17. Deconstructing a Mythology: Spain’s ‘Democratic Transition’: The Fraud of the Century
More than twenty years after the downfall of the dictatorship, a number of politicians and other contemporaries of the Transition still alive produce some palliating accounts of these events, which assign the different political roles incorrectly. Relying on the short historical memory of the Spanish people, this eventually reaches the point of downright falsification of history. By creating a myth around the Transition, they celebrate certain politicians involved and exaggerate their own role.
It appears that part of this phenomenon is the desire to forget or deny the support one received from abroad whereby politicians and correspondents, political parties and foundations and other organisations, especially from Germany, have contributed significantly to the success of the Transition.1
In his celebrated novel The Leopard, Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote: “For things to remain the same, everything must change.” That sums up the essence of the Democratic Transition in Spain. For most people, democracy is not just an empty word. It must mean an entirely new regime that allows the masses to determine their own lives and destinies, and above all permits them to achieve a better standard of living. For the bureaucrat and professional politician, democracy has an entirely different meaning.
A central role in perpetuating the mythology of the Democratic Transition was played by the leaders of the PCE and the PSOE. Together with sections of the old regime, they did everything in their power to prevent the people from the settling of accounts with fascism. To this end they devised a new constitution based on a monarchy that nobody had elected and was the invention of Franco. The main upholders of the old regime would retain their power and privileges and the abominable crimes committed by them for a period of four decades would be forgiven and forgotten.
When Faust eternally signed away his soul for the immediate satisfaction of his earthly desires, he got what he wanted in the short run. But this Faustian pact had very serious consequences hereafter. For the army of careerists who flocked to the banner of the new regime, democracy signified above all an opportunity for them to advance personally to win prominent positions in the state and government, to sit on ministerial benches, to earn fat salaries and have access to all the perks associated with what are known as the fruits of office. No sooner had the dictatorship fallen than the reformist politicians began to dream of ministerial offices, positions, legality, constitutions and life in a future parliamentary paradise. Their slogan was the one expressed many years ago by a British Labour Member of Parliament: “I am in favour of the emancipation of the working class – one by one, commencing with myself.”
The price of the Transition was paid by the masses who had fought to overthrow the old regime. After the so-called Democratic Transition, the old regime remained virtually intact, though now anointed with a little ‘democratic’ oil. The repressive bodies remained in being. The Civil Guard continued to shoot demonstrators, and torture and murder prisoners in the jails. The monstrous privileges of the Roman Catholic Church, that bulwark of the counter-revolution, were left intact, an intolerable burden on the people of Spain. The vast armies of nuns and priests were to remain in charge of their schools, their salaries paid by the taxpayer.
Not a single person was punished for the crimes, murders and atrocities under Franco. The murderers and torturers walked freely in the streets where they could laugh in the faces of their victims. An amnesty law passed in 1977 forbade the prosecution of crimes committed during the dictatorship. A pact of silence was imposed that gagged the people of Spain for decades. They were simply supposed to forget the 1 million who were killed in the Civil War and the forty years of dictatorship. The history books were rewritten in such a way that none of this was supposed to have happened. The mass graves, where thousands of nameless corpses lay beneath olive groves and mountain passes, were to be left undisturbed so as not to prevent tourists from admiring the view. This was a betrayal of everything the workers of Spain had been fighting for.
I recently came across an interesting work by Charles Powell, Director of the Elcano Royal Institute in Spain, who among other things writes:
[…] in marked contrast to the Communist bloc countries, under Franco it was possible to distinguish between the regime and the state, with the result that the dismantling of the former had little impact on the latter; in other words, in Spain the newly-elected democratic authorities were able to inherit a ‘usable’ state apparatus.2
Having arrived at a deal that left the old state basically intact, the workers’ and leftist leaders went on to endorse all kinds of ‘social and economic pacts’ (particularly the AMI and the Pactos de la Moncloa) that placed the full burden of the capitalist crisis of those years on the shoulders of the workers and their families. All this led to a wave of disappointment and political demoralisation that lasted for decades.
The most abominable crimes of the past have been whitewashed, and cries for justice have been ignored. I well remember the name of one of the most notorious of those monsters, who was then known as Billy el Niño (Billy the Kid). That name was known and feared by every man or woman dedicated to the fight for democracy. God help the poor wretch who fell into the hands of that sadistic beast in human form! This man, whose real name is Antonio González Pacheco, was one of the most active agents of Franco’s dreaded secret police, known as the Social Political Brigade and he was notorious for his acts of extreme violence against those detained for political reasons.
Pacheco stands accused of continuous torture in the dungeons of the General Security Directorate of Madrid. Was Pacheco sent to prison for his crimes? Of course not! He was decorated for his services. In 1977 Minister Martín Villa awarded him the Silver Medal for Police Merit, which increased his pension by fifteen per cent. In 1982, he was rewarded with a Gold Medal that meant a further increase of twenty per cent in his pension. And the right-wing PP government of Rajoy confirmed these awards. Evidently, torture is a highly valued and lucrative profession, even in a ‘democracy’.
In November 2017, Felisa Echegoyen filed a criminal case against the torturer. She had been tortured for days on end in one of the dungeons of the former General Security Directorate in 1974 by this Pacheco, who was then inspector of the Social Political Brigade. But in February 2018, a Madrid court ruled that the crimes of torture he was accused of “had expired”. That decision was later upheld by the Provincial Court, which argued that it could not be considered a crime against humanity “because it lacks the requirement of being a systematic and organised attack on a group of the population”.
This is just one example of impunity that serves to cover up the crimes of the Franco regime, one of the pillars of the so-called democratic transition. There are many others.
An even more scandalous example of how the Spanish judiciary protects known torturers is the case of the men who tortured Arregi to death in February 1981. In the trial, the prosecutor requested three months in prison for Julián Marín Rios and Juan Antonio Gil Rubiales for the crime of “ill-treatment.” Given the atrocious nature of the injuries inflicted on a defenceless prisoner, the word “ill-treatment” constitutes either a flagrant violation of legality or a joke in very poor taste. The ‘punishment’ was equally farcical. The author of the Euskal Memoria report on torture in the Basque Country points out that this so-called sanction was “grotesque”, since it only consisted of a loss of twenty days of salary.
As if this were not bad enough, in December 1983 the two torturers were actually acquitted, but shortly afterwards they would be tried again at the request of the Supreme Court. However, in September 1985, the Fifth Section of the Provincial Court of Madrid acquitted them yet again. These honourable judges went even further: they rejected the claim that Arregi had been the victim even of ill-treatment, adding that “there is no certainty that the sores on the soles of the feet were burns.” All that was lacking here was to accuse the dead man of having attacked his guards, who were acting in self-defence, deliberately and maliciously burning his own feet in order to incriminate them.
Nor was this the end of the saga. The sentence was again appealed in October 1989, almost nine years after the crime was committed. The Supreme Court sentenced Marín Ríos and Gil Rubiales to four and three months of arrest and three and two years respectively of suspension of employment and salary. However, neither the disciplinary sanction nor the judicial conviction seems to have had the slightest impact on the lives or careers of the two defendants.
