Spain: New police infiltration in Madrid
Featured image: Undercover police. Source: El Salto Diario
We publish an unofficial translation of the article published on Servir al Pueblo here.
One more case of police infiltration is discovered again in Madrid in addition to the last ones in Madrid, Barcelona, València and Girona. According to the newspaper El Salto, we know:
“The Popular Party deputy for the province Pablo Casado, the police director Ignacio Cosidó, and the Secretary of State, Francisco Martínez were present at the oath of Sergio GA as a police officer at the Ávila academy. Exceptional spectators of the transition to the police career of a promotion that took place in 2014. A few months later, a person who called himself Sergio Botana began to frequent the food bank in the Moratalaz neighborhood. At that moment long militancy began, which led Sergio to participate in actions of disobedience, in an occupation of a Bankia office on Calle Mayor in Madrid or in the defense of a school [translator’s note: where the votes took place] during the referendum [Translation’s note: the non-officially according to the Spanish State referendum for self-determination of Catalonia] on October 1st, 2017 in Barcelona. Three years later, the person who received his appointment as police from three important people of the Popular Party acted as an undercover police officer in the social movements. From 2015 to 2021, the undercover police officer Sergio GA established relationships of friendship, militancy, and work with dozens of people, and in at least two cases also sexual-affective relationships. El Salto, in collaboration with La Directa, has been able to confirm that under Botana’s identity is this police officer who applied for police inspector position in 2019 and who, in the last three years, has gradually abandoned the false identity.(…)
Over time, he reached a high level of trust with many of the militants of this organization, to the point of sharing a flat with some of them. He also was in a sexual-affective relationship that lasted several years with one of these people. He participated in actions such as the occupation for a few hours of a Bankia office in the center of Madrid, and was in a support group for the referendum on October 1st, 2017 in Barcelona, which defended the voting right at the School El Carmel, in the neighborhood with the same name. No police force went to that school. The trust gained over the years allowed him to later be involved in the Madrid Anti-Repressive Movement (MAR), created in 2018 on the occasion of the trial of the Balear Island’s rapper Valtònyc. After beginning to disassociate himself from District 14 around 2019, the last phase of his activity in the organizations was linked to the MAR. One of the people affected by his case remembers that Sergio join again just after the imprisonment of another rapper, Pablo Hasel. The protests on February 18th, 2021 on the occasion of the Hasel’s entry into prison, which resulted into high repression against the MAR and other groups, also represented a turning point in the presence of Sergio GA in meetings, assemblies and movements. Since then, he did not come back to the movements in which he had participated and distanced himself from the people with whom he interacted in those areas, to whom he informed that he wanted to start an education to become a firefighter. ”
One of the organizations in which he was undercover, the Anti-Repressive Movement of Madrid, has released a statement denouncing the situation and points out: “Every anti-fascist, popular and truly democratic movement is the objective of this Regime.” District 14 of Moratalaz, another affected organization, also denounces the undercover operation and makes a public self-criticism, pointing out that the undercover operation was possible thanks to “political naivety.”
All revolutionaries and progressive democrats must stand out in solidarity with the affected movements and actively struggle against police infiltrations.
Police infiltrations are not temporary: they are part of the process of militarization of the Spanish State
Like every bourgeois State, the Spanish State is sustained and developed by using repressive violence against the proletariat and the popular masses. There are many forms of repression used by the Spanish State: from exorbitant fines and sanctions of all kinds, to policies of genocide and torture against the poor migrant masses (CIE’s, shooting at the fences of Ceuta and Melilla, conscious neglect of the boats and boats that shipwreck, etc.) including the imprisonment and torture of political prisoners. One of the invisible forms of repression that exists is police infiltration in revolutionary organizations and popular movements (housing, feminist, anti-repressive movements…). The State uses all its technical superiority to infiltrate police agents:
It is naive to think that the State is going to respect bourgeois legality and will not use all its tricks, so revolutionaries must be prepared for anything. We must remember Chairman Mao’s words: “never forget class struggle.” With police infiltration, they not only collect information, such as the name and address of the activists, plans of the organization or places of political activity. They also propagate bourgeois ideology through specific political criteria, positions and lines. Or perhaps the undercover agents do not participate in the debates that take place in the movement? Aren’t infiltrators trained in oratory, vocabulary and intermediate ideological concepts (or even advanced, depending on the organization where it infiltrates) to win debates? Are the infiltrators not going to support and develop the black line in the specific movement where it is infiltrated, so that the red line never prevails?
The two-line struggle occurs naturally in any political movement, whether or not there are police undercover agents, but it is innocent to think that if there are, they will not actively participate so that the black line prevails over the red line in this two-line struggle. The black line can be manifested in many ways depending on the experience, trajectory and objectives of the popular movement in particular: from collaborating with State institutions, promoting class conciliation and social peace, to using a “red language” to disguising yourself with activities that apparently sound very revolutionary, but really are not (spontaneity, artisan work methods, combating basic security measures, etc.)
Let’s not be innocent, of course the State knows about this!
We must work for security in popular movements and combat infiltrators and provocateurs!
