Spanish State: Repression against antifascist movement, 15 arrested facing eleven years of prison
Clashes between police and protesters in 2021 at Vox rally in Vallecas.
In Navalcarnero, Madrid, Spanish State, 15 people belonging to the antifascist movement have been charged after a police set-up. The sentences that they want to prosecute them for are eleven years each. They are accused of damages, injuries, incitement of hatred, attack against authority, threats, resistance and serious disturbance of public order.
In 2021, some regional elections were held, one of them was in Madrid. It was in this time when Vox, political party that is famous for their proposals against immigrant workers and against workers rights, decided to go to working-class neighborhoods and proletarian cities to do their “political campaign”. Regarding this, one neighbor told to the local media after noticing that a rally would be held in his neighborhood: “It’s a provocation. I’m going to make noise so they can’t be heard. A leftist neighborhood and the far-right comes? It seems horrible to me because this is not exactly a source of votes for Vox”. This neighborhoods and towns of Madrid where Vox went, has a long proletarian tradition.
And so it was, it didn’t take long for the news to show how the neighborhoods rejected the arrival of the political party. Some notable clashes took place in the neighborhoods of the Red Square of Vallecas, where 2 people were arrested and 35 were lightly injured, among them 21 officers due to clashes between the police and the demonstrators. In Navalcarnero, after the protests, the 15 accused were arrested. This is how the detainees describe in their statement what it was like in Navalcarnero: “The repressive response was brutal. The government sent hundreds of riot police to take over our neighborhoods and protect the fascists. So that Abascal [Author’s note: the leader of Vox] could spread his stuff, they charged against our people, beat us up and arrested us. Navalcarnero was no exception. The police unleashed chaos throughout the town harassing neighbors protesting against Vox and its henchmen. Two months later, they went to the homes of 15 young people to take them into custody. Now, two years later, they want to put them on trial using the typical police set-up. Our crime? Being antifascists. The sentence they want to impose on us for it? 11 years in prison. 11 years in prison for defending our neighborhoods from fascism.”
Video: Police repression in Navalcarnero
Two years later, and just ten days away from the Madrid regional elections, the 15 detainees have been notified that they will have to stand trial and face a possible sentence of 11 years for each of them. They defend that there is no evidence to accuse them and that what is happening is a police set-up, that would be common in the Spanish State. For example, among the crimes of glorification of terrorism and insults against the crown, Pablo Hasel has been sentenced again to a new sentence for allegedly having assaulted a policeman, the only evidence being the word of the policeman, as we reported in the news published a few weeks ago.
The Spanish State still maintains to this day the Gag Law, a law passed in 2015 by the Popular Party and was called like that because of the repression and cut of demonstration rights. Under this law, which was heavily criticized by PSOE and Unidas Podemos, social-democratic parties, it is illegal for example to publish images of police violence or to prevent an eviction. Nowadays, the PSOE and Unidas Podemos government tried to make aesthetic changes to the law, but it continues to be active without any change.