In 1990, the government of Felipe González pardoned both policemen. In May of that year, Cristina Almeida, then a member of Parliament for the United Left, asked the Executive of the PSOE what had been their reasons for granting that favour to Ríos and Gil Rubiales, who continued working in the police. She received no answer. The same question was asked again a year later. The minister, Virgilio Zapatero Gómez, replied that “the Police Inspectors to whom the question of the Honourable Member refers are currently in a situation of suspension of duties for the time stipulated in the Judgment”. But soon afterwards, the two pardoned police officers returned to their jobs. In 2005 Gil Rubiales was promoted to the position of Chief Provincial Commissioner of the National Police Corps in Tenerife by the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. He died in July 2008.
This is the real ugly face of the fraud of the century.
The Myth of Juan Carlos and Democracy
After the defeat of the coup in February 1981, a new era began in Spain. The ‘Transition to Democracy’ was considered to have officially come to an end. It was the working class that led the struggle against the dictatorship, and it did so with extraordinary bravery and determination. But this heroic struggle was derailed by leaders who elbowed aside the militants who had sacrificed everything for the sake of the fight against the dictatorship and imposed their own ideas of compromise and moderation on the movement.
All subsequent history has been written with a view to concealing this fact. Instead, miraculous powers are given to certain individuals, although the slightest examination of the facts indicates that these individuals, so far from possessing godlike qualities, were, for the most part, insipid nonentities.
Hardest of all for the workers to accept was the recognition of the monarchy. Charles Powell was correct to say that the king represented: an “entirely artificial, authoritarian monarchy designed to perpetuate the Franco regime.”3
As we have seen, the monarchy was foisted on the Spanish people by a deceitful manoeuvre. This was then covered up by the constant repetition of the myth of ‘the king who saved democracy’. This cynical lie was the basis for a massive hoax. For decades this version has been presented as an eternal truth. To call it into question was regarded approximately as the equivalent of railing against the Holy Trinity in Saint Peter’s Square on Good Friday.
The Spanish royal family was, and remains, protected from any serious investigations or scrutiny into their affairs by the so-called Pact of Silence and key parts of the constitution. In particular there was a blanket veto of any attempt to expose their actions on the night of 23 February 1981. However, sooner or later the truth will always come out. As we have seen in previous chapters, the facts concerning the involvement of the king in the conspiracy have been made public slowly, painfully and in bits and pieces. But, to this very day, important information of what really happened during the coup attempt remains under lock and key, and this scandalous state of affairs will continue until 2031, when the records from Spanish sources and from the United States embassy in Madrid will finally be open for inspection.
The idea that the Spanish monarch has no powers is entirely false. During his reign, Juan Carlos frequently interfered in Spanish politics, notably in foreign affairs, where he inevitably sided with reaction. In 1981, Juan Carlos met with US President Ronald Reagan. Spain decided to join NATO in 1982. The same year, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party came to power and the new President of the Government, Felipe González, maintained excellent relations with the Crown.
Any criticism of the king and Queen is actually illegal under Spanish law. The same applies to any criticism of the armed forces.
The following is an extract from the Royal Decree of 1 April 1977, ironically entitled ‘On Freedom of Expression’:
Article 3
Paragraph 2 of Article 64 of the Press Law will be replaced with the following:
2B. The administration may only order the seizure of written or spoken means of communication if they contain news, comment or information:
a. Which are contrary to the unity of Spain.
b. Which constitute an attack on, or disrespect for, the Monarchy or Members of the Royal Family.
c. Which in any way attack the institutional prestige or respect – before public opinion – of the armed forces.
In February 2018, the Spanish Supreme Court confirmed the sentence passed by the Audiencia Nacional that condemned Valtonyc, the stage name of a twenty-six-year-old rap artist from Mallorca, to three-and-a-half years in jail. He was accused of slander, lèse-majesté (criticism of the monarch) and glorifying terrorism in his lyrics. The day before he was due to enter jail he went into exile in Belgium where he remains. He has, in effect, been exiled for criticising the monarchy. This is the state of freedom of expression in the democratic Spain of the 1978 regime. This case shows how the monarchical institution already severely restricts freedom of speech.
It may have escaped the attention of the admirers of the Spanish version of democracy that free speech does not mean that one is free to speak as long as one does not offend the sensibilities of the powers that be. This is the kind of blatant hypocrisy that covers up the continued existence of objectionable laws and restrictions that Spain has directly inherited from the Franco era.
The Constitution
The biggest fraud of all was the so-called democratic Constitution of 1978. This was not, as was claimed at the time, and is unfortunately repeated today by the leaders of United Left and Podemos, a social contract subscribed amicably between two parts of society, but the fruit of a political betrayal of the expectations of a fundamental change craved by the majority of society.
The botched solution of the so-called ruptura pactada led to an abortion, which under the guise of an alleged consensus, conceals an abject surrender on the part of the workers’ leaders – a ‘solution’ that really represented a continuation of the old regime with a whitewashed façade of pseudo-democracy. In essence, nothing fundamentally changed. Arturo Val del Olmo, the leader of the UGT of Álava at the time of the Vitoria general strike in 1976 who later got a degree in law, had this to say when I interviewed him early in 2018:
The constitution is a reflection of the pact they made with the dictatorship. From start to finish, it stands for the maintenance of the status quo of state power: first of all, the monarchy, which is per se undemocratic. Secondly, it is backed up by the army, a pre-eminently undemocratic institution! By what right do unelected generals exercise the role of guarantors of the constitution?
As for the right to work, to housing, and such like, these are mere phrases that are absolutely worthless. What is not at all worthless is the commitment to private property.
The constitution was supposed to be homologated with Western or European democracies, but the homologation is minimal. In reality, they maintained elements of the old system to ensure that the old powers retained control under a façade of pseudo-democracy. They had to have a Congress and a Senate, because the Senate was going to control the Congress. It is based on an undemocratic type of representation that is weighted in favour of the rural areas where there was less politicisation, where the working class has far less influence and where the more conservative elements prevail.
In this country public companies and important public institutions (and there are many) such as the Bank of Spain, are also full of right-wing elements holding key positions. The PP has put them there. So, they control the judiciary, the economic power and the media. Any book you read about the Transition will tell you that it is not possible to explain the power that the right has in the media if it is not a consequence of the Transition itself.
The Court of Public Order disappeared and yet did not disappear. Only the name was changed. The day after disappearing in the State Bulletin, the National Court appeared, which is the same, and it is responsible for committing crimes. The army, the police and the Civil Guard did not purge themselves of fascists and who is there now? That is a nest of fascists on all sides. Just one week ago the army wanted to close the access to the army archives. And that’s because at the top of the army there are people from the extreme right. What is happening with people who have tried to rebel within the army? Violations of law and human rights have taken place within the army, and what attitude has the state had towards the army? Where have the military leadership been educated? Who directs the education and training of those who join the army?
