THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The Jewish population of Spain numbers 14,000 out of a total population of 39.1 million. The main Jewish centers are Madrid (3,500) and Barcelona (3,500). Smaller communities are located in other cities and towns, notably Málaga, as well as Ceuta and Melilla in Spanish North Africa.

The Federación de Comunidades Israelitas de España (Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain) represents Jewish interests to the government. There are Jewish day schools in Barcelona, Madrid and Málaga. A cultural journal, Raíces (Roots) appears regularly. The Segovia-Israel Association of Cultural Relations was established for studying the influence of Jewish culture in Spain.

In July 2000 Spain agreed to contribute US$1.5 million to a fund to benefit Sephardi Holocaust survivors.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

Two days before the general election of March 2000, French FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen arrived in Madrid to support the campaign of the recently formed España 2000 in a new attempt to reunify the extreme right. The four groups which comprise España 2000 are: Democracia Nacional; Partido Nacional de los Trabajadores (National Workers Party), whose headquarters are in Murcia; Movimiento Social Republicano, associated with former leftist republicans; and Vértice Social Español, which split from the Falange (see below). The alliance, which won only 9,769 votes (0.04 percent) in the election, hopes to improve its results in the 2003 municipal elections.

The leading group, Democracia Nacional (DN), which emerged in 1995 after the dissolution of CEDADE (see ASW 1995/6) and the Juntas Españolas of Juan Peligro, also includes elements from Acción Radical, Nación Joven, Vanguardia Nacional Revolucionaria and Bases Autónomas. Emulating the FN, DN’s populist and xenophobic message promises full employment, economic protectionism, the expulsion of illegal immigrants and total rejection of European structures and regional autonomies. The party has no seats either in the Spanish parliament or in the European Parliament.

As leader of the senior partner in the alliance, Francisco Pérez Corrales heads España 2000. Ernesto Mil, a former Fuerza Nueva activist and founder of Frente Nacional de la Juventud, Juan A. Aguilar, once a member of the neo-Nazi Bases Autónomas, and Christian Ruíz and Laureano Luna, formerly ideologists of CEDADE, were also driving forces behind the formation of España 2000. Excluded from its ranks were former Fuerza Nueva president and traditionalist Blas Pilar and AUN leader Sáenz de Ynestrillas, because of his criminal record. Since he began serving a prison term, de Ynestrillas, leader of the Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (AUN), has disappeared from the political scene (see ASW 1999/2000). A few days before the election, the party announced it would not run in order to avoid fragmentation of the extreme right. In September 2000, four members of AUN were arrested after Molotov cocktails were found in their possession. The party organ La voz de AUN appears from time to time.

The various tiny fascist Falange parties, including Española de las JONS, Falange Española Independiente (FEI) and Falange Española Auténtica, struggle mainly to survive. Confederación de Ex-Combatientes is an umbrella organization for associations of veterans that hanker after Spain’s fascist era (1936–75). A traditionalist fascist party, Partido Demócrata Español (PaDE), established in 1997 and led by Juan Ramón Calero, formerly of Alianza Popular, got a mere 12,200 votes (0.05 percent) in the 2000 election.

The populist Grupo Independiente Liberal (GIL), led by Atlético de Madrid president Jesús Gil, had some success in the 1999 municipal elections (see ASW 1999/2000). When introducing his candidates for the 2000 elections, Gil declared that democracy was “the worst of all dictatorships” and that “with Franco life was better.” GIL went to the polls in 18 provinces, obtaining a total of 71,914 votes (0.31 percent) but no seats.

Sources in the police, who have been monitoring the scene closely, report that political awareness within the extreme right has increased, due in part to the fact that university graduates have taken over the leadership. The political far right now eclipses smaller and more violent groups such as skinheads, and may become a significant factor on the political scene, as it has in Germany, France and Belgium. Cyberspace communication facilitates this trend.

