Swastikas in Spain

...none of whom were fascists...

...The circumstances surrounding the bombing would lead almost anyone to suspect the fascists...

...Despite this generally accepted belief that torture is not uncommon, the response to the death of Arregui was overwhelming...

...Or should the mistakes of the past six years be attributed, as some say, to an "inability to function" in a democratic society...

...There is no happy ending to this article...

...But they wish that the price they had to pay for dignity were not quite so terribly high...

...In retrospect, six years after the death of Franco, that optimism seems tragic...

...Or opportunistic...

...For others—those who did question— they were years of jail and living in basements, or years of moving from house to house, careful to choose their friends wisely and leave no tracks...

...Eight people were killed...

...The party of the government, the Union of the Democratic Center (UCD), counts many former Francoists among its leaders...

...According to testimony by the two suspects, they acted on orders given by David Martinez Loza, head of security for Fuerza Nueva...

...The ease with which the fascist movement has been able to function and grow since 1975 can be explained in part by its curious role in the political system...

...They had never known the Civil War nor seen a Republican flag, but they read clandestine histories of Spain smuggled from France and equipped with false book covers...

...Every year since the death of Franco there have been fascist demonstrations on November 20, the anniversary of his death, and every year more people attend...

...And, it added, "The burns on both feet are not recent, but nor are they old...

...Instead of working toward eliminating the fascist element in the armed forces, the government has put more emphasis on public declarations about the democratic nature of the army, perhaps hoping that the army itself will be convinced...

...They lined the nine lawyers against the wall and began shooting, leaving five dead and four seriously wounded...

...A constant presence and a constant threat...

...Martinez Loza was detained for a few hours and then released...

...Since 1977, when the political parties were legalized, at least forty offices have been bombed or attacked...

...In other cases, they may not be members or even materially implicated in fascist crimes, but they protect those who are directly implicated, and they supply arms, destroy evidence, refuse to give testimony, or give false information to the press...

...The parliamentary left-wing parties have often used the Chilean experience to argue that great care should be taken to avoid provoking or angering the armed forces and the extreme right in general...

...The result of the investigation (in October 1979) was an affirmation by Amnesty that in fact the prisoners had been tortured...

...After five months of confinement, they were released without bail...

...However, the autopsy also pointed out that "the bruises (and other wounds) demonstrate physical violence pathologically unrelated to the bronchial pneumonia...

...But just as those who had seen the Second Republic declared on April 14, 1931, began to die or forget that interlude of freedom, a new generation of antifascists began to appear...

...Fascists in Spain fall into two general categories: the "old guard," made up of former Francoists, business executives, bankers, lawyers, large landowners, and military officers, and the "new wave," made up of younger recruits, the sons and daughters of the old guard...

...The torture and death of Jose Arregui is not a singular occurrence," the bishops said in an official public statement...

...One learns the art of gracefully avoiding their stands in the street, where they sell national flags, key chains with swastikas, and portraits of Franco...

...During Franco's forty years in power, the Falange was the only legal political party, and the party's president, Raimundo Fernandez Cuesta, served several times as a minister in the Franco Government...

...One person was killed and fourteen were wounded...

...Many of those men and women who heroically struggled against fascism are today members of the Spanish parliament...

...Of the violent organizations linked with Fuerza Nueva, two deserve a special note...

...the police warned Fuerza Nueva members to move the tables away from the restaurant...

...The 144 members of ETA in the Madrid prison of Carabanchel began a hunger strike in protest...

...Although there are some ideological differences among them, more often than not this multiplicity is the result of a tactical decision...

...One witness told the press that he heard a Fuerza Nueva member telling his friends not to enter the restaurant...

...If the armed forces and the police had been democratized, if the parliamentary Left had seriously sponsored an ideological campaign against fascism, if the district attorneys and judges, almost all of whom were appointed during the Franco regime, had been replaced—even then, there is no guarantee that the coup attempt of February 23 would not have come...