The crisis in Catalonia, the brutal police repression and political prisoners are reflections of the democratic involution that is a direct consequence of renouncing the democratic rupture in the Transition. The Franco regime was allowed to keep in its hands the levers of power at all levels, and this has been maintained to this day. The PP held onto the key elements of power as a consequence of the Transition. In the judiciary its influence is incredible, in public companies, it is the same story. Just look into the Bank of Spain or any other public institution, and they are stuffed full of right-wingers. These people during the Transition held onto power at all levels: in the police, in the army, you name it…
In the Constitutional Court, for example, the woman who is judging the Alsasua case is the wife of a lieutenant colonel of the Civil Guard. The university is one of the powers also. In spite of everything, these people have placed their children, cousins, grandchildren, uncles – all of them have been placed in key positions and they have been given qualifications to put them there. So there you have it! The Cifuentes case shows that. They are all well placed. It’s terrible.
You can see just to what extent the far right controls the state apparatus in the question of Catalonia and the republican flag. What happened in Catalonia led to a reaction of the most right-wing sectors in the State. And how do we respond to all this? That is the question, and the answer is quite depressing. One has to ask: what kind of left is there in this country? Where is it? You don’t hear a pipsqueak out of them.
The media is another element in the Transition that requires explanation. What role did El País play at that time? And how was it financed? It has taken all this time, and still there are not many answers to these questions. We now know the role that Felipe González played, but there are many things that are not known, people have been learning from their experience, but it has taken longer than we thought.
Arturo continued:
Then there is terrorism. But what is considered as terrorism? The case of Alsasua proves that anything can be judged as terrorism. A young girl who is on the Committees for Defence of the Republic in Catalonia has been sent before the National Court. These bodies have been stuffed with their own people who completely dominate the judiciary.
‘Terrorism’ in Alsasua, Rape in Pamplona
The indiscriminate use of terrorism as an accusation was shown in an incident that occurred in the small town of Alsasua in Navarre on 15 October 2016. Two off-duty Civil Guards entered a local bar with their girlfriends. They were quickly identified by a group of twenty to thirty-year-olds and told they were not welcome. Blows were exchanged and one of the guards ended with a fractured ankle. You might say this was just an ordinary drunken scuffle. But when the case came to court, the local boys found themselves charged with ‘terrorism’. That meant that the eight accused were collectively facing up to 375 years in prison. Three of the young defendants were held for over a year in pre-trial prison nearly 500 km from their families, whose visiting rights were severely restricted.
In the end, the National Court dismissed the terrorism charges, but convicted them with severe sentences for “injuring and attacking an agent of the authority, aggravated with abuse of superiority, discrimination and public disorders and threats.” One of them was sentenced to two years of prison, another three to nine years, another two to twelve years and the remaining two to thirteen years.
The degree to which the police and Civil Guard are out of control was shockingly exposed by the notorious Pamplona rape case. During the San Fermín festival in July 2016, a young girl, only eighteen years old, was subjected to a brutal rape by a gang of five men who called themselves La Manada (the Wolfpack). Two members of this gang were serving in the police and the armed forces. In view of the vicious nature of this crime against a defenceless young girl, the prosecutors had asked for sentences of more than twenty years. But in the end the five men were each sentenced to nine years in prison. Antonio Manuel Guerrero, a member of the hated Guardia Civil, was fined an extra €900 for stealing the victim’s phone. The men were found guilty of sexual abuse, which provides for a far more lenient sentence than rape. The court’s decision not to convict the men of rape caused a national outcry and mass protests in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and other parts of Spain.
Despite the seriousness of their crime, these convicted rapists were released on bail in June 2018, less than two months after being sentenced. This was particularly scandalous since some of the men had been charged with a similar case of group sex abuse in Pozoblanco (Córdoba), for which the prosecution is asking for a seven-year jail sentence. But the judge, in his wisdom, considered that there was no flight risk, no risk of destruction of evidence and no risk of reoffending.
Following their conviction in April 2018, the army soldier, Cabezuelo, and the Civil Guard, Guerrero, were suspended from service but still received seventy-five per cent of their wage. Cabezuelo was expelled from the army in October 2018, but Guerrero remains a member of the Civil Guard until the end of the appeals process for the case. Just compare this extraordinary leniency with the scandalous severity of the Alsasua case. In modern, democratic Spain, just as under Franco, the police are a law unto themselves, free to commit any kind of arbitrary crime against the people, in the confidence that the courts, which are stuffed with right-wing and fascist elements, will allow them to walk free and even pay their back wages.
As I was finishing the book, on 21 June, 2019, the Supreme Court took a final decision on the La Manada Case. It ruled that their crime was rape, not just sexual abuse as the lower court had decided, and sentenced them to fifteen years imprisonment. This does not change anything about the nature of the Spanish justice system. The ruling was forced on the Supreme Court by a campaign of mass protests in the street, which left it with no other option than to increase the sentence in an attempt to protect the already tarnished reputation of the Court and the whole of the judiciary.
The number of cases of violation of human rights in Spain is too great to mention. But any attempt to denounce them is met with hostility and further repression. Thus far have we come in four decades of democracy in Spain.
Freedom of Speech in Spain Today
In addition to prohibiting all criticism of the monarchy and the armed forces, there are other aspects that restrict it even further. In 2018, Amnesty International published a damning report about the lamentable state of free speech in Spain. The PP government launched an all-out offensive against online speech, targeting everything from politically controversial song lyrics to jokes. This was done under the accusation of ‘glorifying terrorism’ or else ‘humiliating the victims of terrorism.’
Social media users, journalists, lawyers and musicians have in fact been prosecuted under Article 578 of the Spanish Criminal Code, which prohibits ‘glorifying terrorism’ and ‘humiliating the victims of terrorism’. Although this provision was first introduced in 2000, it is only in recent years, following its amendment in 2015, that prosecutions and convictions under Article 578 have sharply risen. The Amnesty document states:
The result is increasing self-censorship and a broader chilling effect on freedom of expression in Spain. The rise in prosecutions under Article 578 has taken place in the context of the rapidly shrinking space for expressing dissent in Spain.
Austerity policies, implemented following the 2008 financial crisis, were met with mass opposition in the form of new social movements and waves of protests. The Spanish authorities subsequently curtailed the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
In 2015, parliament amended the Law on the Protection of Public Security – commonly known as the ‘gag law’ (ley mordaza) and introduced new limitations on protests and administrative fines targeting those participating in public assemblies. The authorities then imposed tens of thousands of fines on protesters, human rights defenders and journalists for conduct that is protected by the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.4
Article 578 of the Penal Code says:
Punishes any person who commits a public act that either glorifies or justifies a terrorism-related offence, or those who committed such an offence, or any act that discredits, disparages or humiliates victims of terrorism or their relatives.
Penalties may include between one and three years’ imprisonment, a fine and several years’ mandatory disqualification from the public sector (which includes prohibitions on practicing certain professions, holding public office, obtaining public scholarships and more).
