Jim Lawley

Spain’s anarchists are rioting

(Photo by JOSEP LAGO/AFP via Getty Images)

Michael Bakunin, the 19th century revolutionary Russian anarchist, identified Spain as the place where his creed was most likely to take root. In 1868, to get the ball rolling, Bakunin dispatched his disciple, Giuseppi Fanelli, to Spain. After some difficulty in raising the money for his train fare, Fanelli finally arrived in Madrid where he was introduced to a small group of printers who attended a working-class educational institute. Although Fanelli spoke only Italian and French and most of the print workers spoke only Spanish, his address made a dramatic impact.

A shortage of money meant Fanelli could not stay long but he left behind copies of Bakunin’s speeches. These were carefully studied and enthusiasm for anarchy was soon spreading like wild-fire through Spain. It became the only country in Europe in which Bakunin’s ideas took root in a mass movement; by the 1930s, on the eve of the civil war, Spain’s anarchists were famed throughout Europe.

Today, Spain’s parliamentary democracy at least offers hope

It was in Barcelona that the anarchists (along with other Republicans) held out longest against Franco, before finally succumbing in 1939. Are the youths of Barcelona who have taken to the streets every night for the last week heirs to the country’s strong anarchist tradition?

This week’s street protests were triggered by the jailing of rap artist Pablo Hasél. Hasél’s social media posts have glorified terrorism, praising Grapo (a clandestine Marxist-Leninist organisation responsible for killing 84 people in shootings and bombings between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s) and the Basque terrorist group ETA, (which murdered 829 people between 1968 and 2010). His songs have also insulted the monarchy, suggesting the guillotine for one royal. He is only the latest victim of Spain’s laws allowing jail sentences for such crimes: another rapper fled to Belgium in 2018 to avoid prison and in 2016 two puppeteers were briefly jailed for glorifying terrorism in their carnival show.

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