...El Papus: On September 20, 1977, a bomb destroyed the Barcelona building where the satirical magazine El Pa-pus is published...

...There were more bomb threats, attacks on leftist party offices, soldiers in the streets, and sporadic fascist demonstrations...

...Such aid would not be surprising, given the fact that the police hierarchy and structure, as well as the personnel, remain the same as during the Franco years...

...They listened to American music on the radio and realized that young people in other places could rebel and question their world, if only in the Ruth MacKay is an American freelance writer in Spain...

...In Arregui's home town, a village in the province of Guipuzcoa, 10,000 attended the funeral...

...The police, in whose hands the suspect remains and who have the sole responsibility for deciding if a suspect deserves to have the Anti-Terrorist Law applied, wear no identification in the jails and often are plainclothes officers, making later identification in court extremely difficult...

...Supporters include members of the upper class, civil servants, military officers (General Milans del Bosch, leader of the coup attempt in Valencia, is said to be a member, as is Lieutenant General Santiago Diaz de Mendival, who served as a Vice President in Adolfo Suarez's first government), right-wing members of the clergy (including Bishop Guerra Campos of the province of Cuenca), and the sons and daughters of all these except—of course—the clergy...

...The Batallon Vasco-Espanol (Basque-Spanish Battalion) occupies itself almost exclusively with killing members of Basque nationalist parties, and up to this writing its members have evaded arrest...

...The Frente Nacional had an estimated 150 members when the arrests took place...

...He was arrested under the Law of Citizens Security, better known as the Anti-Terrorist Law, which stipulates that a suspect may be held without specific charges, and with no access to legal counsel, for up to ten days...

...According to a survey published in the magazine Tiempo de Historia in November 1980, 85 per cent of Spain's military officers voted for the Right in the general elections of 1979: one-third for the governing Union of the Democratic Center, one-third for the Popular Alliance (to the right of the UCD), and one-third for the Fuerza Nueva...

...The attack was claimed by the Triple A, and provoked an immediate twenty-four-hour protest strike by employes in press, television, and radio throughout the country...

...The Association of District Attorneys of Madrid refused to sign a public condemnation of the coup, with eight voting in favor, twelve against, and four abstaining...

...Claiming that Fuerza Nueva had become too moderate, dissident members formed the Frente Nacional de la Juventud (National Youth Front), which was legalized in 1979...

...Only half an hour after the explosion, hundreds of uniformed fascists gathered outside the restaurant chanting slogans...

...have been hooked up to a similar terminal in a country home outside Madrid...

...His body, exposed to public view two days later, after the official autopsy had been completed, was completely covered except for his face, which still bore signs of having been beaten...

...And, of course, in favor of a military uprising as the solution to all Spain's problems...

...The Ministry of the Interior has always gone to great lengths to argue that the fascist organizations act on their own...

...Several newspapers and magazines have published reports positively identifying right-wing bankers, politicians, and lawyers among the plotters, though only one civilian is currently in jail charged with direct participation...

...Santiago Brouard, president of the People's Revolutionary Socialist Party, a Basque separatist party, said that the pneumonia could have been the result of the torture known as "la banera" '(the bathtub), in which the victim's head is held for prolonged intervals in a tub of water, blood, vomit, and excrement...

...To date, they have not been tried...

...Have they forgotten what they were struggling for...

...The coup attempt was the most important indication of the current strength of fascism since the death of Franco...

...Writers and artists, political leaders and intellectuals, feminists and film directors began to return from their forced or self-imposed exile, creating a mood of optimism, even euphoria, which seemed to obliterate those forty years...

...The Military Governor did not surrender, and the falangistas never appeared, but once again the specter of civilian cooperation and participation is raised...

...But the police and the army remain in the hands of fascists...

...Connected—yes...

...Although several of Pinar's own bodyguards, along with others with whom he associates, have been accused formally of murder, and although his name is often linked to the terrorist offshoots of Fuerza Nueva, Pinar has to date escaped any serious investigation...