Militants of the almost defunct neo-Nazi, anarchist Bases Autónomas (BBAA) now operate through other organizations, such as Resistencia, DN, the Internet group Nuevo Orden, cultural groups associated with the Falange, or the Coordinadora Nacionalista Revolucionaria (National Revolutionary Coordinating Body). Some cells similar to BBAA still exist, such as Hermandad Nacionalsocialista Armagedón (Armageddon National Socialist Brotherhood), which is active in Valencia and environs and which split from Acción Radical in 1998 (see ASW 1998/9). The brotherhood claimed responsibility for the Molotov cocktail attacks against branches of the Popular, Socialist and Izquierda Unida parties several days before the March election, in some towns near Valencia. The police, who were monitoring this group since its inception, arrested 13 of its neo-Nazi members in connection with the attacks. They allegedly have links to fascist groups in Italy.

Members of the International Third Position, one of the most active national revolutionary groups in the United Kingdom, continue to reconstruct the seven ruined houses they purchased in the abandoned town of Los Pedriches, 92 kms from Valencia (see ASW 1999/2000). The group is supposedly using Los Pedriches as a place of “refuge and respite.”

According to the police, soccer fans in Spain include almost 10,000 followers of extremist groups. Of this number, only some 640 rightist skinheads and another 330 leftists (red skins) in 16 fan clubs, are considered dangerous. These groups were protected by the managers of the soccer clubs until the late 1990s, when some courts declared that the clubs were responsible for the criminal conduct of their fans. The principal radical fan groups in Madrid are now in decline. Nevertheless, some small neo-Nazi groups within Ultra Sur (the Real Madrid fan club), which was reduced to 500 members, have been attempting to revive it. Four skinheads from this club were arrested in 2000 after police found in a backpack a stick, a knife, pamphlets with Nazi and antisemitic texts (e.g., “Jewish blood must flow”) and a black flag inscribed with the words “Rommel Korps.”

Bastión, the most violent group associated with Atlético de Madrid, and connected to BBAA, suffered a setback when 11 of their 35–40 members were ordered to stand trial for illegal association and public disorder (see below).

Rex, a cultural association created to rehabilitate the deceased Belgian Nazi Leon Degrelle, spiritual mentor of the Spanish neo-Nazi movement, continues to publish a magazine run by Degrelle’s close collaborator, the lawyer José Luis Jerez Riesco.

In Spanish universities, student associations identified with parliamentary political parties are losing ground to extremists – the revolutionary left and the far right – although they are still a minority. The revolutionary leftist movements, mostly anti-fascist, are usually labeled “anti-establishment” because of their ties to the global resistance movement and their rejection of representation in government. The extreme right, on the other hand, are better organized and do not reject the representative system in the universities. In the Spanish University Union (SEU) the number activists with ties to Falange Española and the JONS tripled in one year. In several regions the vote for right-wing extremists increased from 1,200 to 7,000, and they now have representation in the university councils of Málaga, Salamanca, Oviedo and Jaén.

There are half a million Muslims in Spain, mostly immigrants from the Maghreb. According to El Pais (1 Oct. 2000), an intensifying struggle for control of Islam in Spain is taking place in the country’s 45 mosques between Muslim moderates and extremists. The moderates claim that lack of state aid is helping extremist groups, which are funded by Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia’s embassy denies these allegations.

ANTISEMITIC AND RACIST ACTIVITY

Little antisemitic activity was recorded prior to the upsurge of violence between Palestinians and Israelis in late September/October; the most serious incident was the desecration of the Holocaust memorial in Barcelona. A series of attacks on Jewish institutions began in October after some Muslim communities called for demonstrations in support of the Palestinians. The glass door at the entrance of the Ceuta synagogue was smashed twice, in October and December, and windows were broken in the Madrid synagogue. Graffiti reading “Jew murderers” was found near an olive tree planted on the occasion of the donation of a house to the local Jewish association Oveido, on the night of 8 October (Yom Kippur).

Another serious incident was an attack by right-wing extremists on pro- and anti-Israel demonstrators outside a Madrid stadium where a soccer match between Spain and Israel was taking place on 7 October. Police arrested several neo-Nazis who shouted racist or antisemitic slogans, distributed antisemitic literature or threw bars of soap at policemen.

Anti-immigrant violence was common throughout the year, mostly perpetrated by neo-Nazis. An attack on Moroccan workers by gangs armed with iron rods and baseball bats in the town of El Ejido (Almeria) in February was one of the most serious racial incidents ever to occur in Spain. They also set fire to cars and buildings. The attack, which left 55 injured, was apparently sparked by the killing of a young Spanish woman by a Moroccan man. It was condemned by various official Spanish organizations, by the Moroccan government and by European and UN human rights bodies.

