Spain: Racism and fascism
01 January 1991
Spain: Racism and fascism
artdoc April=1995
Racism and the homeless
Police deny racial motivation after fire devastates Madrid shanty
town
Police denied any racist motivation for a fire which swept
through the shanty town of PeÑagrande, Madrid, in the early hours
of the morning of 10 October, blaming a short-circuit, despite
an anonymous threatening phone call received in a local community
centre just four hours before the fire. Four hundred north
Africans were made homeless by the fire, in which almost half the
dwellings in Spain's largest shanty town were destroyed. The fire
brigade took 40 minutes to arrive, saying that no one had called
them earlier.
The fire was the seventh in two years in the shanty town, and
the third to be blamed on a short-circuit. The inhabitants live
in conditions of squalor, in huts built of paper, cardboard and
wood, on land by a roundabout in a north Madrid suburb. A
rehousing programme, promised by the municipality for June 1993,
has not yet materialised (El País 11.10.94).
Madrid city council censured for treatment of Gypsies
The Romani organisation `Presencia Gitana' has asked the Spanish
Attorney General to conduct an inquiry into measures taken by
Madrid city council against 54 Gypsies who were forced to leave
their shanty home, which was destroyed, only to be transferred
to the site of a city waste dump last May. The Gypsies, who had
been promised better accommodation, were loaded on to trucks and
taken to the site. According to Presencia Gitana, trucks carrying
rubbish arrive at the site at the rate of three a minute; many
children living on the site are suffering from diarrhoea (Romnews
no. 18, 5.10.94).
Skinhead sentenced for racist stabbing
A 19-year-old skinhead, Akim Rim Moreno, was sent to prison for
2 years and 4 months for the almost fatal stabbing of Dominican
pastor Julián Fabián Contreras, in July 1992. The attack happened
outside a phone booth in Barcelona where Contreras' friend was
making a phone call. Moreno demanded to use the phone and then
stabbed Contreras in the stomach with a penknife, saying `Die,
black'. He denied a racist motive, saying that his father was
Algerian (El País 9, 22.9.94).
Riot in church
Pilgrims in Torrenueva near Granada, southern Spain, rioted when
the parish priest announced that the Sunday collection of £3500
was destined for Rwanda. Many in the 3000-strong congregation
began to shout `No money for black people' (Guardian 11.8.94).
Catalan president talks of threat to Catalan identity
The Catalan president, Jordi Pujol, has said that the unique
identity of Catalan and Andorran people is under threat from the
English-language media, from Castilian Spanish and from
demographic, migratory and political factors. It was not known
if his references to migration were to foreigners or to people
coming in to the region from other parts of Spain (El País
16.9.94).
IRR European Race Audit, Bulletin no 11, December 1994. Contact:
Liz Fekete, Institute of Race Relations, 2-6 Leeke Street, London
WC1X 9HS. Tel: 0171 837 0041