After five months of waiting and delay, the nine detainees from
Compostela took the first step in a process that should never havebegun. Once again, the Gag Rule is being used to repress the protest
efforts of the population, in this case, those organized to stop the
genocide, occupation, and Zionist apartheid taking place in Palestine.
On this occasion, the excuse used by the state was the nonviolent
boycott of the multinational Burger King on October 6. The protesters
denounced the company's complicity in the genocide against the
Palestinian people, chanting inside and in front of the establishment
while holding ketchup-stained hamburger buns. This nonviolent action
ended with the violent intervention of state security forces, who
charged the protesters and arrested five of them. Once they were taken
to the Spanish National Police station, an emergency rally was called to
demand their release. At this rally, police violence was repeated, with
four more protesters arrested. The day ended with "nine arrests, zero
explanations."
The actions, which were demonstrably nonviolent in nature, were
described as aggressive for disrupting the normal activities of the
establishment collaborating with the Zionist regime and for supporting
the detained comrades. The response, which was demonstrably
violent-physically and psychologically-left several injuries that in no
way posed a threat to public safety, nor to the political and economic
interests of the capitalist structure.
After many months of waiting and exhaustion, the depositions of the
defendants before the judge in this impeachment trial took place on
February 19 and March 5. As is typical in these cases of political
repression, the conduct of the courts represents the next step in the
state's punitive structure.
The comrades-eight of whom are under thirty, and four of whom are under
23-are suffering the arbitrary and disproportionate hostility of the
judicial system in this process. Once again, as with the comrades
prosecuted in the rest of the country, those prosecuted today are
nothing more than scapegoats for a global internationalist movement
defending human rights.
In this "civil rights guarantor" state, once again the aggressors,
dressed in uniform, are not the ones who bear the burden of proof.
Rather, it is the working class, deprived of resources, legal and
psychosocial support, who must prove their innocence in a summary trial
with few guarantees. Thus, the only attacks that took place on October 6
were those carried out by the police, documented even by residents, and
which are going unpunished. In response, the police create their own
narrative, impossible to prove due to its nonexistence, but to which the
system, through the misnamed "Citizen Security Law," grants a
presumption of truth.
The political charges the comrades face are contained in Article 36 of
this Law. Since its entry into force, the abstraction of this article
has served as a tool to repress social movements ideologically critical
of the 1978 Regime and the socioeconomic system that sustains it. This
lack of specificity is not accidental; rather, it was deliberately
drafted to repress all behavior aimed at building other possible
futures-more just, more equitable, and more humane.
Although the charges against our comrades are still unknown, the 9
Arrests, 0 Explanations campaign -also a support group for those
detained in this process-reports that, based on previous experiences in
Galicia, this process will last several years.
In analyzing the events of that day, it's worth mentioning a couple of
issues that are, to say the least, noteworthy. First, the gender
interpretation that can be made of the arrests, since of the nine
detainees, only two are considered women, and they were, in fact, half
of the comrades arrested at the support rally that afternoon. Analyzing
this and other experiences in the state, we see that, while the majority
of social movements for Palestine have been led and supported by women
and non-binary people, the main indictments are people considered men.
This analysis should be considered when planning any action.
On the other hand, a cursory glance at the detainees' ages is enough to
confirm their youth: eight are under thirty, two of them 21, and the
other two are only 19. This also aligns with the observations of various
human rights and anti-repression observatories at the state level:
repression is increasingly directed at younger people, also linked to
the fact that in the last year youth mobilizations have been benchmarks
in the materialization of internationalist solidarity.
Repression in these times
A decade ago, an article in this same publication warned that "the main
objective of repression is to hinder and neutralize our capacity for
struggle, as well as to prevent the growth of political alternatives
that break with capitalist exploitation and aspire to a more just
society ." It's clear that repression, in any form, has three main
objectives: to spread fear of the consequences of rebellion, to exhaust
us psychologically and economically, and to isolate us through the
targeted punishment of militants and activists from organized movements
and collectives.
According to the report presented by Defender a quien Defiende this
year, the Palestine solidarity movement was the second most persecuted
in 2023, preceded by environmental groups and followed by the housing
movement. We will have to wait for the next report to understand the
consequences of the student encampments and the intensification of
mobilizations. Even so, we can make some assessments regarding the
intensification of repression we have experienced in recent months and
years. The discovery of various cases of police infiltration and the
repression on many of the most strategic fronts of struggle (unionism,
internationalist solidarity, housing, etc.) are just the tip of the
iceberg of a structural change in the sociopolitical and economic
dynamics of a system that is increasingly less concerned with life. The
main characteristic of these struggles is the balanced combination of
material and moral demands. In the case of housing, for example, many
unions are not limiting themselves to material demands-necessary, but
with insufficient revolutionary foundations-but are instead focusing
their discourse on neighborhood empowerment, on the construction of
community structures that have the real capacity to replace the welfare
state, or even on the social construction of the family. The creation of
support networks, reference groups, and safe and meeting spaces are also
undeniable tasks of these grassroots movements.