Where the internet or other electronic media is used, this is punishable by a penalty at the higher end of the range of possible sanctions.5
The Amnesty document continues:
The impact of prosecutions under Article 578 has been considerable. As with all terrorism-related offences in Spain, those convicted under this provision must be subjected to a lengthy period of disqualification from the public sector, which means, among other restrictions, that they are excluded from pursuing a wide range of professions and from running for public office.6
The Spanish Ministry of the Interior warned that even retweeting a message that glorifies terrorism can amount to a criminal offence. That was no empty threat. On 7 November 2014, the media reported that the Madrid municipality had decided to put up a commemorative plaque to Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco.
Arkaitz Terrón, a thirty-one-year-old Basque lawyer living in Barcelona, tweeted: “I don’t understand why the producers of Cava don’t put up a plaque for Carrero. The day ETA blew him up, lots of bottles were opened.” On the morning of 13 April 2016, eight Civil Guard officers arrested him as he was about to leave home for work. He was detained for a day and charged with “glorifying terrorism” and “humiliating victims of terrorism” on social networks.
The National Court acquitted Arkaitz, arguing that his messages had not incited anyone, either directly or indirectly, to commit a terrorism-related offence. The prosecution appealed to the Supreme Court, which confirmed the acquittal of Arkaitz. He told Amnesty International:
In my case, they did not achieve anything, but their target is not the sixty people prosecuted in the aftermath of the Spider Operation.7 These operations and the subsequent prosecutions attract a lot of media attention. The authorities’ aim is to make people think twice before expressing their opinions online, especially those who are the most critical.8
Others were not so lucky.
On the same day that Arkaitz was arrested, J.C.V. returned home in Aiguafreda (a town 55 km from Barcelona) after his night shift at work and found five plainclothes officers waiting outside his house. He was detained for six hours and then charged with “glorifying terrorism” and “humiliating victims of terrorism” … The authorities prosecuted J.C.V. for thirteen messages posted on Twitter between 2012 and 2013. For example, on 30 May 2013, J.C.V. wrote:
“They killed Xabier López Peña Thierry [a former ETA political leader] in a French prison. We will always remember him. Soldier, the people are with you. We will win for you.” López Peña died on 30 March 2013 from a brain haemorrhage in a hospital in Paris. In January 2018 J.C.V. was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison, and seven years’ disqualification from the public sector. The cases of Arkaitz and J.C.V. demonstrate how narrow the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ online speech have become.9
In Spain today, tweet if you dare…
Attacks on Artistic Freedom
The Amnesty report contains an annihilating exposure of the assault on free speech, which extends even to the realm of the arts:
A number of artists have been prosecuted for “glorifying terrorism” and “humiliating” its victims… In one of the most infamous cases, Alfonso Lázaro de la Fuente and Raúl García Pérez, two professional puppeteers, were arrested after a performance during the Madrid Carnival because one of the puppets had held a sign with a slogan similar to one used by ETA. The National Court eventually dropped the charge[s]…
[O]n 4 December 2017, the National Court convicted twelve rappers, part of a collective called La Insurgencia, under Article 578 and sentenced each of them to two years and a day in prison, as well as nine years’ disqualification from the public sector and a €4,800 fine…10
In October 2016, law enforcement officials launched a co-ordinated operation in several locations to arrest all twelve rappers of La Insurgencia. Two police officers arrested Nyto [Rukeli] in Santiago de Compostela. The prosecutor charged them with “glorifying terrorism” on the basis of their song lyrics, including the following line in Nyto’s song ‘Subversive Rhymes’: “We must fight decisively, only the ideological line of the Communist Party-Reconstituted will save us.”
The National Court ruled that the rappers glorified the armed group GRAPO, which the authorities argued is tied to the PCE-r, and several of its members and, in addition, had the potential to encourage people to commit terrorism-related offences. In addition to the prison sentence, Nyto fears that being sentenced to nine years’ disqualification from the public sector will significantly limit his ability to find employment in his chosen profession, care of the elderly.
Nyto told Amnesty International that even before their convictions, the prosecution of the collective had already had a negative impact on its members. “Many got scared. The authorities succeeded as about half the members have stopped singing or have changed the messages in their songs.”
The authorities have prosecuted several other rappers under Article 578. On 19 January 2017, the Supreme Court sentenced the singer César Strawberry to one year in prison, and six years and six months’ disqualification from the public sector for “glorifying terrorism” and “humiliating” its victims. The conviction related to a series of tweets he had posted in 2013 and 2014. In December 2013, César Strawberry tweeted “how many more should follow the flight of Carrero Blanco?”…
César Strawberry previously had been acquitted by the National Court in July 2016. However, in a landmark ruling heavily criticised by human rights organisations, the Supreme Court stated that whether César Strawberry had intended to glorify ETA and GRAPO or humiliate the victims of terrorism in his Twitter posts was irrelevant in establishing his criminal liability. The Court stated that Article 578 does not require courts to take intention into account. At the time of writing, his appeal was pending before the Constitutional Court.
Rapper Pablo Hasél, who was sentenced in 2014 to two years’ imprisonment for “glorifying terrorism” in his songs on YouTube, was convicted again for his lyrics and Twitter posts on 2 March. In one of the tweets, posted on 1 April 2016, he said: “two years since Isabel Arpacio [a member of PCE-r] was exterminated for being a communist, after the state denied her medical care in prison”. He received a two-year prison sentence and a €24,300 fine for “insults and slander against the Crown and other state organs”, as well as “glorifying” terrorism.11
Don’t Laugh! It May Injure Your Health
On 13 April 2016 the Civil Guard arrested Cassandra Vera, a twenty-two-year-old student from Murcia, for jokes and memes she had posted on Twitter concerning Carrero Blanco. For example, she had tweeted a photo showing Spiderman watching a car in mid-air with the text “Spiderman vs. Carrero Blanco”. Many people came to Cassandra’s defence, including Lucía Carrero Blanco, Luis Carrero Blanco’s niece. In a letter to El Pais, she wrote: “I am fearful of a society where freedom of expression, however regrettable it may be, could lead to imprisonment”.
Despite this, the National Court sentenced her to one year in prison and seven years’ disqualification from the public sector. Subsequently, the Supreme Court acquitted Cassandra after a successful appeal. But although Cassandra’s conviction was overturned, her prosecution had a seriously detrimental impact on her life. The sentence of disqualification from the public sector meant that she lost a public scholarship that covered her university fees.12
The Amnesty report concludes with a devastating criticism of Spain’s record on human rights:
In Spain itself, amendments to Article 578 in 2015 only increased the reach of this already broad and vague provision.
By using these laws to criminalise lawful expression, the Spanish authorities are disregarding international human rights law and standards. The impact of Article 578 is devastating to individuals – ranging from hefty fines, to lengthy periods of exclusion from the public sector, to prison sentences. But even beyond these sanctions, such misuse of counter-terrorism provisions leads people to engage in self-censorship for fear that they may be targeted. The criminalisation of such a wide range of expression has a general chilling effect and can create an environment where individuals are afraid of expressing unpopular views, or even making controversial jokes.
