Hundreds of
right-wing demonstrators made stiff-armed fascist salutes
and shouted insults against gays, Muslims, and
immigrants at a Sunday rally marking the 30th
anniversary of the death of former Spanish dictator Gen.
Francisco Franco.
Waving red-and-yellow Spanish flags with the
insignia of the Franco regime's Falange Party, the
crowd gathered at the Plaza de Oriente beside the
royal palace in Madrid's old quarter, where Franco used to
address crowds every year on July 18. That was the day
he launched a military uprising against Spain's
elected Republican government in 1936, starting the
civil war his fascist forces eventually would win.
Franco's regime ended when he died November 20,
1975, after nearly 40 years in power. He was 82.
Miguel Menendez Pinar, grandson of the leader of
a largely defunct far-right party called New Force,
addressed a crowd that jeered gays and Muslims,
saying, "Spain is dying, or--better said--Spain
is being murdered." The crowd roared in agreement.
Some protesters shouted expletive-laced insults
against Socialist prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Franco supporters are a small minority in Spain
today, and there is no significant far-right party.
The demonstrators Sunday ranged in age from the
elderly to young couples pushing strollers. Boys in their
teens or younger walked around wrapped in the Spanish flag.
Representatives of far-right parties from
Germany, Italy, and France also attended the rally.
Police declined to give an official crowd estimate,
but one officer said about 1,000 people were on the square.
Some arrived earlier Sunday after walking overnight
from Valle de los Caidos, the mausoleum 20 miles
outside Madrid where Franco is buried.
Mainstream Spanish politicians made no public
comment on Sunday's anniversary. Socialists tend to
let the pro-Franco rallies speak for themselves, and
the conservative Popular Party is wary of being
associated with that period of Spain's past.
Blas Pinar, Miguel's grandfather and head of the
far-right New Force, said Franco transformed Spain
from a country riddled with poverty and illiteracy
into one with "enviable industrial development" and a
unified national identity. Still, he said Franco is
dismissed today as "a mediocre military leader,
ambitious and bloodthirsty, a man who enjoyed imposing
the death penalty and whose monuments are removed under
the cover of night, with hatred."
Angry right-wing demonstrators gathered at Plaza
de Oriente in March after the government tore down
Madrid's last publicly displayed statue of the late
dictator. Right-wing activists blame Spain's post-Franco,
democratic constitution for the country's ills, which Pinar
described as crime, decadence, and regional separatism.
Parliament passed a same-sex marriage bill in
June, giving full legal recognition to such unions.
The law angered the Roman Catholic Church, which is
the nation's leading denomination, and Spanish
conservatives, but polls suggest that most Spaniards back
it. Spain's constitutional court said in October it
would study the Popular Party's appeal against the
law. (AP)
