factor is decisive. The crack of 1929 help us to understand the growth of Nazism, Italian fascism, communism and Francoism. The current economic crisis become crucible to alleviate the fear of the loss of work, housing and conditions of the welfare state by which the financial system was rescued with more than 70,000 million euros, in Spain, and the bursting of the housing bubble. In this context, people from immigration become targets for projecting frustrations and accumulated anger. The other determining factor, in the influence of far-right approaches in Spain, is historical. Almost genealogical. Families that united power in a totalitarian state have retained power and influence in the 41st year of what should be a rule of law, democracy and social. If we analyze the pillars of the whole state - the legislative, the executive and the judiciary - we will find that the majority party in recent years (not in Catalonia but in the state) was the Popular Party. Born of Alliance Popular, founded among others by former Francoist ministers León Herrera Esteban or Manuel Fraga Iribarne. By their hands circulated the vertebrate power, with the leg of the army (scare aside 23-F), that cannot be freed of some objective data: the Emeritus 4 See La politització miop del procés català (El País, March 15 2014), CUCURELLA, Santiago. 6 King was designated King by the dictator Francisco Franco, to succeed it. The Constitution considers him irresponsible, against the principle of equality of all citizens established in article 14 of the same rule. In institutions like the Civil Guard, also of a military nature, in the 1980's they could still be found commands who had been fighting in the Nazi 250th Division, the Blaue Division, and they had sworn allegiance to the Fürher. From the Francisco Franco National Foundation website, you can consult an article by Fernando Garrido Polonio 5 , reminiscent of participation of the Civil Guard in the Nazi 250th Division. It must be remembered, for example, that 7 Managing Directors of the Civil Guard served in his day as chiefs or officers at the Nazi 250th Division: 1) Luis Zanón Aldalur (10-12-1962/31-12-1965) 2) Angel Ramírez de Cartagena y Marcaida (4-1-1966/21-11-1967) 3) Luis Díez-Alegría Gutiérrez (7-3-1969/13-1-1972) 4) José Vega Rodríguez (17-5-1975/10-10-1975) 5) Ángel Campano López (11-10-1975/23-12-1976) 6) Antonio Ibáñez Freire (23-12-1976/2-5-1978) 7) José Luis Aramburu Topete (21-4-1980/26-10-1983) On Saturday, May 11 2013 the Civil Guard paid tribute to Blue Division (Nazi 250th Division) in an act with the government delegate at Catalonia, then María de los Llanos de Luna, at Sant Andreu de la Barca.