Such a constrained and shrinking space for public and open debate, discussion and criticism poses a longer-term threat to the strength of civil society and the ability to ensure not only the right to freedom of expression, but the defence of a whole range of other fundamental human rights.13
The Church Today
The Church of Rome has a habit of surviving. It has lasted two thousand years, which is not a bad track record. In Spain it managed to save itself by jumping off the Francoist cart just in time. But does this mean that the leopard has changed its spots? Subsequent events must lead us to a different conclusion. The Concordat between Spain and the Holy See was signed in 1979. After forty years, the privileges of the Catholic Church have not only been maintained but greatly increased: in economic and fiscal matters, in education and social services, and even in symbolism. Socialist governments allowed themselves to be intimidated by the Church, while those of the People’s Party went along with it with enthusiasm.
It is said that Spain is a Catholic country. But this is no longer true. The country’s seminaries, monasteries and nunneries are half-empty, or closed. Only fifteen per cent of Spanish Catholics attend mass every week. More than sixty per cent rarely step foot inside a church. A mere twenty per cent of Spanish citizens define themselves as practicing Catholics (and only ten per cent of citizens under the age of thirty-five). About thirty per cent of the population under the age of fifty are agnostics, sceptics, freethinkers, atheists and people indifferent to the subject. In May 2013, the Spanish radio network Cadena SER revealed that only twenty-two per cent of those interviewed support the special treatment of the Church, whereas sixty per cent of voters of all political parties stand for the abolition of the privileges that the Catholic Church enjoys under the Concordat. It is important to note that eighty-one per cent of the voters of the PSOE and eighty-eight per cent of the voters of the United Left are against those privileges.
Thanks to different economic circumstances and tax allowances granted by the state, the Catholic Church receives more than €11 billion in Spain each year. This generous gift adds to the enormous wealth already possessed by the Church as a result of centuries of robbery, swindling and exploitation. In fact, the privileges of the Roman Catholic Church in Spain are even criticised by many Catholics, including important ecclesiastics and theologians. The organisation Cristianos de base de Madrid (rank-and-file Christians in Madrid) sent a letter to the then-Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, in which they said:
Teaching a religious faith does not belong in schools but somewhere else, and other agents must be in charge of it: temples, synagogues, mosques, etc. They further point out that the economic privileges of the Church “cannot be justified in a democratic State”, such as subsidies, tax exemptions and special rights for the acquisition of real estate properties. (…) On the contrary, the Catholic Church is the largest owner of real property in Spain, and fails to meet its commitment to finance itself. This was admitted by the very Church in the above-mentioned Agreements, but it still asks for more state subsidies, even if, right now, these are above €10 billion every year.14
To add insult to injury, a truly monstrous piece of legislation allows the Church to claim possession of a huge number of buildings that were regarded as public property. Inmatriculación is a legal form of robbery that allows the Catholic Church to claim ownership of properties that are not registered in the Spanish land registration system, under Article 206 of the mortgage legislation established by the Franco regime on 8 February 1946. Under the government of the right-wing reactionary José María Aznar, a decree law was passed in 1998, thanks to which the Catholic Church is considered to be at the same level as Public Law Corporations, such as municipalities, provinces and the state itself. Bishops and archbishops are given the same rank as any public official when it comes to certifying that a property ‘belongs’ to the Church.
As a result of this legalised plunder, the Church has managed to get its hands on more than 4,500 buildings and other properties in the last ten years. These properties include the world-famous Mosque of Córdoba, which was seized by the Church. This blatant theft of public assets has been carried out with the full consent of state authorities.
Since nobody seems to have the courage to challenge the power of the Church, it will continue to enjoy its privileged role, in which barefaced robbery is thinly disguised under the heading ‘charity work’. But for the Church, the old saying holds good: ‘Charity begins at home.’ Millions in economic contributions to the healthcare and education organisations will continue to pour into the deep-bottomed coffers of the Catholic Church.
An Affront to Democracy
These privileges would be an affront to any genuine democracy. But Spain today is very far from being such a democracy. It is bad enough that the Church has its hands buried deep in the pockets of Spanish taxpayers. But its interference in the private lives of citizens goes far further than that. The Church is heavily involved in politics. When a socialist government legalised divorce and abortion and decriminalised birth control in the 1980s, the bishops protested that the socialists were destroying the moral fibre of the nation.15 A radio station it part-owns, the COPE, was a ferocious critic of the socialist government and the faithful were called out to protest against laws on divorce, abortion and gay marriage, although it lost those battles.
When the Education Act of 1990 removed the compulsory teaching of Ethics and Religion (i.e. Catholicism) from state schools Church leaders accused the government of leading the country down the path of secularisation. The Act would, they argued, destroy young people, who will be brought up with neither morals nor feelings.16 Later the Church were violently opposed to same sex marriage despite strong popular support for the Act (it was passed in July 2005). In other words, the Church remains today what it always was: a bulwark of reaction. The Church uses its position in order to lobby the elected government to impose policies in accordance with its own set of moral rules, violating rights and freedoms, specifically the freedom of conscience and freedom of speech, and trampling on human dignity.
A case in point was when actor Willy Toledo, who used a very common and rather vulgar Spanish expression relating to the Almighty (Me cago en Dios), was put on trial for blasphemy. The aforementioned expression, although it may be regarded as somewhat indelicate, is of very great antiquity, and is so common that, if everyone who said these words were hauled before the courts, the entire judicial system in Spain would grind to a halt. I do not know how this trial will end. There may have been some difficulty in citing the Almighty as a witness for the prosecution, but clever lawyers can usually find a way out of such situations.
In 2013, the Church beatified 522 ‘martyrs’ of the Spanish Civil War in what the Spanish media described as “the biggest ever beatification in the history of the Church”. Beatification is the last formal step before possible sainthood. The Platform for the Truth Commission, an association of groups supporting Franco-era victims had written to the pope, saying: “Under the guise of a religious act, the (Catholic) hierarchy is committing a political act of pro-Franco affirmation.” It added:
“You should know that the Catholic Church backed Franco’s military uprising against the Spanish Republic in 1936.”
The Church “considered the war ‘a crusade’ by backing the generals who revolted, [and] legitimised the fascist dictatorship and the fierce repression that it afflicted on the Spanish.”17
Some more progressive sections of the Spanish Catholic Church, a minority in Spain, also opposed the beatification, saying it would reopen the wounds of the past. But the Church went ahead anyway. The Spanish Catholic Church tried to sidestep the controversy by referring to the 522 to be beatified as “martyrs of the twentieth century in Spain”. But Pope Francis let the cat out of the bag by saying at the Vatican that they were “martyrs killed for their faith during the Spanish Civil War.” In 2007, Francis’ predecessor Benedict XVI staged the Vatican’s largest previous beatification ceremony, involving 498 victims of religious persecution during the war.
Just Like the Good Old Days
The lengths the Spanish state went to in its attempt to prevent a Catalan referendum on self-determination led many to ask the question why? After all, had referendums not taken place in Quebec and Scotland? The fact is that in Spain even the hint of exercising the right of self-determination was considered as a threat to one of the pillars of the regime: the sacred unity of Spain guaranteed by the armed forces as enshrined in the 1978 Constitution. If that pillar was allowed to be challenged (regardless of the possible result), then what would be next? A referendum on the form of the State – Monarchy or Republic?