To conclude this brief analysis, it is necessary to examine the
political subject of youth, both from its historically revolutionary
potential and its precarious reality (economically and mentally). The
reports, but especially the case we are dealing with today, that of the
Compostela 9, cry out to heaven about the declared danger of an
organized, united, and strong youth. However, we are the children of
many generations who placed their hopes in younger people, in an act of
transmitting and inheriting revolutionary aspirations, socially
constructing expectations that are not only impossible to fulfill
(alone) but also impossible to reject. We recognize ourselves as young,
with energy, time, and hope, but we cannot (and should not) fully take
over without support and a grasp of the knowledge acquired thus far.
Generational transition, intergenerational transmission-the only legacy
we should defend-are essential for a joint struggle, in which time and
knowledge come together to build a solid foundation of shared principles
and strategies, from yesterday to tomorrow.
On the other side, we find a state that does not, and will not, cease to
rely on militarism and social control. The investment in public spending
demonstrates a belligerent and ever-escalating proposal. The Ministry of
the Interior will have a budget of EUR12.215 billion by 2025, an 8.3%
increase over the previous year, without addressing a collapsed
healthcare system or an increasingly precarious education system. In
2023, Spain reached a historic high of 156,400 police officers and civil
guards, a 10% increase in a single year. The objective is clear and not
new: to protect a police state that represses, controls, and persecutes
the organized working class.
Five strategies to organize ourselves in the face of their rage
It touches one of us, we all respond
While repression is the main risk factor in political and social
activism, it is often arbitrary (always within the stereotypical biases
of the state's repressive forces). The fact that any of us, in any
environment, can be subjected to this repression is just another weapon
of containment to optimize the punitivism defending their socioeconomic
system and their private property. Judicial processes attempt to
fragment collective cases as much as possible (as in the case of the
Compostela 9, in which, so far, a distinction is made between those
arrested in the morning and those in the afternoon), thus seeking to
isolate each of the activists. Against these strategies, collectivity is
our best defense. Framing this situation in a collective sense allows
for the sharing of legal tools and resources, defense and funding
strategies, psychosocial support, and even facilitating media coverage
of the cases. And we must not only collectivize these processes from a
pragmatic perspective. From an ethical perspective, the activists we
share, it is necessary to be aware of the arbitrary nature of the
arrests and sanctions, knowing that we are susceptible at any moment to
being the recipients of these odious certified letters.
2. Class internationalism
Speaking of collectivizing processes, it is essential to build spaces
for support, training, and mutual information about repressive systems
by, from, and for the perpetrators of this repression. Sharing past
experiences, forms of financing, which are always needed, strategies for
psychosocial support, care for caregivers, etc., can be an effective
tool to collectively and successfully confront their power structure.
Furthermore, it is important that this solidarity transcend national
borders, since we share state legislation that pursues our values and
actions regardless of the territory we are in, albeit in different ways
in each place. But this perspective cannot remain solely within the
framework of the state; it is necessary to strengthen support and
learning networks internationally. Many of the repressive strategies we
suffer are imported from other contexts or respond to global trends, so
we can similarly draw inspiration from experiences of resistance and
organizing that are developing in other countries. Repression, like
capital, knows no borders, and the response should be conceived through
understanding the dynamics of other European states and through dialogue
with the struggles of Latin America, where there is a long tradition of
confronting different forms of institutional violence. International
cooperation can provide us with key tools to confront this scenario.
3. Organized care and mutual support
Theirs is a game of attrition, a marathon with no end in sight other
than the silencing or physical and mental exhaustion of the members of
each social movement. We're seeing it with comrades across the state:
the 18 from La Macarena, the 6 from Switzerland, the 6 from Zaragoza,
the 9 from Compostela... Or perhaps the most paradigmatic case is that
of those prosecuted for the "Rode the Congress" protests, more than 12
years ago. Collective lawsuits, lawsuits perpetuated by calling and
suspending hearings and trials in order to keep their vulnerable
situation omnipresent in the lives of those prosecuted. A punishment
that isn't there, but exists; the battle for which is fought in the
minds of those accused, in every nightmare, in every project for the
future truncated by the (intentional) lack of answers.
These endless processes, the police infiltrations so prevalent in our
communities today, and the economic sanctions used as a weapon to
criminalize poverty are just some examples of what can be considered
psychological torture. Despite the lack of motives or evidence to
support the accusations, these judicial processes use the tension and
anxiety they generate as punishment for organizing, for social
transformation, for proposing possible futures.
