spain 2007

 

Antisemitic graffiti was the main expression of anti-Jewish activity in 2007. A 16-year-old youth traveling on the subway to demonstrate against an extreme right event organized by the Democracia Nacional was murdered by a professional soldier of the Spanish army with neo-Nazi sympathies in November. Former US Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke visited Spain for a week of meetings in November, the period when the extreme right commemorates the anniversaries of the deaths of General Francisco Franco and the founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera.

 

the jewish community

The Jewish population is estimated at 50,000; however, the number of registered Jews does not exceed 14,000. The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE), which represents Jewish interests to the government, consists of thirteen traditional and Orthodox communities, the largest of which are located in Madrid, Barcelona and the Costa del Sol (Malaga). There are Jewish day schools in Barcelona, Madrid and Melilla. A cultural magazine, Raíces (Roots) appears on a quarterly basis and is sold also in South America. The Federation of Jewish Communities operates an Internet radio station, Radio Sefarad - www.radiosefarad.com. The Segovia-Israel Association of Cultural Relations researches the influence of Jewish culture in Spain.

 

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

The Far Right

The extreme right has had no representation in either the Spanish Congress or the Senate since the early 1980s. Democracia Nacional (DN), which received the support of French Front National leader Jean Marie Le Pen in the 2004 national election, began its campaign for the March 2008 election. However, on November 11, 2007, a 16-year-old youth, Carlos Javier Palomino, who was traveling on the subway to demonstrate against an extreme right event organized by the DN on Plaza Legazpi in Madrid, was murdered by a professional soldier of the Spanish army with neo-Nazi sympathies. The DN has denied any connection to the killer. Anti-fascist groups, as well as Catalonian, Basque and Galician nationalist organizations (which support the far left), reacted by holding a mass demonstration (see below). The soldier was arrested but it is unclear to which, if any, group he belonged.

The ultra-right Alianza Nacional (AN), though legal, stands ideologically close to the borderline of permissible activities. For example, their demonstrations are deliberately organized to provoke the anti-fascists into a fight. In 2007 the group participated in several demonstrations of the far right. Brandishing the slogan “Nation-Race-Socialism,” the AN, successors to the defunct ultra-right Alianza por la Unidad Nacional of convicted criminal Ricardo Saenz de Ynestrillas, target mainly immigrants, especially Moroccans and other Muslim groups.

The small traditionalist fascist parties, principally “las tres Falanges” (Falange Española de las JONS, Falange Española Independiente (FEI) and Falange Española Autentica), continued to participate in elections at the local, regional and national level, but are concerned mainly with their own survival. Membership of the Confederacion de ex-Combatientes, an umbrella organization linking associations that yearn for Spain's fascist past, is dwindling due to the death of the veterans; those remaining, however, commemorate annually the execution by Socialist forces of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (founder of the Falange), as well as the death of General Francisco Franco, around November 20.

As they have done for five decades, on November 17, over 400 Falangists marked the 51st anniversary of the death of Primo de Rivera with a 50 km march from Madrid’s Plaza Colon to his tomb in the monastery of the Valle de los Caidos. The government had initially banned the demonstration because of the slogan “Jose Antonio assassinated by the Socialists in 1936.” However, the Falange Española appealed and Madrid’s High Court of Justice authorized it. One of the main purposes of the proposed Law of Historical Memory, which in 2007 was under discussion in parliament, would be to strictly proscribe the use of the Valle de los Caidos for ideological purposes.

In another homage to Franco and Primo de Rivera, some 500 blue-shirted sympathizers gathered on November 18 in Madrid’s Plaza de Oriente to express their “indignation and rejection” of the Law of Historical Memory. Called by the Confederacion Nacional de Ex-Combatientes, participants shouted slogans supporting Franco and Primo de Rivera and against the king and the president of the government, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Among those present were the founder of the pro-Franco Fuerza Nueva, Blas Pinar, his grandson Miguel Menendez, and Falangist Emilio Mariat. The event was blessed by an unknown Polish priest, introduced as “Father Francisco,” who praised Franco and Primo de Rivera and attacked the “Polish Zapatero [Polish prime minister],” whom he labeled “a third class Mason who will break his teeth in his attempts to crush Catholic Poland.” It should be noted that Zapatero openly opposes the Spanish cardinals, led by the new head of the Spanish Catholic Church, Cardinal Rouco, and seeks to deal directly with the Vatican.