All the questions which were left unsolved during the Transition would be brought back into discussion putting in jeopardy the whole of the 1978 regime. That is why the referendum could not be allowed and the Spanish state used all means at its disposal, through the legal structures and also through naked police repression, to prevent it.
On 1 October 2017, the day of the referendum on Catalan independence, thousands of Spanish police and Civil Guards in full riot gear descended on polling stations to seize ballot boxes and physically prevent the voting from going ahead. They were met with hundreds of people at each polling station. These were unarmed citizens who attempted to use peaceful civil disobedience to defend the polling stations, in many cases this consisted in sitting on the floor arms linked or raising their arms and shouting “we will vote”.
The Spanish police responded with baton charges, tear gas and rubber bullets, which left harrowing scenes of peaceful protesters being attacked, thrown down the stairs, their skulls cracked by police batons. People were beaten on the floor where they were lying defenceless. The police did not hesitate in using battering rams to enter polling stations (mostly located in primary and secondary schools), smashing through glass doors, destroying furniture and internal doors. As a result, over 1,000 people were injured and had to receive medical attention and four were hospitalised.
Roger Espanyol, a young man from Barcelona, lost an eye as a result of a direct impact from a rubber bullet fired by the Spanish police. Then came the arrests. Among those detained and charged with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds were several Catalan politicians (including the president and several ministers, as well as the speaker of the Catalan parliament). Also arrested were leaders of the mass movement (the leaders of Òmnium Cultural and the Catalan National Assembly). Others went into exile to avoid being jailed.
Those arrested were all put in pre-trial detention in jails far away from Catalonia. Crimes of rebellion and sedition, for which members of the government were indicted, are inherited without any modification from the 1944 Franco-era penal code. This fact tells us a lot about the real nature of the 1978 regime in Spain. The National Court itself, trying the Catalan political prisoners, is the continuation of the old Public Order Tribunal of the Franco regime, which in turn had inherited functions from the Special Tribunal for the Repression of Masonry and Communism.
Sedition implies a ‘tumultuous mob’ preventing the action of the authorities or the implementation of the law. It carries a maximum jail sentence of fifteen years. The leaders of the two largest pro-independence organisations, Jordi Sánchez from the Catalan National Assembly and Jordi Cuixart from the Òmnium Cultural, have been charged with sedition in relation to the 20 September 2017 demonstrations.
Tens of thousands attempted to prevent the arrest of fourteen high ranking Catalan officials by the Spanish police and searches by the Civil Guard in a number of Catalan government buildings. The crowds were peaceful and there were no clashes. Furthermore, Sánchez and Cuixart acted to calm the crowds and attempted to guarantee the Civil Guards’ and court officials’ safe passage out of the building of the Economy Department.
The crime of rebellion implies “rising up in a violent and public manner”. It carries a maximum jail sentence of thirty years. The fact that there has been no violent uprising in Catalonia did not deter the state prosecutor, nor judge Carmen Lamela, who accepted these charges. Far from encouraging a riotous mob, they attempted to calm it down! None of that matters to the Spanish state prosecutor and the National Court. They want to mete out exemplary punishment so that no one can get the impression that mass civil disobedience carries no consequence.
State prosecutor José Manuel Maza argued that the 1 October referendum on independence (called by the Catalan Parliament and outlawed by the Spanish state) constituted an uprising, and that rebellion does not necessarily imply “physical violence” if “the uprising is of such a scale that it has a sufficient capacity of intimidation to discourage action by security forces”.
In other words what is on trial here is the exercise of the right of self-determination. In a sign of its vindictive character, it was revealed that the prosecutor had named the file with the indictment against the Catalan government ‘The Harder They’ll Fall’. Why was the repression of the Spanish state against those involved in the Catalan independence referendum so brutal? Would it not have been better to allow a referendum to take place as for instance in Scotland and Quebec in the past? The real reason is that the ‘unity of Spain’ imposed by force is one of the defining features of the 1978 regime, which resulted from the fraud of the ‘Democratic Transition’. One of the conditions in the piece of paper which was given to Carrillo on behalf of Suárez in 1977 was precisely the abandonment of the right of self-determination for the nationalities.
Furthermore, the Catalan referendum was posed as a referendum for a Catalan Republic therefore questioning not only the ‘sacred unity’ of the Spanish state but also that other pillar of the 1978 regime, the Monarchy. Such a challenge could not be allowed. If the Catalan people were permitted to hold a democratic vote on whether they wished to remain part of Spain, then the question which would obviously follow would be, why not a referendum on the question of the Republic for the whole of Spain. In fact, this is precisely what we have seen with the wave of Republican referendums which took place in universities, neighbourhoods and towns across Catalonia in the Autumn of 2018 and the Spring of 2019, with the participation of tens of thousands.
Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Cuixart were arrested on 16 October 2017, while the other eight Catalan political leaders were arrested on 2 November 2017. This means they spent over a year in pre-trial detention and they remain in jail while the trial is going on at the moment of writing these lines. They are facing a total of 200 years in jail. Their only crime? To attempt to exercise the democratic right of self-determination, one which the Spanish 1978 regime sees as a fundamental threat to its legitimacy. As well as these high-profile cases, dozens of Catalan independence activists have been charged, arrested and questioned by the police for participating in peaceful protests, road blockades, defence of polling stations, etc.
The people of Catalonia have had a most effective demonstration of the joys of democracy brought about by the Transition. In Spain, the right of self-determination, the struggle for the Republic and the struggle for the historical memory therefore acquire a revolutionary character and challenge the whole edifice of the regime.
Spain’s Buried Shame
In 2010, seventy-one years after the Spanish Civil War ended, thirty-five years after Franco’s death, and four years after a law was passed authorising exhumation of the war’s mass graves, barely ten per cent of the estimated 2,052 sites have been investigated. The great majority of the 120,000-plus victims believed to have been killed and buried by Franco’s militias are still waiting to be dug up. They may wait forever. In the province of Seville, 102 out of 104 have not been unearthed – even though, as one of the victims’ relatives says, “everybody who lived through the Franco years knows where the sites are; it was part of what our parents grew up with”.
Juan Luís Castro, an archaeologist who has been present at more than half the exhumations of Civil War graves in Andalusia, told The Independent: “The graves and execution sites were mainly at the sides of cemeteries, where the atheists and suicides, as well as huge numbers of unbaptised children, were buried during the Franco years.”18 Roadside ditches, according to Mr. Castro, were another favourite spot. Spain’s most famous ‘missing person’ from the Civil War, the poet Federico García Lorca, is believed to have been murdered along with 4,000 republicans by a ditch on a hillside above Granada. “But in other cases, the bodies have been found in pits, in forests or in wells. At the concentration camp in Castuera [Badajoz], they’d rope up a prisoner, throw them in a well and then throw in a hand grenade,” Mr. Castro says.
Time and urban development have destroyed some of the burial sites, which have disappeared beneath rubbish tips or inside the gardens of expensive housing estates. Not long ago, in La Palma del Condado in Huelva, south-west Spain, a children’s play park was built over one. About 200 bodies are estimated to be buried beneath the concrete. The families of nine former Republicans requested the right to extract the bodies from the most notorious mass graves, but they face an uphill struggle.