...They made movies which won international recognition but were unknown in Barcelona...

...Since the death of Franco, more than sixty people have been killed by one or another of the many fascist groups, and countless more have been wounded...

...Eduardo Jauraldi, an attorney general in the Supreme Court, summed up the situation in the judicial branch when he said in a press conference last year that "if there are few democrats in judicial circles, the panorama in the Attorney General's office is desolate...

...Jan Keulen was immediately expelled from Spain...

...Fuerza Nueva, the new wave in Spanish fascism, is by far the most important of the Spanish fascist organizations...

...At 6:30 p.m...

...Many of the members of Parliament who were held prisoner commented on the strange appearance and disappearance of civilians in the Congress during the eighteen-hour crisis...

...only twenty-nine military officers and one civilian have been jailed...

...For many, the report only served to confirm what was already known or assumed...

...Indeed, many say that the confrontation was inevitable...

...The lawyers for El Papus immediately filed suit against the judge, accusing him of "malicious delays" and of ignoring evidence implicating the accused in the bombing...

...Reliable sources state that arms were distributed in Fuerza Nueva headquarters during that evening...

...The civilian fascist participation in the coup can be assumed, but curiously enough, it remains to be seriously investigated...

...A general strike on February 16 paralyzed the four provinces of the Basque country...

...Aside from attacks on the Law School (there have been more than one), the following four cases best illustrate the forms taken by fascist violence...

...private sphere...

...Are they optimistic—or naive...

...Responding to right-wing pressure, the Parliament has passed a series of repressive laws since the coup, so that, in a sense, the coup actually succeeded...

...As rumors of another coup spread through Madrid, some of the returned exiles pack their suitcases and call up old friends in Paris...

...According to El Pais, Spain's most respected and reliable daily newspaper, on the night of February 23 a military officer accompanied by two civilians (identity unknown) went to the military authorities of the province of Madrid to order the surrender of all personnel, saying that 500 members of the Falange were ready to take over the building...

...Instead of investigating and prosecuting military fascists who participated directly in the coup, the government released 271 of the 288 Guardia Civiles who were initially arrested because "they were only following orders...

...In 1980, an estimated 25,000 people filled Madrid's Plaza de Oriente, singing fascist songs and giving the raised-arm fascist salute...

...One had actually confessed to having written the note to the press claiming responsibility for the crime in the name of the Triple A, and the typewriter on which the note had been written was found in his home...

...They became priests, and the obvious contradictions of Spanish society which confronted them produced many of the most radical leaders of the resistance...

...If someone made a disparaging comment, he or she was forcibly taken to the nearest party headquarters, beaten, often tortured (using many of the techniques enumerated in the Amnesty International report on torture in Spanish prisons), and robbed...

...The first step Judge Alfredo Vazquez Rivera took was to put all the suspects together in jail...

...They wrote a constitution that was approved in a national referendum in 1978...

...He was thirty years old...

...Implicated—no...

...since 1975 there have been more than seventy armed attacks on bookstores, newsstands, individual journalists, and publishers...

...They told us that when we heard a whistle we were to charge, using lead pipes and firing on those students who resisted...

...The fact that leftist armed groups never claimed responsibility—on the contrary, they explicitly denied it—makes the theory of deliberate provocation all the more credible...

...and the fact is that there were no members of Fuerza Nueva inside when the bomb exploded...

...the same people often appear connected with various organizations, and the same organization can use several names...

...The following day, the assassination was claimed by the Triple A—the Alianza Apostolica Anti-Communista—although time would prove that most of those implicated in the affair Were members or former members of Fuerza Nueva...

...The principal fascist organizations have learned how to combine legal political action with illegal armed struggle...

...Thus, fascist activity is encouraged, its legitimacy enhanced...

...Simplifying the spectrum a bit, there are two large "families" of fascist organizations: the Falange and Fuerza Nueva, or New Force...

...On the ninth day of interrogation, Jose Arregui died...

