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 community is mainly composed of Jewish immigrants from North Africa and the Balkans, as well as Jews from Latin America who settled in Spain in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Federación de Comunidades Israelitas de España (Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain) represents Jewish interests to the government. Jewish day schools exist in Barcelona, Madrid and Málaga. A cultural journal, Raíces (Roots), appears regularly.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

Spain’s divided and weak extreme right has for years been without parliamentary representation. The Spanish extreme right consists of two streams: the traditional, characterized by the fascist ideology of the 1930s, and the radical, patterned after the French FN.

Of the organizations in the latter stream, the Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Alliance for National Unity – AUN), once the most important bloc, has been reduced to one party, Movimiento Social Español (Spanish Social Movement) (see previous reports). Because of the legal and other problems of AUN leader Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas, AUN did not participate in the March 2000 general elections. Its members voted for other extreme right parties, including Plataforma España (see below).

In 1999 Ynestrillas continued his campaign for the “reconquest of Spain,” a slogan against the separatist movements of the Basque and other regions, by attempting to organize several demonstrations in Navarra and the Basque country, which were attended by a small group of supporters. His presence sparked violent incidents between the police and leftist demonstrators (abertzale), who attacked the ultra-rightists.

On 7 June the Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced Ynestrillas to seven years imprisonment for attempting to kill a young man who refused to give him cocaine in 1997. While awaiting his appeal, he was involved in some thefts, for which the district attorney is demanding a further prison term.

Prior to the March 2000 elections, the radical Democracia Nacional joined with a few other small ultra-right parties to form Plataforma España 2000. French FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen gave his support to this coalition, which got only a few thousand votes (0.04 percent) and no seats in parliament. Other extreme right parties which participated in the election included the traditional fascist Falange Española Independiente, La Falange (0.06 percent) and Partido Demócrata Español (0.05 percent). It should be noted that the Falange parties have only a tiny following and are primarily intent on survival. Previously, AUN, Democracia Nacional, Falange Española and a few other ultra-right parties and blocs had run unsuccessfully in the June 1999 election to the European Parliament.

The small Grupo Independiente Liberal (Independent Liberal Group – GIL), led by the populist Jesús Gil, gained several seats in the 1999 municipal elections in Marbella and La Línea (near Gibraltar), as well as in Ceuta and Melilla (Spanish North Africa). Gil, dismissed as president of Madrid’s football club Atlético de Madrid, is considered by some political analysts to be the potential leader of a new ultra-right party or coalition. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the March 2000 elections.

Although CEDADE (Círculo Español de Amigos de Europa -- Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe), formerly one of Europe’s oldest and more active neo-Nazi groups, was dissolved in 1993, the Europa Bookstore and its publishing houses in Barcelona, run by the organization’s former leader Pedro Varela, continued to operate. Varela was under sentence for infringing Spain’s anti-racist law (see below).

The author and former CEDADE activist Jesús Palacios published, in 1999, La España Totalitaria (Totalitarian Spain), containing the entire body of correspondence between Hitler and Franco. In the 1970s Palacios, who is still active on the extreme right-wing scene, and his brother Isidro-Juan, published neo-Nazi journals, such as Ruta Solar and Cuadernos de Cultura Vertical, financed by the now deceased SS Colonel Otto Skorzeni, who was living in exile in Spain.

Several leaders and militants from CEDADE and other Nazi groups have joined extreme right parties such as Democracia Nacional, or even conservative right parties such as Partido Demócrata Español (PaDE).

Members of the neo-Nazi anarchist Bases Autónomas continued their militant activity under cover of other organizations, such as Resistance, Democracia Nacional and the Internet site Nuevorden (see below). Nevertheless, some of their cells remain active in cities such as Madrid and Burgos.

A serious racist incident began in July as a quarrel between an immigrant from the Magreb and his neighbor in the town of Tarrasa, near Barcelona, and rapidly erupted into attacks and demonstrations against immigrants, which spread throughout Catalonia. Many of the participants were skinheads.