The memory of slavery is still alive in countless towns and villages where streets and squares still bear the names of the old oppressors. In Madrid alone someone has calculated that there are still more than 150 streets and squares named after Franco’s ministers and generals four decades after the country was supposed to have embraced democracy. The people of Spain cannot forget and must never forgive. The bodies may still be buried in unmarked graves, but the truth cannot be buried forever. All the attempts to bury the past have failed. In its search for the ‘historical memory’, the new generation is digging up the graves and rescuing the mortal remains of the victims of fascism. In so doing, they are not only fighting for justice. They are also struggling to recover the genuine traditions of the past generations. After all, what future can there be for a nation that has lost its past?
The Valley of the Fallen
“But the republicans cannot make a bourgeois revolution. Their masses want a red revolution,” the general said.
“In the name of liberty there was frightful license. The constitution was a unilateral affair. Half of Spain is persecuted.”
“Then no truce, no compromise is possible?”
“No. No, decidedly, no. We are fighting for Spain. They are fighting against Spain. We will go on at whatever cost”
“You will have to shoot half of Spain,” I said.
He shook his head, smiled and then, looking at me steadily: “I said whatever the cost.”19
The Valley of the Fallen is a vast mausoleum in a lonely valley in the sierras, some 50 km north-west of Madrid. Its sinister presence is marked by an enormous cross, 150 m high and 46 m wide, which is visible for miles around. In a huge basilica at the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen), Francisco Franco still lies in state in a grave fit for a king. This very fact cries out to heaven, for this monstrous cross was built in large measure by the slave labour of thousands of nameless prisoners of the Civil War, many of whom lost their lives in the process. This monument to fascist barbarism remains a stain on the face of Spain – a permanent mute rebuke to those who wish us to forgive and forget.
It takes an effort of the imagination to grasp the fact that this is the last national monument in Europe to the memory of a former dictator. In Italy, there is nothing to remind us of Mussolini, who ended his life hanging upside down from a petrol pump. In Germany, all the monuments to Nazi Germany have been painstakingly erased, while Hitler’s body, doused with kerosene and burned in his Berlin bunker, has never been found. But in Spain, forty years after democracy was said to have been restored, fascism is still openly celebrated in monumental style. The Valle de los Caídos contains, as well as the body of Franco, the mortal remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Spanish Fascist Party, the Falange.
In fulfilment of Franco’s macabre whim, the crypts contain 33,847 bodies of Civil War combatants, more than a third unidentified. Some are fascists, others are prisoners from battalions of forced labour who died during the monument’s twenty-year construction. Yet others were exhumed from mass execution graves in the 1950s, purely to make up the numbers in the crypts after the fascists failed to find enough unidentified massacre victims from their own side. Thus, today, murdered republicans, socialists, communists and anarchists are lying alongside the man responsible for their deaths, a macabre kind of ‘national reconciliation’ in which the victims are insulted and humiliated, even after death. For decades, their families have been denied the elementary human right to rescue their bodies and provide them with a decent burial and a suitable place over which to mourn them.
The families of the victims have campaigned for justice for years, without success until now. The socialist government of Pedro Sánchez passed a law to remove Franco’s remains from the basilica in the Valle de los Caídos. But this has been thwarted by Franco’s family and the right wing, who have used every legal trick and excuse to prevent it. This was not difficult, for the simple reason that the judiciary, along with the rest of the Spanish state, is stuffed full of right-wing and extreme right-wing elements. To ask this state for justice, and particularly justice for the victims of the Franco terror, is a futile exercise.
The latest twist in this convoluted saga took place on 4 June 2019. The Supreme Court decided to stop the exhumation of Franco’s body, which the government had set for 10 June. In its judgement, the Court cites “the great fame of Francisco Franco Bahamonde” adding “the fact that he was Head of State since 1 October, 1936”. This is a scandalous statement. Franco was appointed head of state on that date by the fascist generals, who had risen up against the democratically elected Government of the Republic in July 1936. This was the only legal government and head of state of Spain in October 1936. Thus, the Supreme Court is giving legitimacy to Franco and his regime! This little incident shows that Francoism is alive and well in present day Spain, and effectively controls the most important parts of the Spanish judiciary.
As I write these lines (June, 2019) the body of the dictator stays where it is.
Darkness and Light
The Prado Museum in Madrid is undoubtedly one of the world’s finest repositories of great art. And for me personally, the greatest Spanish artist alongside Diego Velázquez, was undoubtedly Francisco Goya. In his paintings one sees the essence of Spain and its people, their irrepressible character, their history, their sufferings and joys. Here too, one finds the sunshine and laughter of youth, but also the darkness and miseries that have befallen the Spanish people so many times.
Spain is a country of many contrasts. The brilliant rays of the sun produce the darkest shadows. The history of Spain also has periods of sunshine and enlightenment, interspersed with dark and sinister episodes. The long years of the Franco dictatorship were years of terrible darkness. But in the period through which I had the good fortune to live in Spain, the sun began to shine through the clouds. True, it was a period of many difficulties, hardships and dangers, but I will always remember those years of struggle as a period of tremendous energy and optimism. They were, when all is said and done, a period of brilliant and invigorating sunshine. It was the sun of hope, that most powerful and life-giving of all human emotions.
The hopes of those years were not necessarily clear to everyone. They could not be expressed in words, but they were powerfully felt by every one of the men and women who participated in the struggle. They were fighting for a better world, a better tomorrow for themselves and for their class. They felt that such a world was within their grasp. But these noble aspirations were never fulfilled.
The Spain which I remember in the 1970s and the Spain of today are like two different countries. In many ways, the life of the people has improved beyond recognition. The infrastructure, especially in the field of public transport and roads, has been transformed. Health and education have also made gigantic steps forward. Living standards improved in the period up to 2008. But all these gains were in reality based upon very fragile and unstable foundations. After the collapse of 2008, Spain experienced a deep recession, with soaring unemployment, especially among young people. The government imposed a policy of cuts and austerity that led to the collapse of living standards and a rise in poverty and homelessness. The old problems, which in truth were never completely resolved, have returned with a vengeance. The ghosts and demons of the past, which were never exorcised, have come back to haunt Spanish politics.
The years and decades that followed what I consider to be the great betrayal cannot be described as either the dark night of reaction, nor yet the bright sunshine of hope and aspiration. They were lost years and decades, a grey period in which one could speak of material improvements, but of intellectual, moral and spiritual impoverishment. Unspeakable corruption and cynicism at the top, and a kind of reluctant acquiescence in the base. That period lasted a long time, but fortunately is now coming to an end.
For the past four decades Spain has suffered from a ‘national amnesia.’ When a man or woman suffers from amnesia, they go to a doctor for treatment. When a whole people suffer from collective amnesia more drastic treatment is called for. Powerful vested interests wish to keep Spain’s past under lock and key. But the working class and all the living forces of Spain demand the truth and will not be satisfied with anything less.