...One of the more spectacular of the Frente Nacional attacks took place on January 26,1979, when, in conjunction with Primera Linea and Fuerza Joven (the youth group of Fuerza Nueva), members attacked the Law School of the University of Madrid, inflicting serious bullet wounds on three students...

...According to Mas Elices, "pistols, smoke bombs, and hand grenades were distributed to members in the party headquarters...

...The lack of firm and consistent disciplinary or legal reprisals since 1975 has made.their work easier...

...After the coup attempt, the government and the political parties asked the people to keep on as if nothing had happened...

...the judicial apparatus has never been touched, and the Monarchy—that most undemocratic of institutions—is extolled by former leaders of the resistance, today leading members of the Socialist and Communist parties...

...The sons and daughters of most of the exiles grew up as Americans, French, or Russians...

...Fuerza Nueva has conducted campaigns against all leftist political parties, against divorce and abortion, against, public education, against the Basques, and against the liberal press...

...Offices of all the leftist parliamentary and extra-parliamentary political parties and trade unions have been bombed...

...Prior to the legalization of the political parties, the preferred targets were bars or bookstores which served as gathering places for the resistance...

...Although a judge or the equivalent of the district attorney may visit a suspect, in not a single case did Amnesty find that such a visit had taken place...

...The interpretation given by the liberal press was that the bombing was a deliberate provocation by the Right, aimed at putting the blame on the Left...

...there is not even an optimistic final note which neatly ties everything together...

...The majority were middle-aged women having afternoon tea...

...Like the Falange, it has spawned many splinter groups and has an armed segment...

...A few days later, the Basque-Spanish Battalion claimed responsibility, although the two men arrested for the crime were both members of Fuerza Nueva...

...Employes of the national television and radio, which was occupied by the army for several hours on the night of February 23, commented on the presence on the premises of known right-wingers from other television stations during the hours which preceded the seizure...

...The connections between the police and the Batallon are shady, and many observers and journalists have stated that a large percentage of Batallon members are police officers...

...One of the suspects, an engineer, had in his workshop a computer terminal which appears to The death of Jose Arregui Jose Ignacio Arregui Izguirre was arrested on February 4 and taken to the Spanish General Direction of Security, equivalent to a federal prison...

...One must acquire the skill of looking the other way without incurring their wrath by appearing to do so...

...The social background of the members and followers of Fuerza Nueva and its "family" is varied, attesting to the organiza-, tional skill of Pinar and his associates...

...It was made possible because the Law of Citizens Security denies an arrested person the necessary guarantees with which to avoid abuses of power by the police...

...The implication of the police in this case is clearer than in the cases previously described...

...It has committed more murders in recent years than any other group associated with Fuerza Nueva...

...For anyone who was not already convinced, the aborted coup of February 23 proved definitely that the much celebrated "transition to democracy" has not taken Spain very far...

...The publication of the Amnesty report in the fall of 1980 provoked less reaction than one might have expected...

...An article by Jan Keulen in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant attributed the crime to the police itself: "A section of the Spanish police, called the G-2, is responsible for the attack on California 47...

...Three weeks after the attempted coup of February 23, he proclaimed Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero, one of the coup's leaders, "a man of great honor...

...The ideologies also vary within the extreme right, which includes Fran-coists, traditional Catholics, Falangists, Nazis, neo-Nazis...

...The massacre of Atocha: On January 24,1977, while one fascist waited in an outside hallway, two others entered the Atocha Street office of a group of left-wing labor lawyers...

...One journalist who specializes in investigating fascism has said there are as many as 100 functioning fascist groups...

...Others have resigned themselves, once again, to silence...

...For some Spaniards—those who decided not to question too much, or who had never known how to question a series of rules which seemed universal—they were forty years of silence...

...There have been innumerable splits in the Falange, most of them arising from disputes over the "correct" interpretation of Primo de Rivera's ideology, and some old-guard falangistas considered Franco himself a traitpr to the cause...