Skinhead numbers in Spain have multiplied five-fold since 1995, when 2,300 violent, extremist skinheads were on file, according to the Interior Ministry. The current figure of 11,132 are found mostly in the football fan clubs. The RAXEN report of the Movement Against Intolerance states that the total number of skinheads could actually be closer to 21,000 and points to the existence of 55 neo-Nazi or skinhead groups. The autonomous communities with the highest number of violent groups are Catalonia, Madrid and Andalucía, with 3.000 members each.

The annual report of the Madrid Autonomous Community on security, published in March 1999, states that attacks by urban guerrillas in 1998 increased by 13.6 percent over 1997, reaching 100. Seventy-four percent of the attacks were carried out by skinheads and Bakaladeros (skinheads without the shaven head and the traditional skinhead dress).

During 1999 the police arrested several dozen skinheads, including nine from Youth National Resistance, the youth branch of AUN. Two of those arrested were AUN candidates in the June elections to the European Parliament. They were accused of beating immigrants and homosexuals. In addition, the Madrid Autonomous Community began legal proceedings against Atlético de Madrid because it allowed the exhibition of Nazi symbols in its stadium during a match in early February.

The International Third Position (ITP), one of the more active neo-Nazi groups in the UK (see UK), has purchased a village in Valencia, Los Pedriches, which was abandoned by its inhabitants twenty years ago. The group of British activists bought the seven ruined houses, partly with funds from a British “charity” institution called the Trust of St. Michael the Archangel, which is known to be connected with extreme right activities. The ITP rejects democracy and supports the expatriation of immigrants, as well as the “implacable” persecution of their worst enemies -- homosexuals and Jews.

Involved in the purchase of the village were the Valencian lawyer Fernando Pazos, an ex-member of the neo-francoist, Catholic Fuerza Nueva, and his clients Roberto Fiore and Massimo Morsello, two fugitives from Italian justice connected to the ITP (see Italy). In 1995 they registered a charity in London called the St. George Educational Trust. They also own hostels, employment agencies and a language academy in the center of London. Their services have been advertised in Spain since 1994, and hof Spanish youngsters have passed through their institutions. Both the Spanish and British police are monitoring the group closely.

Each year a dwindling number of fascists attend the 20 November demonstrations marking the memorial day of the former dictator Francisco Franco and of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange. According to police, about 2,000 fascists attended two 1999 demonstrations in Madrid, and over 2,000 anti-fascists demonstrated against them.

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES

Reported anti-Semitic incidents in 1999 were limited to some wall graffiti and a few phone threats. The graffiti included the words “Juden Raus” and swastikas sprayed on the walls of a stadium where the Israeli team Hapoel Haifa were to play a soccer match against a Spanish team in Valencia.

Descendants of Majorcan Jews, known as Chuetas, who converted to Christianity during the period of the Inquisition, are still subject to anti-Semitic slurs. According to the sociologist Pere Salva, 30 percent of Majorcans would not marry a Chueta and 5 percent would not have Chueta friends. The Chuetas are identifiable by their family names. Salva expressed surprise that the economic development, in which the Chuetas had played a key role, had not changed the islanders’ mentality.

Since 1997, with the enactment of the new penal code and the trial of Pedro Varela, most Spanish neo-Nazi propaganda has been disseminated through the Internet from the Stormfront server of Don Black located in Miami. The Nuevorden (New Order) website, transmitted through Stormfront, acts as the coordinator of more than 50 small neo-Nazi groups, according to the November 1999 RAXEN report. Nuevorden publishes Hispania Gothorum, a page dedicated to Spanish skinheads, and El Mundo NS of Ramon Bau, who was one of the founders of CEDADE.

A few journals, such as Nueva Política, Resistencia, Hesperides and Tribuna de Europa, occasionally print anti-Semitic propaganda.