On November 20 the Fundacion Francisco Franco organized its annual mass in memory of Franco and Primo de Rivera in the Basilica of the Valle de los Caidos. Some 1,500 persons attended the event, during which slogans insulting Zapatero, his ruling Socialist party (PSOE − Partido Socialista Obrero Español), the opposition Partido Popular (PP), former Communist leader Santiago Carrillo, and immigrants, especially Moroccans, were heard.

 

Far Left

Izquierda Unida, the United Left party, whose membership includes Communists and other leftists, is the only parliamentary party to the left of the ruling Socialist Party. Though some members of both parties hold extremist views on Jews, Zionism and Israel, a minority actively demonstrate their support. In addition, hundreds of small anti-establishment, mostly anti-Zionist, leftist groups, though differing in origin and ideology, unite to attack “fascists,” i.e., any right-wing organization, including the conservative right PP, and demonstrate their support for the Palestinians and/or opposition to “American imperialism.”

 

The Muslim Community

Muslim convert and leftist Mansur Escudero appealed to all Muslims of Spanish nationality to vote for a leftist party in the 2008 elections. Escudero tries to influence Muslim converts and immigrants through his company Junta Islamica de Espania which produces and distributes Halal products in Spain; he has no official position on the Comision Islamica de Espania (official body representing Muslims to the Spanish government), whose president, Rihay Tatari, opposes his views. In February Escudero sent a letter to the Prince of Asturias Foundation of Crown Prince Felipe, demanding annulment of a social sciences award granted to Giovanni Sartori, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Florence. Sartori, he claimed, had allegedly made xenophobic and anti-democratic statements regarding Muslims. As an example, he charged that Sartori had proposed legalizing the term “revocable citizenship,” which would be applied to citizens who proved unable to integrate as citizens of the European Union. Escudero claimed that the label “revocable citizenship” was equivalent to the idea of denationalization, supported by 20th century European fascists, and referred specifically to Nazi Germany’s stripping German Jews of their citizenship under the 1935 Nuremberg laws prior to their extermination.

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITIES

Neo-Nazi graffiti appeared on the 14th century Cordoba synagogue and the Sefarad House of Cordoba (a cultural institution for preserving the Jewish legacy) in August. Slogans included threats in German such as “Jews Out” and “Achtung, there are Jews here.” When Jaime Sanchez, head of the Sefarad House, lodged a complaint with the national police, they refused to deal with it and sent him to the local police, who had it removed. Sanchez recalled that in early 2007 graffiti painted on the statue of Maimonides in the Jewish quarter of the city remained for three months before being erased.

Former US Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke visited Spain for a week of meetings in November. Police concern was high following the neo-Nazi murder in Madrid. The first meeting, entitled “From a Multiracial Society to a Multiracist One,” took place in a Madrid hotel, on November 18, and the venue, which was guarded by the national police, had been kept secret in order “to avoid hostile demonstrations of unwanted people.” It was organized by his publishers, the extreme right Editorial Ojeda, reportedly in cooperation with the DN and its Center for National Democratic Studies. At the meeting, Duke presented his book Jewish Supremacy, published by Ojeda, which claims, inter alia, that the media and US political parties are controlled by “Zionist extremists.” Addressing about thirty people, mostly members of ultra-right groups, he asserted that the “invasion” of immigrants to Spain in recent years, was “equal or superior” in numbers to that suffered by the Arabs in the eighth century. The second meeting, which took place at the Kris Parque Hotel in Valladolid on November 23, was transmitted to a radio station in the US at which Duke is a broadcaster. Duke addressed another meeting in the National Alliance facilities in Valencia without any police intervention. Anti-fascist groups had asked that the event be banned; however, the authorities said there was no need to apply for permission because it was a private affair. Flanked by the flags of Spain and the United States in front of an audience of sixty skinheads, Duke disseminated his message in support of the “white” people of Europe. His sponsor, Pedro Varela, owner of the Europa bookstore in Barcelona and former president of the neo-Nazi Spanish Circle of Europe’s Friends (CEDADE), questioned the number of dead in the Nazi concentration camps, defended the right to deny the Holocaust and praised National Socialism. The websites of anti-fascist groups, especially SOS-Racism, posted calls to boycott these events.