For this reason, resisting, creating collective support mechanisms for
both the accused and their families and for the support groups
themselves, is already a revolutionary step. If torture is their weapon,
our resistance is solidarity and mutual support. But solidarity cannot
be just a one-time response; it must be a firm and sustained structure
over time, one that does not depend exclusively on the emergencies of
the moment. Creating stable networks of legal support, spaces for
emotional and material care, mechanisms for raising awareness and
denouncing repression, as well as strengthening political commitment to
those suffering repression on the front lines, are essential steps to
break their game of attrition.
Resistance is also the ability to learn to defend ourselves together, to
pool resources, strategies, and knowledge so that fear doesn't paralyze
us, but rather makes us stronger. If its intention is to isolate us,
fragment us, and make us feel alone, our response must be exactly the
opposite: to forge strong bonds that make repression another reason to
organize, not a tool for demobilization.
4. Social prisoners: the alliance of vagrants and criminals
If we look back, COPEL emerged from the libertarian prisoners' refusal
to call themselves "political," as well as from the abandonment they
suffered at the hands of other political prisoners, who ignored the
struggle of the so-called social prisoners. This division, intentionally
fueled, served to perpetuate a narrative in which political repression
and the criminalization of poverty seemed like divergent paths, when in
reality they are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps it's time to
recover this conception of class in our practices, understanding that
the structural violence of the system not only persecutes organized
political dissent, but also those forced to break their moral and
economic order to survive.
Repression directly affects social movements, which are fortunate enough
to be collective and know we are strong and united, but it also hits the
most impoverished sectors hard, often in a more brutal and invisible
way. If our organizational experiences serve to equip us with
anti-repressive tools, we must ask ourselves to what extent we are
willing to share them beyond our own struggles. The dominant order
establishes that there are "common crimes" and "political crimes," but
who benefits from these distinctions?
Our resistance tactics-expropriation, squatting, sabotage-are also those
that many people employ, outside the militant framework, as survival
strategies in a system that leaves no other option. Politicizing our
daily lives also means not forgetting the daily lives of the population
most marginalized by the system and channeling that rage upward, not
inward. This is the only way to build real and effective class
solidarity that breaks with the isolation and categories imposed by
capitalist logic.
5. Overcome old tactics, draw new strategies
Struggle is the only path, but this struggle must be organized,
coordinated, and strategic. We cannot afford to fall into the same
mistakes over and over again, nor to repeat formulas that, far from
strengthening us, isolate and weaken us. Therefore, we also share the
analysis written a decade ago in Regeneración, which is necessary to
remember, since in anti-repression spaces and campaigns we continue to
see "the repetition of modus operandi that have proven ineffective:
self-referential messages in demonstrations, self-isolation by blaming
the rest of society for its indifference to repression, and worst of
all, an inappropriate aesthetic translated into anti-repression
campaigns that feature images of riots, attacks on the police,
barricades, and hooded protests, with slogans that do not seek popular
support, but rather directly challenge the State."
Repression exists and strikes hard, but we must not fall into its trap.
We cannot turn our prisoners, detainees, and indicted people into
martyrs, nor fuel the romanticization of repression, as this only
contributes to assuming sacrifice as a central part of the struggle,
instead of analyzing how to minimize its impact. Similarly, it is
essential to avoid the idealization of tactics of direct and violent
confrontation: they are valid tools in certain contexts, but not
absolute truths or strategies to be applied blindly. Any tactic must be
functional and operational according to the time and place in which it
is implemented, and this requires a rigorous analysis of the current
situation and a strategic design that allows it to adapt to each
scenario and audience. Our strength lies not only in the will to fight,
but in the ability to learn, to evaluate what works and what doesn't,
and to build intelligent and effective collective responses. If the goal
is to resist and transform, it must be done thoughtfully, with planning,
and with a commitment to continuity.
Solidarity is not a crime. Unionism is not a crime. Fighting for housing
is not a crime. And yet, each of those values for which we live and
fight is becoming a target of repression. This is no coincidence; it's a
warning: they want us to remain silent, to be afraid, to accept
helplessness as our destiny. But we won't.
We must be prepared, organized, and ready to defend and protect
ourselves. Because in the face of their strategy of isolation, we have
the strength of community; in the face of their abuse, our integrity; in
the face of their fear, our determination. The publicization of judicial
processes is not just a tool for defense; it's a reminder that no one
should face alone the weight of a system that punishes those who defy it.
A cool head, so we can think calmly; a warm heart, so we don't forget
why we're fighting; just causes, because we know we're right; brave
strategies, for a revolutionary horizon.
Inés Kropo ,
Member of the "9 Arrests, 0 Explanations" campaign
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/03/14/organizar-a-nosa-raiba-organizarmonos-fronte-a-sua/
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