The urban guerilla in Spain: improvisation or institutionalization of violence?

The urban guerrilla is a concept with military connotations that emerged in the second half of the 20th century, referring to asymmetric and improvised coordinated strategies of struggle. Basically, a specific type of tactics in urban environments.

In Spain it has its sentimental and ideological reference for the anti-system and secessionist collectives in the Spanish maquis. Resistance to the Franco dictatorship. Being groups of different ideological orientations, in the case of the Catalan region, they were anarchists.

Currently, violence in Spanish cities has escalated and attacks on the police are daily and by the dozen.

Self-called antifascist, anticapitalist, anarchist or independence movements sow terror in the Spanish streets in an organized way and in regions such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, Valencia, Navarra or the Balearic Islands, with a transversal projection based on politics away from social demands. Which ones, if they exist, are subject to ideological political interest: territorial secession.

We have the so-called NEGRA INTERNATIONAL founded around 2012 to spread anti-system thinking, and it is also curious, that in the 70s and 80s there was a fascist movement of the same name. Ideologically born in Greece, they want to create an expansive global network of subversion supported by two pre-existing organizations: FRI (INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY FRONT) AND FAI (INFORMAL ANARCHIST FEDERATION).

Its main objective though, is to spread through western cities making the heartlands of States a dangerous place. It is scary to see how the ideologies of these movements converge with the pure terrorist organizations in this motivation to bring chaos to Society.

In the second half of 2019, in Barcelona, ​​anarchist collectives from half of Europe, taking advantage of the climate of social unrest created, and maintained since then, by regionalist politicians: sowed chaos.

The Catalan region was a testing ground for strategies and tactics of urban violence.

These anarchists were joined by the Catalan secessionist collectives. The anarchists put aside any claim of a social nature and joined a political protest of a transversal nature, based on an ideology: independence.

Anarchists violently overflow Spanish cities and the State, currently led by a social-communist government and at the regional level by secessionist parties, encourages them or subliminally justifies their violence.

All the action of the legislative and executive branches is aimed at allowing violence that is getting out of control. The judiciary, which is not independent, despite repeated warnings from the European Union, tries to stop democratic degradation but is subjected to overwhelming political pressure. We live in Spain an authentic dictatorship of political parties that have an all-embracing power exercised through public subsidies and a corrupt clientelistic network.

This permissiveness has generated a peculiar anarchist lifestyle to which the self-proclaimed antifascist or independence movements have joined.

The presence of massive public and private subsidies, a political, associative and business clientele network and administrative impunity generate masses of followers.

Unlike the anarchists, the Catalan secessionists have the so-called CDR - COMMITTEES FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE REPUBLIC, created in 2017, which are autonomous cells, but with a centralized command.

The usual mantra or slogan of these movements is peaceful and non-violent civil disobedience but with ample nuances if they are opposed. The police and the military do not fall within the cataloging of human beings and are servants of power who can be attacked.

And it is not something that I make up, but rather that these movements that converge in a transversal pro-independence project, advertise daily through written manuals.

Abundant in the Catalan secessionists, they have been creating groups, based on the evidence of their violent and criminal forms in previous groups. Hence, TSUNAMI DEMOCRATICO was born in August 2019. Through cyberactivism and mass connection through social networks under the slogan or habitual mantra of peaceful and non-violent civil disobedience, they organized roadblocks, damaged rail infrastructure, prevented border access with France and tried to attack by force the international airport of El Prat-Barcelona.

Both the CDR and the democratic Tsunami have been destroyed by police operations, a new group has taken over: BLACK BLOC CATALUÑA. Another copy of a previous movement that preaches direct action with urban guerrilla methods, through telegram channels and infographics that teach how to attack the police, how to dress, etc.

I think I have reflected that these ideologically disparate movements converge in a transverse political independence project, thanks to the inaction of the State and the huge amounts of public money they receive. Without it, they would not converge, nor would they have such a media presence.

But who finances, apart from the public money of all Spaniards, these anarchist, secessionist, or anti-fascist movements? the private foundations such as Open Society Foundation, entities such as Amnesty International, or IRIDIA, NGOs, etc.

All of the above in union with political parties and unions linked to the left, communism and independence. They are watered with public money and put at their service the mass media and the legislative power.

The contempt for private property in Spain and the phenomenon of illegal occupation is a unique example in the West.

Migration policy is in chaos, any social problem that overflows in time and space becomes a problem of public order, and uncontrolled immigration is a reality paid by the residents of lower or middle-class neighbourhoods, while the political leaders who live in upper-class neighbourhoods are oblivious to it and legislate recklessly.

In the field of the urban guerrilla, as the Spanish expression says: the past will come back to haunt you.

The political power, the referenced private funders and the legislative power harass, coerce and repress the monopoly of force that the State has: Currently in Spain, the police are afraid to act against criminals due to the legislative and legal defencelessness they suffer and the on media exposure that they will suffer from any police action.

The case of the Catalan region is worrying, the public order units are literally crushed politically, as resolution 476 / X of the regional Parliament dated 12/18/2013, prohibited the use of rubber balls in violent demonstrations.

The public order units tried to adapt with visco-elastic cartridge cannons or FOAM, but they limited the firing distance to 50 meters (loss of deterrent effectiveness) and whoever shoots them has to unseal the ammunition from a bag, ask permission from their superior. and write down the time, place and reason. All this while trying to avoid a deluge of stones, glass bottles, and so on.

Public order units were also prevented from using tear gas and were told to buy and use pepper spray (without added chemicals) with the same negative result.

Currently the anti-system party CUP (popular unity candidacy) is conducting an audit against the police in the Catalan region, with the aim of withdrawing the FOAM cannons and dissolving the public order units. All this with the approval of the entities financed by the Open Society Foundation and the pro-independence political powers.

This risk to the life and physical integrity of the police officers and the environmental and economic degradation of Catalonia with so many acts and vandalism, led last Saturday 10/23/2021 to a massive police demonstration in Barcelona, ​​to which associations joined of merchants, hoteliers, neighbors, and so on.

As a final conclusion, we are not facing an improvised urban guerrilla phenomenon but rather a strategy of destruction of the social and democratic State under Spanish law, from within and with the public money of all Spaniards. It is an instrumentalization of violence to control the streets, the speeches, the minds and feelings of the citizens. A work of social engineering geopolitically designed to destabilize a European state with the complicity of a mediocre political class.

The solution is to achieve the effective division of the three powers in Spain, which does not exist because the judicial power is subject to the legislative power and the latter subject to the executive power. Meanwhile, the violence in the streets, for whatever reason, will be daily and the institutional and economic degradation unstoppable.

David Hernández
President Politeia 
Police, Defense and Security Association
Spain