Duke’s meeting scheduled for November 24 in Varela’s Europa bookstore was canceled by the organizers. SOS Racism and a group of Catalonian intellectuals, including journalist and activist Pilar Rahola, who supports the struggle against antisemitism and anti-Israelism, had asked the Catalonian High Court of Justice to intervene. By order of the district attorney, police checked the identity of all those seeking to enter the bookstore “to… ensure that no crimes would be committed” during the talk. Not wanting to identify themselves, members of the far right chose not to participate in the meeting, which thus did not take place. Anti-fascist youths demonstrated outside with posters reading “Neither oblivion nor pardon,” “Close the Europa bookstore” and “Neither Nazis nor KKK.”

The small ultra-nationalist Nationalist Gallego Bloc (BNG), which obtained the regional presidency of the Autonomous Community of Galicia as a result of post-electoral alliances, began proceedings to expel Pedro Gomez-Valades, who represented the party on the regional council of Vigo, following his election in March as president of the newly-established Association of Friendship with Israel (AGAI). The association includes representatives of all political parties. AGAI condemned the BNG for its “fascist, totalitarian, intolerant and anti-constitutional behavior,” which, it claimed, contravened the fundamental rights of association and freedom of expression. Valades refused to submit to party pressure and did not resign.

Susana Gordillo, Socialist mayor of Ciempozuelos, Province of Madrid, decided to dedicate January 27, the UN-sanctioned Holocaust Remembrance Day, to the “Palestinian genocide.” The event consisted of a drum roll during the morning and an Arab music concert in the afternoon. Israeli Ambassador to Spain Victor Harel sent a statement condemning the act to senior government ministers, such as the minister of foreign affairs, as well as to Socialist Party officials. The Catalonian activist Pilar Rahola (see above) wrote a strongly-worded article in the Barcelona edition of the national El Pais, entitled “Antisemitism. Ciempozuelos as a Metaphor for Imbecility.”

 

attitudes toward the holocaust and the nazi era

Holocaust Denial

British Holocaust denier David Irving visited Barcelona twice in 2007. On April 28, Irving gave a “private” seminar, entitled “Hitler, Himmler and the Concentration Camps of Eastern Europe. History as It Was,” at the Europa bookstore. Editorial Ojeda sent invitations to the event without specifying initially where it would take place. Invitees were prohibited from using mobile phones, smoking and wearing skinhead symbols. About ten skinheads attended and the meeting went unreported in the media.

Irving gave another talk at the Europa Bookstore on December 15, during which the premises were tightly guarded by the police. By order of the district attorney, police asked for identification from all the participants, who were mostly journalists since far right sympathizers feared entering the building. The police video-taped Irving’s lecture for possible violations of the law against inciting to genocide. Irving claimed that Hitler did not know what was happening in the concentration camps and that “two or three million Jews’ were murdered by the Nazis. Some one hundred anti-fascists tried to boycott the event.

 

Holocaust Commemoration

Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked in Madrid by a week of events organized by a cultural institution, the Circle of Fine Arts, with the participation of many Spanish Jewish survivors. Among other events, on January 24 a concert of Sephardic liturgical music took place in the Senate, in the presence of the chief rabbi of the French Consistory, and the next day the government organized a musical event in the auditorium of Complutense University, Madrid. The week closed with a ceremony in the Chamber of Deputies.

At the regional level, a ceremony was held on January 23 in the Catalonian parliament. It was attended by representatives of all political parties, Jewish and Roma associations, and associations of homosexuals and Catalans deported by the Nazis. The vice-president of the government said that “Nazism and the Holocaust represent such great horrors that they should never be compared” to current events. In addition, on February 5, the Madrid Autonomous Community Assembly held its annual Remembrance Day ceremony, which has taken place since 2000.   

A Holocaust memorial was unveiled in Madrid on April 15, Israel’s Yom Hashoah. Designed by the sculptor Sam Nahon, the monument is located in the Garden of the Three Cultures within Madrid’s Juan Carlos I park, landscaped by Alberto Stisin. The mayor of Madrid was among those attending the ceremony.

 

responses to racism and antisemitism

Legal Activity

On April 29 the Catalonian police arrested a 20-year-old youth in Barcelona who had been operating a website with neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial content. The site offered video films defending Hitler and Goebbels for downloading, as well as books forbidden under Spanish law such as Mein Kampf. The police found an arms cache in his home. He was released on bail, and the site was shut down.

