SPAIN: Neo-Nazis Change Their Appearance, But Not Their Habits

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Julio Calistro

MADRID, Jul 24 1996 (IPS) - Neo-nazi gangs of ‘skinheads’ in Spain, once easy to spot by the leather jackets, shaved heads, and celtic crosses they normally wear, are changing their appearance — but not their violent habits — say Spanish police.

Neo-nazi skin heads are trying to avoid police attention by adopting the dress style of the ‘bakaladeros’ or ‘bacalao’, the Spanish fans of popular ‘techno’ dance music nicknamed for their ‘fish-like’ fluid dancing style.

The bakaladeros also closely shave their hair, wear jeans, military boots and synthetic jackets. But unlike the skinheads, the techno fans are known all over Europe for their harmless obsession with a style that has its roots in the ‘peace and love’ fashions of the 1960’s.

With youth violence claiming the lives of four youngsters in Madrid alone in the past year and all the killings perpetrated by supporters of the extreme right, identification has become all important, as is the need to avoid targeting the innocent.

The re-styled skinheads have been dubbed ‘national bakaladeros’ by the National Police Department, currently studying the neo-nazi movement in Madrid.

Since the change of clothes they have recorded a 15 percent drop in the number of attacks attributed to skinheads and a five-fold increase in attacks attributed to other ‘urban tribes’. In the first five months of 1996, skinheads were charged with 54 violent crimes against 66 in the same period last year. The reported figure for other groups rose from seven in 1996 to 37 so far this year.

Last May, David Alfonso, 17, was fatally stabbed in a fight over a 500 peseta (four dollar) coin, dropped by a friend at a fair in the working class Madrid district of Arganzuela. Fifteen ‘national bakaladeros’ joined in the fight, whereupon Alfonso was stabbed in the heart.

A year before, Ricardo Rodriguez, 20, was stabbed to death in the suburban night club district of Costa Polvoranca, again by skinheads. In February skinheads threw a petrol bomb at a shelter for homeless youngsters, leaving a five-year old black child who tried to defy the thugs’ taunts, with serious eye injuries.

Two hundred police patrol the streets of Madrid at weekends, briefed to watch the activities of the ‘tribes’, often resorting to random stop and search tactics to weed out suspects. At the same time they are trying to build up a dossier on the neo-nazis.

The interior ministry says police have identified some 700 skinheads in Madrid, about 30 percent of all the violent ultra- rightists so far picked out in Spain. They sub-divide into smaller factions, including those who support the so-called Bases Autónomas (‘Autonomous Headquarters’) a neo-nazi group that went underground in the 1980s, but still operates secretly in skinhead circles.

Their leader in Madrid, Carlos Rodrigo Ruiz de Castro, a lawyer who adopted the nickname ‘El Cid’, committed suicide in 1995. Ruiz de Castro was also the founder of the ‘Bernal Diaz del Castillo’ group, named in turn after a notorious nationalist hero. De Castro created the Eurosurcamp company in 1988 that runs the Soldiers chain of shops, selling clothes and paramilitary style equipment popular among skinheads.

His second in command was Ignacio Alonso, the leader of at least two student organisations at the Complutense University of Madrid. The Madrid district attorney has called for a nine-year prison sentence for Alonso, who is currently accused of organising attacks on leftist students.

Other leaders of the Bases Autónomas have gone underground, such as Fernando Fernandez Perdices, as has its journals ‘A Por Ellos’ and ‘El Porvenir’ (The Future), as the group has split up into ten core covert bands of about ten national bakaladeros each.

The problem is also shared by the cities of Valencia and particularly Barcelona, which has the dubious honour of hosting 50 percent of the country’s right-wing extremists. Skinheads were blamed for the murder of a 20 year old off-duty Civil Guard officer in the city last year.

In March, police in Barcelona and surrounding cities arrested 34 members of the ‘Centuriones’, a racist paramilitary group with a neo-nazi ideology and links to drug trafficking. Aspiring gang members must pass a test, in which they must beat up a member of a rival group. This well-organised gang used to run its own social club, workshops, motorcycle store, tattoo parlour and even an ‘insurance agency’ and a boat which it rented out for parties.

In the raid the police scooped up firearms, machetes, tear gas, cocaine, amphetamine-type drugs like ecstasy. Indications are that the group enjoyed links with U.S. and Scandinavian far-right groups.

It is this covert international network that most disturbs observers. A report to the European Parliament by the European Center for Research on Racism and Anti-Semitism, recently warned of these ‘sophisticated networks’ of neo-nazis in which their true leadership remains a guarded secret.

The groups continue to recruit among young troublemakers at soccer matches, organsining attacks on immigrants, anti-racists and homosexuals.