...He had blood in his lungs, his body was hideously bruised and swollen, and he had second-degree burns on the soles of his feet...

...One final anecdote about California 47...

...R.M...

...It was a miracle that it didn't turn out to be a massacre...

...Several of the suspects had prepared their escape to Chile...

...They rely upon their contacts and supporters in the armed forces and the ministries for the former, and have created an increasingly sophisticated infrastructure for the latter...

...According to the official autopsy, the immediate cause of Arregui's death was bronchial pneumonia...

...In March 1977, seven people were arrested for the crime...

...a nation that had suffered more than twenty-five attempted or successful coups since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century...

...The case came to trial three years later, after drawn-out pre-trial hearings in which the victims' lawyers were repeatedly denied access to witnesses...

...According to the testimony of Carlos Mas Elices, twenty-four years old, who.left the organization more out of fear than out of ideological differences, the first task given to new members was to beat up homosexuals and young people smoking hashish, and then rob them...

...The children of those who remained, the children who grew up Spaniards, grew up in silence, in ignorance, in deceit...

...Nonetheless, it is difficult to explain the sophisticated infrastructure, strategy, and coordination of these groups without aid from the police...

...One police officer who was behind the murder decided to reveal the details to the Ministry of the Interior in exchange for immunity, and the Minister of the Interior made a public statement: "Is there a member of the police implicated in [the death of Yolanda Gonzalez...

...According to former commander Luis Otero, leader of the now defunct and illegal Democratic Military Union, the number of true democrats among military officers does not reach 2 per cent...

...Before Arregui's death, an investigative team from Amnesty International had conducted interviews with fourteen Spanish prisoners who claimed that they had been tortured...

...Amnesty recommended that the Anti-Terrorist Law be repealed, and that a law of habeus corpus be introduced...

...They had never known what a legal trade union was, but they began organizing anyway, for better wages and working conditions, and for the right of assembly...

...An enormous arsenal was discovered in this workshop, and several reports stated that the arms originally belonged to the army...

...The party offices raided by the police contained enormous arsenals...

...In the four capitals, more than 100,000 people participated in protest demonstrations convoked by all the trade unions and political parties with the exception of the right-wing Popular Alliance and the government party, the Union of the Democratic Center...

...Fascists may be a minority in Spain, but they are nonetheless an important component, if not the majority, within the armed forces and the police...

...Long excerpts were reprinted in several major magazines and newspapers, but neither the government nor the police ever gave an official reaction...

...Because the judicial and military-police apparatus has remained in the hands of reactionary elements since 1975, a clean break with Francoism was never a possibility...

...Somehow, despite all odds, these Spaniards struggled for the freedom of Spain, a nation that had known only five years of peace and democracy in the Twentieth Century—from the declaration of the Second Republic in 1931 to the beginning of the Civil War in 1936...

...The government now has emergency powers to make arrests at will, tap communications, close newspapers, search homes, shut down businesses, prohibit strikes, and impose curfews...

...the majority lived in Madrid, Valencia, and Valladolid— central Spain...

...He was suspected of being a member of ETA, the Basque separatist organization...

...California 47: On May 26, 1979, at 6:55 p.m., a powerful bomb exploded in California 47, a Madrid restaurant known to be a hangout for young fascists...

...Police raids in January led to the arrest of fifty-one members of the Frente Nacional...

...Among the declarations of condemnation made by political and labor leaders, lawyers, journalists, and intellectuals, the declarations of the bishops of Bilbao and San Sebastian, capitals of the Basque provinces of Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa respectively, stood out because of the traditional conservatism of the Spanish Catholic church...

...one, former president Adolfo Suarez, was the National Secretary of the Falange during the last years of Francoism...

...One knows them by their slicked-back hair, the inevitable Spanish-flag pin worn on the lapel, the black boots and leather gloves, the dark glasses, the clean-shaven, well-fed young faces...

...They formed clandestine political parties and trade unions that began to be legalized soon after Franco's death in 1975...

...Bookstores are still an important target, as are the liberal mass media in general...