On August 25, the Spanish police arrested the fugitive Austrian Nazi Gerd Honsik in Benalmádena (Malaga). The Austrian judicial authorities had been seeking his extradition since his sentencing in 1992 by a Viennese court to 18 months in prison on Holocaust denial charges. His views appeared in the book Absolution for Hitler and in the magazines Halt and Sieg, in which he denied the existence of the gas chambers; his publishers were connected to the ultra-right organization CEDADE. Spain had already twice turned down an Austrian extradition request for Honsik on the grounds that Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi propaganda were not illegal in the country. However, the National Court in Spain refused an application by Honsik to be considered a political refugee, a decision later supported by the Spanish Supreme Court. He was arrested and extradited on October 4 following the issuing of a Europe-wide arrest warrant.

In the ongoing case involving Pedro Varela, owner of the Europa bookstore (see ASW 2006), the Spanish Constitutional Court declared that Holocaust denial was not punishable by imprisonment under Spanish legislation and that part of Art. 607.2 of the Criminal Code was unconstitutional because it violated the right of freedom of expression enshrined in Art. 20 of the Spanish Constitution. While the court upheld the stipulation of imprisonment for justifying genocide or the Holocaust, it determined that denial of the Holocaust did not warrant such punishment. The Spanish Jewish community rejects this interpretation and through its lawyers is seeking ways to change it.

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Official and Public Activity

On November 17, several hundred people (some 2000 according to the organizers) who had responded to a call via the Internet by the group Antifascist Assemblies and Individuals, gathered in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol to protest the murder of Carlos Javier Palomino committed 6 days earlier. The demonstration passed without incident, although police had earlier seized some 70 weapons, including razors, knives and chains. A similar anti-fascist demonstration was held in Barcelona. Ten policemen were injured and seven persons detained. On the same day, a demonstration scheduled by the ultra-right AN to be held in the central San Luis area of Madrid, was called off by its organizers because it was not authorized.

Representatives of the European Jewish Congress met on January 25 with the President of the Spanish Government Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero during its meeting in Madrid. While acknowledging that antisemitism was not a matter of great concern in Spain, they called for a strong Spanish position against the anti-Jewish declarations of the presidents of Iran and Venezuela.

The Spanish Government inaugurated the Casa-Sefarad-Israel cultural institution in Madrid in honor of Spain’s Sephardic Jews and their legacy on February 8. Besides the minister of foreign affairs and other Spanish officials, numerous ambassadors and international personalities were present at the ceremony.

A Jewish museum in Madrid’s Jewish Community Center was opened on March 1, the 90th anniversary of the inauguration of the first synagogue in Spain after the expulsion of the Jews.

In April, representatives of the PSOE supported a manifesto of the Association of Spanish-Israeli Solidarity (ASEI), which denounced the silence of the Spanish left in all that concerned support of Israeli democratic values.  The manifesto declared that the silence stemmed from a “confused,” “antisemitic,” “anti-Jewish” and “anti-Israel” position that appeared “to prevail among the Spanish left.”  It points out that the defense of Israel cannot be left exclusively in the hands of the right, but was “the duty of all democratic people.”  

On the initiative of the ASEI, on June 27, a demonstration took place in front of the Iranian embassy to protest the continuing declarations of the president of Iran against the State of Israel. Besides members of the Jewish communities in Spain, representatives from the PP and the PSOE, as well as from non-governmental organizations, such as the Jewish-Christian Friendship Association, were also present.

In September 2007, the first international conference on the Holocaust was held in Madrid. Organized by Yad Vashem, it was attended by experts from Israel and Europe. According to Prof. David Banquier, head of Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research, the idea for such a conference accorded with “Spain’s desire to participate in Europe’s history.” Spain has announced that Holocaust studies are to be introduced into Spanish college programs and Yad Vashem has been organizing training conferences in Spanish for teachers selected by Spain’s education ministry.

On September 12, Yad Vashem received the prestigious Prince of Asturias Concord Award, presented by the Prince Asturias Foundation, for its “exemplary and outstanding contribution to mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence amongst men, to the struggle against injustice or ignorance, to the defense of freedom, or whose work has widened the horizons of knowledge or has been outstanding in protecting and preserving mankind’s heritage.”