It took a few hours for the Spanish far right to activate the same propaganda mechanisms put in place during the pandemic: complaints, complaints, disinformation and dissemination of the idea that patriotism reaches where politicians do not arrive or do not do not want to reach. Among the criticisms of the management of the DANA crisis by the national and Valencian authorities, movements of Nazi or fascist ideology, politicians like Alvise Pérez and groups linked to parties like Vox or National Democracy wanted to capitalize on the disaster for, among aid shipments and collective demonstrations of solidarity, send a clear message: Spain is a failed state.
The columns of volunteers who traveled the roads of the Valencian Community to help residents of the areas most affected by the disaster were the signal for the involuntary departure of dozens of initiatives by far-right groups to collect and send truck after truck of food, water and equipment. accompanied by flags, logos and slogans. From the industrial warehouse of Arganda del Rey with the preferential presence of Revuelta, a youth group linked to Vox, to the Espacio Ardemans in Madrid shared these days by the Núcleo Nacional and the Falangist groups.
The strategy has a recent and close history. Hogar Social Madrid, a group that made itself known on the capital’s ultra scene ten years ago, based a good part of its activity on collecting food for disadvantaged families, but only for the families they considered Spanish. An adaptation of the Italian neofascist movement CasaPound, which deployed a similar strategy in Amatrice during the 2016 earthquake that killed more than 300 people in that town and two others nearby, or which was also implemented shortly before in Greece by the disappeared neo-fascists. Golden Dawn of the Nazis.
The DANA tragedy, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 220 people, most of them in the Valencian Community, is witness to a similar strategy. Far-right organizations, with little or no presence in social movements serving the most disadvantaged, have become the great benefactors of the Valencian people, loading truck after truck and van after van towards the areas most affected by the disaster. All broadcast live and filled with propaganda: it is the patriots, and not the left or the State, who save Valencia in the face of the inaction of the authorities and the inability of experts to predict and prevent the tragedy.
The battle already christened for history is fueled by the absence of data on who, how and how much helps, as well as by the testimony of many affected areas which have not received the aid they need and by the proliferation hoaxes on social networks but also in pseudomedia. And in the far-right groups, who seek to make it clear that they help more than the 7,000 soldiers deployed on the ground, the volunteers with tractors or the Civil Guard, two slogans proliferate: “Only the people save the people » and “Failed”. State.” “.
Few of these initiatives which combine aid and the establishment of the far right in a traumatic period bear the signature of a political party. But there are links. Revoltwhich defends the sending of aid trucks from the south of Madrid, is a youth organization closely linked to Vox and protagonist of the Ferraz Street protests in November last year. And Luis “Alvise” Pérez himself, MEP and leader of the Se Acabó La Fiesta group, is publicizing the tons of help his “squirrels” are providing to the areas most affected by DANA.
The ultra National Democracy party organized a food drive on Ferraz Street, near the PSOE headquarters. Alvise chose to rent a theater in Chamberí to collect aid and then take it by truck to Valencia. All while the main accounts of the social network
In a message published on his Telegram channel, where he has more than 722,000 subscribers, Alvise added to this mix the theory that the government is hiding the real number of deaths in the face of possible new catharsis from those it regularly announces. “The only reason they don’t want us Spaniards to help them is because we show the failed state of this useless administration and the false data of a catastrophe that claims many more lives than the official figure, because if they say the real deaths, Spain will burn,” he says.
Aid trucks from all over the country
There is no unified data, but a quick glance at truck departures to Valencia allows us to deny that the aid collected by ultra groups and parties is the majority in the face of the attempt to stop aid. of the state. Madrid City Hall has collected enough material to fill 240 trucks at 40 collection points throughout the city with no known restrictions. 60 tons of food and equipment were shipped from Burgos. Logroño, León, Murcia, Seville, Málaga and Salamanca are other cities from which dozens of trucks loaded with aid to those affected by DANA have departed.
The strategy of the far right reproduced its line of action during the pandemic a few days after the tragedy: criminally pursue all political responsibility in the management of the disaster. Vox, through its spokesperson Juan Antonio Fúster, called for a “fair trial” for Pedro Sánchez, following the slogan that his party popularized during the pandemic: putting the central government in the dock.
The Supreme Court was then very clear in rejecting any criminal and general investigation against governments, central or regional, for the management of the pandemic. Several of the organizations which then took legal action have returned to the fray to demand legal measures against the authorities. Among them, Clean Hands, which has already denounced AEMET and those responsible for reckless homicides, or Iustitia Europa, which filed a complaint against Pedro Sánchez, Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska or Carlos Mazón, president of the Valencian executive.
Many of these organizations, ultra parties and influencers from the far-right orbit have sought to adopt the slogan “Only the people save the people” popularized on social networks after the wave of solidarity from volunteers coming above all from the community herself. . Valencian Community. And openly for their own political objectives: yesterday, several of them called for demonstrations on Ferraz Street in Madrid, near the PSOE headquarters. Others have not joined: they have their own calls for the next few days.