According to the Movement Against Intolerance, White Power music and radical right football fans are the principal purveyors of Nazi propaganda. The movement warned that Division 250 Klan, Estirpe Imperial, Batallón de Castigo, Patria, Reconquista and Zetme 88, were among the most dangerous music groups in Spain. Songs of the first group, which has recorded and performed in Spain and Italy, include phrases such as: “Zionism is cornered,” “This is the white race revolution” and “I will kill all the gypsies, adults or children.” In addition, they distribute free issues of their colorful and attractive magazines. Their sponsors include the record companies Sonido Antisistema and Rata-Ta-Ta, which was created by activists associated with Bases Autónomas. Rata-Ta-Ta, centered in Valencia, plan to release 12 CDs in 2001 and to raise the circulation of their magazine Respuesta Sonara to 10,000 copies.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM

In May 1999, the Appeals Court decided to send the file of the case of Pedro Varela to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that Paragraph 2 of Article 607 of the Penal Code, under which Varela was sentenced to two years imprisonment in November 1998 for Holocaust denial, might violate Varela’s right to freedom of expression. (He was also under a three-year sentence for incitement to hatred.) According to the judges, defamation of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group could be sufficiently punished by other articles of the Penal Code. In February 2000, however, the Constitutional Court returned the file to the Appeals Court for a re-hearing. As of mid-2000, the judgment of the Appeals Court was still pending.

During 1999 Spanish courts imposed numerous sentences on skinheads for their participation in violent incidents, and increased to four years the prison sentences imposed on three skinheads for a 1992 attack against a Spanish citizen from Guinea.

In March, a Spanish judge ordered 11 members of the GIA (Grupo Islámico Armado -- GIA) to stand trial for fabricating fake documents and delivering arms, explosives and stolen vehicles to other members of the organization.

The COSOFAM (Commission of Solidarity with the Families of the Disappeared in Argentina) presented a report on the systematic anti-Semitism of Argentina’s military junta (1976-83), to Judge Baltazar Garzón, who is independently investigating the crimes of that regime. The report stresses that repression against Jews, who represented only 1 percent of the population, was 15 times greater than against other victims of persecution because 15 percent of the victims were Jews.

In Madrid, an institution monitoring urban violence, racism and intolerance was created (Observatorio de la Violencia Urbana, del Racismo y la Intolerancia). Its task is to collect information in the region and to deal with complaints of victims in order to bring their cases to court.

Two demonstrations were held to demand closure of the Europa Bookstore: one in January when some 1,500 participants representing 30 organizations began a peaceful march, which turned violent after they reached the shop; another demonstration in May took place without incident.

B’nai B’rith Spain asked the Segovia Municipality to withdraw an offensive plaque placed in San Facundo Square after the Civil War, in 1940. The plaque reads: “In memory of the sacrilege committed by the Jews in the Church of San Facundo…,” referring to the alleged Jewish desecration of the chalice in the church that stood in that location in the Middle Ages.

The Children of Abraham Project, which promotes tolerance and mutual respect for different religions, held its second annual event in December. Starting at Madrid’s synagogue, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish children traveled to Cuenca, Valencia, Gerona, Barcelona and Montserrat, where they visited the symbols of each other’s religions.

Spanish President José María Aznar presented Enrique Mugica with an award for his work on the commission inquiring into Spain’s role in gold transactions with the Third Reich during the war. This is in spite of the fact that the commission’s findings, exonerating Spain from the charge of being one of the Reich’s main suppliers of critical war materials, were contradicted by the Eizenstat Report and by the opinion of other Spanish historians, because it limited the investigation to officially bought gold, and ignored tons of gold smuggled into Spain with the covert assistance of the Spanish authorities.

The well-known Holocaust survivor Violeta Friedman was honored by Carlos III University of Madrid for her work in educating against intolerance and racism. Friedman has been regarded as a symbol of the Holocaust in Spain since she scored a legal victory over the Belgian Holocaust denier León Degrelle in 1991.