Madrid, Spain: Youths defy cops to protest fascist murder

As in the United States, in the Spanish state fascist and other right-wing groups have made immigrants the scapegoat for the ills of society in their attempt to break up the unity and solidarity of the working class. This was underlined by the murder of a 16-year-old anti-fascist youth on Nov. 11 and a militant anti-fascist protest on Nov. 25, both in Madrid, the capital.

The protest brought 3,000 anti-fascists, mainly young people, to the center of Madrid near the Atocha train terminal. The “Socialist Party” government had reversed an earlier permit and outlawed the legitimate anti-fascist protest. Attacked by rioting police, the youths retreated, set up barricades and about 1,000 fought their way from Atocha to the Legazpi metro stop. There, amid cheers that they had succeeded despite the open police repression, they hung a plaque to honor the slain youth.

The plaque read: “Here Carlos Javier Palomino was murdered on Nov. 11, 2007, at the age of 16, struggling against fascism and racism. Carlos, brother, we will not forget you. The best way to honor you is to continue the struggle.”

The latest events began when the extreme right-wing National Democracy group—the equivalent of Le Pen’s racist National Front in France—called for a demonstration in Usera, a working-class district in Madrid with a high proportion of immigrants, under the slogans “Against immigration” and “Against anti-Spanish racism,” which are, in essence, racist slogans.

Young anti-fascists from diverse organizations had met near Legazpi on Nov. 11 to take the metro to the site of the fascist demonstration to either heckle it or stop it. When a group of these young anti-fascists entered a subway car, they ran into the killer, a professional soldier who was also a member of the honorary battalion of the king’s guards. Metro videotapes show that without hesitating to speak, this soldier pulled out a machete and used it to stab Palomino in the heart, killing him, and seriously wounding Jonathan M. Alexander when a machete blow cut his lung.

Other young people chased and finally brought down the killer. But at the metro exit, riot police attacked the anti-fascist youths, injuring several of them, one of them seriously. These events took place soon before the Nov. 20 date, when both Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, and founder of the Spanish fascist Falange party, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, died in the 1930s.

The young anti-fascists are mainly from groups in Madrid’s Antifascist Coordination, which was founded by several left organizations, mainly comprised of young people, in the mid-1980s.

According to a text written by Ángeles Maestro of the Red Current group, this coordination has carried out anti-fascist demonstrations that have continually gained in political and class content—last year the slogan was: “Republic [end the monarchy—J.C.], Self-determination, Socialism.” Maestro attributes this development to:

(1) The increase in questioning of the legitimacy of the monarchy and the regime that arose from the “Transition”; that is, the change from fascism, after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, to imperialist democracy.

(2) The insecure working conditions, including the impossibility especially for young people to obtain independent housing arrangements, and the decline of living conditions.

The Spanish state, and Madrid especially, is a financial and commercial link between world imperialism and Latin America. This was revealed earlier in November by the arrogant attitude toward Latin America’s Indigenous elected leaders expressed by the Spanish King Juan Carlos II—named by Franco to his post—at the Iberian-American summit in Santiago, Chile.

Maestro notes that, “After the dramatic events of Nov. 11 the very serious development occurred: all the great [corporate] mass media referred to the events as if they were a confrontation between ‘rival gangs’ and connected the antifascist movement with ‘terrorism.’

“From this arises the enormous importance of the popular response in the working-class districts, with large demonstrations following the murder, especially in Usera, the district where the fascists tried to demonstrate, and in Vallekas, where the murdered youth lived.”

There were anti-fascist demonstrations on or around Nov. 17 in almost all the major cities in the Spanish state, one of the largest in Barcelona in the Catalan region. The organization of the Basque people’s movement, Batasuna, issued a statement in solidarity with Carlos Palomino and the anti-fascist struggle. The Madrid government and fascists, besides scapegoating immigrants, have carried out a systematic repression of the organizations struggling for self-determination for the Basque nation.

What is also significant is that the “Socialist” (PSOE) government led by Prime Minister Zapatero has permitted all the demonstrations requested by pro-fascist and ultra-right groups, including a tribute to Franco and a protest demanding that the government hold no negotiations with the Basque ETA group, while it denied permits to the anti-fascists.

Despite the state repression, the anti-fascist youth seem combat ready and prepared to take the next steps to defend their rights and those of immigrant workers.