A group of students tried to disrupt a meeting devoted to Tolerance Week and to the memory of Violeta Friedman, the well-known Holocaust survivor (see below), at the Political Science and Sociology School at Complutense University of Madrid. The speakers included Prof. Tomás Calvo Buezas, a member of the European Commission against Racism, Alberto Benasuly, president of the Commission for Human Rights of B’nai B’rith, and a representative of the Movement against Intolerance. After they were forced to leave the meeting, some 30 hooded people, allegedly the same group of students, destroyed a classroom in the nearby School of Economics at the university. They also attacked participants at a meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian situation, organized by the extreme right, at which the speaker was the Argentinean antisemite and advisor to the Venezuelan president, Norberto Ceresoles. The police stated that the students belonged to radical anti-establishment groups.

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

Over one thousand children gathered in Madrid’s Circle of Fine Arts to pay homage to Anne Frank at the conclusion of an exhibition of photographs and the original text of her diaries. The exhibit moved on to other centers of the region.

The book A Spaniard in the Face of the Holocaust, by Diego Carcedo, was launched at Madrid’s Circle of Fine Arts in March. The book tells of the Spanish diplomat Angel Sanz Briz, who saved the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews when he was ambassador in Budapest during the Nazi occupation. In 1991 he was awarded the title of Righteous among Gentiles by Yad Vashem. Participating in the ceremony were the journalist Iuaki Gabilondo and the brothers Jaime and Enrique Vandor, all saved by Sanz Briz.

The City Council of Madrid announced that it would erect a monument at the Juan Carlos I Park, in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

Between 1 and 10 May several Jewish associations campaigned for a series of ceremonies to commemorate the Holocaust and to promote Holocaust education. The main event in the campaign took place in the regional parliament (Asamblea de Madrid) on 3 May.

Violeta Friedman, survivor of Auschwitz, who in Spain was considered a symbol of the Holocaust, died in Madrid on 4 October. She was commemorated at Madrid’s synagogue on 4 December, in the presence of the Israeli ambassador, the president of the regional parliament, and representatives of universities and human rights representatives.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM

In the case of Pedro Varela, convicted in 1998 for Holocaust denial (see ASW 1998/9, 1999/2000), in February 2000 the Constitutional Court censured the Barcelona court of Appeals for procedural defects in its claim of unconstitutionality of Article 607.2 of the Penal Code. According to the Barcelona Court, this article, which punishes the promotion of genocide, could contravene Varela’s right to freedom of expression established in the constitution. As a result, the file was returned to the Barcelona court and the trial delayed for 15 months.

Ricardo Guerra, convicted of the homicide of a fan of the Real Sociedad soccer club Aitor Zabaleta, together with ten of his friends, will be tried in Madrid for illegal association and public disorder. This is the first time that such a charge will be made in Spain against a group of neo-Nazis. According to the prosecution, the 11 accused youngsters were allegedly members of an organization (Bastión – see above) which “took advantage of soccer games in order to display violent behavior.” The Movement against Intolerance, acting as a private party, commented that it was a clear warning to violent neo-Nazi groups.

The short documentary film Stories of a Bookseller was screened at the Second Festival of Jewish Cinema of Barcelona. This work by David Mauas, an Argentinean-born Israeli producer, shows scenes from the trial of extreme right leader Pedro Varela, owner of the Europa Bookstore in Barcelona. At the trial Varela claimed he sold only historical books. He was then shown in a flashback inciting hatred and violence at a neo-Nazi rally in Madrid.

In July the inhabitants of the town of Hervas in Extremadura held its annual commemoration of its Jewish past by performing the play The Convert from Hervas by the Spanish-Argentinean writer Solly Wolodarsky (see also ASW 1998/9).

The recipient of the Príncipe de Asturias Award for the Arts for the year 2000 was the North American soprano Barbara Hendricks, for her support of refugees and for speaking out against xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance.

The mayor of Barcelona, Joan Clos, ordered the removal of all Nazi memorabilia from the souvenir shop at the military museum in Montjuic Castle.