...Two-and-a-half years went by and no decision was handed down until April 1980, when the judge sentenced six of the twelve accused for illegal possession of firearms...

...Most of those arrested are under twenty years old, and many are sons or daughters of military officers...

...The object of the attack was to produce an uprising by the Guardia Civil and the army against the current democratic system...

...For violent and clandestine activity, the Falange relies principally upon two terrorist groups: Primera Linea de Falange Espanola and Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey, whose young members carry out the murders, bombings, and other violent attacks...

...The sidewalk outside the restaurant is the principal site in Madrid for Fuerza Nueva propaganda tables...

...And there are those, as there always are, who will go down fighting, preferring, as La Pasionara said, to die on their feet rather than live on their knees...

...Not surprisingly, their stories all matched...

...On March 18 of this year the Supreme Court rejected the lawyers' suit against the judge...

...But the inverse argument is that consistently giving in to the army and tolerating its anti-democratic declarations and actions can only lead, as it did in Chile, to the army's increased desire and capacity to seize power...

...Next, members were assigned to propaganda tables set up on major streets, where they were instructed to watch carefully for pas-sersby who looked disapproving...

...A short time later, twelve men were arrested for suspected participation in the crime...

...The bombing has never been claimed by anyone, although dissident members of Fuerza Nueva who formed the Secret Anti-Fascist Organization sent letters to the press on June 5, accusing the Frente Nacional de la Juven-tud and "Section C" of Fuerza Nueva of having committed the crime...

...It also can claim to have parliamentary representation—Bias Pinar, the president of Fuerza Nueva and perhaps the most eloquent, powerful, and charismatic of the fascist leaders, was elected to Parliament from Madrid in March 1979 with the -support of the Falange as well...

...The following days were terrifying ones in Madrid...

...Spanish law states that a suspect must be accused of a crime if there is "rational indication" of involvement or guilt...

...It presents itself as the opposition, yet it is widely represented within the administrative, judicial, political, and military establishments...

...That summer, two members of the extreme leftist Armed Group of October First (GRAPO) were arrested for the crime...

...Yolanda Gonzalez: On February 2, 1980, Yolanda Gonzalez, a student at the University of Madrid who had been active in the student movement, was kidnapped in her apartment and taken to the outskirts of Madrid, where her assailants shot her in the head...

...According to the attorneys, there was ample proof of initial meetings ¦among the accused to plan the bombing, visits to the building to decide how and where to place the bomb, and the purchase of explosives and their later disappearance...

...They wrote books in Paris about ideas deemed unpatriotic in Madrid...

...A small group of police officers and politicians have known for a week that the G-2 was responsible for the attack...

...At a time when hundreds of journalists have been fined or jailed for attacking state institutions, he has, with impunity, made public declarations in favor of a military uprising...

...At times, members of the police force are also members of Fuerza Nueva...

...Dr...

...Three of the accused were given life sentences, two were given light sentences, and the seventh suspect was released...

...The fascist who waited in the hall while the massacre took place fled the country in March 1979, taking advantage of an Easter week vacation granted by Judge Gomez Chaparro, closely connected to Fuerza Nueva...

...Nevertheless, a large number of prominent Francoists and high military officers are members of the Falange...

...The Falange dates from the early 1930s during the Second Republic, when Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera founded the party and formulated its ideology: a blend of national syndicalism with a strong dose of Catholicism...

...that terminal in turn was hooked up to police terminals...

...Amnesty International believes that there is absolutely no justification for the police to detain a suspect for ten days simply for the purpose of conducting an investigation," the report said...

...Because of those arrests and because a member who left the organization told his story to the press, more is known about the Frente Nacional than about any other fascist group...

...As always, the Basques are treated far more harshly than the fascists* and anti-terrorism has come to mean pro-police, pro-army, and pro-government...

...The lawyers will appeal, and the case may well enter its fourth year...

...This information was obtained from well-informed sources close to the Ministry of the Interior...