Today, the revolutionary struggles of the 1970s seem like the half-forgotten dream of a distant past. And yet, for those of us who were privileged to live through it, the memory of those great days remains as bright as ever. What struggles those years witnessed! How much hope had they been filled with! For the first time in their lives, millions of workers, women and youth saw themselves as the protagonists of their own history, taking their destiny into their own hands. They had broken the inertia and routine that had condemned them to the existence of slaves. Those without a voice suddenly found one, and began to speak their mind. They had lost their fear and entered boldly into battle, full of pride and confidence in their cause.
Millions of people joined parties, stood up and fought for their rights. It was through mass action that men and women began to acquire a sense of their own strength and assert their worth as human beings. In periods like this, the finest qualities of the human personality assert themselves, casting away all the pettiness, narrowness and egotism of a mundane life. The human spirit strives for something greater, something higher, for a better world and a better life, for a new society.
This was a magnificent movement based on solidarity and unity, sacrifice and bravery, dignity and pride. Workers asserted themselves as workers, expressing a class unity above all distinctions of age, gender, nationality, language or religion. There was a new respect for women comrades, the struggle for the rights of all men and women. These were the feelings and qualities that inspired millions of men and women, and spurred them on to action in those turbulent revolutionary years. With such marvellous human material, nothing could have stopped the socialist transformation of society. Victory was within our reach, if only those who called themselves leaders had possessed one tenth of the character, courage and determination of the working class.
It is that which should be the real memory of the 1970s, not the cynical wheeling and dealing of the so-called heroes of the Transition. The real heroes were the men and women whose names are forgotten, but who sacrificed everything to win the fight for freedom. That fight has still to be won.
A New Awakening
For forty years Spain has been living a lie. Behind the façade of ‘democracy’ are the same old people that thrived under Franco and continue to thrive today. Steeped in corruption and holding in their hands thousands of threads that control the state, the police, the army and the judiciary, the children and grandchildren of the dictatorship continue to hold real power. The same handful of privileged families own and control the banks, the mass media, the land and the wealth of Spain. The same 100 families of the economic oligarchy that helped Franco take power and maintain the dictatorship, and that now continue their business in ‘democracy’: the Urquijo, the March, the Carceller, the Villar-Mir, the Botín, the Del Pino, etc., who have been joined by new upstarts like the Amancio Ortega, the Florentino Pérez or César Alierta. Everything has changed, and nothing has changed. The prior condition for advance is a serious, honest and critical analysis of the mistakes of the past. The new generation of activists are searching for ideas, a banner and an organisation. Powerful vested interests wish to keep Spain’s past under lock and key. But the working class and all the living forces of Spain demand the truth and will not be satisfied with anything less. They are quite right. Without this understanding, they would be doomed to make similar mistakes and suffer the fate of their fathers and grandfathers. No further progress is possible until this swindle is exposed and overthrown.
However, the leaders of the main workers’ parties have learned nothing and forgotten everything. The rapid rise of Podemos was a clear reflection of the inability of the old leaderships to put forward a revolutionary programme that could appeal to the workers and youth. It attracted many of the most active and energetic layers of society. Podemos aroused great hopes. But the complete lack of a coherent and unambiguous socialist programme has led it into a blind alley.
Four decades after the betrayal of the Transition, Spain is moving once again towards a revolutionary upsurge. The country is now faced with huge unemployment and the deepest economic crisis for decades. After a long period of relative quiescence, there are clear signs of a revival of the class struggle. Many of the older generation have fallen away, tired and disillusioned. They are being replaced by a new and fresh generation of fighters. There have been mass protests against austerity measures, general strikes and the impressive movement of the miners, which recalled the traditions of the 1930s. In 2011, we had the impressive movement of the revolutionary youth with hundreds of thousands of indignados occupying the main squares of the cities in Spain.
According to an IPSOS opinion poll, over 6 million people said that they had participated in one way or another in the movement. There have also been massive movements against education cuts, a successful movement against privatisation of health care in Madrid, huge demonstrations and direct action to resist evictions and repossessions. More recently, we have seen movements of millions of pensioners against so-called pension reform. The rebellion of the Catalan people is part of this general process. On International Working Women’s Day, 8 March 2018, millions participated in mass protests all over Spain, including a general strike. Although the initial cause was women’s rights, there can be no doubt that this movement expressed the general discontent that has been building up in Spanish society for many years.
The new generation is being forged in the fire of struggle. They instinctively feel that the privileged position of the Church and the Monarchy are an intolerable violation of basic democratic rights, and they seek to return to the genuine traditions of communism, to the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. They are saying: “The regime of 1978 is finished”. They are right, of course, but what is necessary is a thorough and honest debate about the past and an analysis of the mistakes that were made. It is necessary to break completely with the policies of ‘consensus’, pacts and alliances with the bourgeoisie.
On the order of the day is a return to the 1930s and 1970s, but on a qualitatively higher level. After decades of living a lie, people are questioning the very nature of the infamous ‘Transition to Democracy.’ Republican flags are again flying defiantly on demonstrations alongside the red flag of the working class. They are seen by many in the communist movement and in United Left as a symbol of struggle against a bankrupt and reactionary regime that was imposed on the people as part of a ‘democratic’ swindle. In the furnace of struggle, a new generation of fighters will be forged. In fact, this is already happening. This is the hope for the future of Spain and the world. It is to this generation that I dedicate this book. Its final chapter will be written by them. The great wheel of history is turning right now, preparing new struggles and challenges that will determine the fate of everything. It is the duty of all conscious workers and revolutionary youth to study the lessons of the past as a necessary precondition for victory in the future.
In the words of George Santayana: “He who does not learn from history will forever be doomed to repeat it.”
[1] Walter Haubrich, Spain’s Difficult Path to Freedom.
[2] Charles Powell, Revisiting Spain’s Transition to Democracy, p. 40. My emphasis, AW.
[3] Ibid., p. 45.
[4] Amnesty International (2015), Tweet… if you Dare: How Counter-Terrorism Laws Restrict Freedom of Speech in Spain, London, p. 2.
[5] Ibid., p. 5.
[6] Ibid., p. 5.
[7] Operation Spider (Spanish: Operación Araña) is the codename given to the 2014-17 Civil Guard operation in Spain against the defence of terrorism on social media, mainly on Facebook and Twitter.
[8] Ibid., p. 7.
[9] Ibid., p. 7.
[10] Ibid., p. 8.
[11] Ibid., pp. 10-11.
[12] See ibid., p. 14.
[13] Ibid., p. 15, My emphasis, AW.
[14] This figure has increased to more than €11.6 billion since they produced this report.
[15] Ian Gibson, Fire in the Blood: The New Spain, London, 1992, p. 70.
[16] Ibid., p. 68.
[17] Quoted in The Telegraph, ‘Church beatifies 522 “martyrs” of Spanish Civil War’, 13 October 2013.
[18] Alasdair Fotheringham, ‘Scandal of the Spanish Civil War mass graves’, The Independent, 14 November 2010.
[19] Jay Allen, ‘Franco Orders: “No let-up in drive on Madrid”’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 28 July 1936.