SPAIN:
FIES
Short
history of the struggle against the FIES
by
the Anarchist Black Cross - Gent
Short
history of the prison struggle in Spain
At
the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies there was a revival of
social and revolutionary struggles in the whole of Europe, also in Spain.
Strikes, occupations of factories and the formation of independent workers’
councils (“asambleas”) rose together with the renewed armed struggle, like
the one of the MIL and the Autonomous Groups. The transition of the fascist
dictatorship to a “democratic state” in the middle of the seventies made no
difference at least on this point: the repression was severe, and the prisons
were overpopulated. The struggle for the liberation of political prisoners
altered quickly toward a struggle for the liberation of all prisoners and the
abolition of the prison system.
In
January 1977, with the ‘Manifesto of the prisoners of Carabanchel’, the
regular prisoners interfered in the struggle. A rebellion in prisons all over
the country broke out, with 35 mutinies and an amount of protest actions. The
prisoners organised the struggle in general meetings in the prisons and in
February 1977 the COPEL (coordination of prisoners in struggle) is a fact.
After a hundred young people were beaten severely in a correctional institution
and 3 detainees were stabbed, a bloody uprising started; 26 prisoners cut their
stomach open the moment the police arrived, others swallowed several objects,
one prisoner who was transported to the hospital, managed to escape. In the
hallways of the prison, a wounded prisoner writes the word COPEL on the walls…
The day after 98 detainees are transferred to several prisons and 40 mutilators
disappear in a penitentiary cell. From that moment till 1979, uprisings, hunger
strikes, working strikes,… follow each other all over the country without an
end. The demands of the COPEL contain an amelioration of the prison conditions,
amnesty for all ‘social prisoners’, and the end of all laws and structures
inherited from the Franco era.
The
answer of the state was, like always, double; on the one hand negotiations, on
the other hand brutal repression. The COPEL was infiltrated and the most active
members were eliminated. Many of them were locked up in the new build
special prison of Herrera de la Mancha. Herrera de la Mancha is the first
of a series of prisons specially constructed to observe, divide and isolate the
prisoners, where physical and psychological terror is practised systematically,
and where we already find characteristics of a prison in a prison, or what will
be the FIES later on. In these prisons, in the words of the general director of
the prisons Carlos Garcia Valdès, the ‘unadjusted’ are locked up, or those
considered as the “most dangerous” detainees. The management of these
prisons was also assured by the Guardia Civil, not by regular guards. Once
arrived in Herrera de la Mancha, the prisoner is put in observation first degree
(total isolation). If he hasn’t made any infringement, he goes over to second
degree, where the differences in treatment are minimal (a little bit longer ‘airing’,
with a couple other prisoners). When the prisoner went through all the different
degrees without infringements, he gets transferred to another prison.
In
spite of the very repressive conditionss, uprisings also break out in these
prisons. For example in Meco (Madrid), in the beginning of the eighties, where
the prisoners set up the APRE (Asociacion de Presos en Regimen Especial,
Association of Prisoners in Special Regime). The struggle is ruthless, the
prisoners refuse every form of dialogue, and a radical minority wants only one
thing: to kill the guards and policemen, grab the arms and fight till death. The
repression that follows, and the fact that in the eighties the revolutionary élan
ebbed away, made that there was almost no struggle in prisons for nearly a
decade.
In
the beginning of the nineties there is a little revival of the collective prison
struggle. On the 27th of June 1989 there is a mutiny in Puerto de Santa Maria;
the insurgents are transferred to Herrera de la Mancha and put into isolation.
In the same year the political prisoners of the GRAPO also start a hunger strike
that will last 435 days and will bring a lot of commotion. On the 14th of
February 1990 the prisoners take the guards as hostages in Alcala-Meco. They
demand the release of Juan Redondo Fernandez and of the prisoners of Herrera de
la Mancha. In March, uprisings follow in Daroca, Nanclares de la Oca, Caceres II,
Alcala-Meco and Fontcalent. In October of that year the APRE(r) (APRE
reconstituida) is established. On the 18th of March 1991 there is again a new
revolt in Herrera de la Mancha, as a support of APRE(r), followed by another one
on the 11th of July 1991.
As
a reaction to these revolts the state installs the FIES. The most active
members of the APRE are locked up under the FIES regime; and a lot of those who
now have started the fight again, are already in their 10th, 15th or 20th year
in the darkest dungeons of the Spanish prison system
F.I.E.S.
The
FIES was introduced through a simple circular under the management of the
General Director of the prisons Antonio Asuncion, now leader of the Socialist
Party of Alicante. Although the Constitutional Court temporarily put an end to
the FIES regime in 1994, after a complaint of 2 prisoners, it still exists until
this day. The new penitentiary regulations, under article 93, provides a regime
that consists of:
-ISOLATION:
airing in an individual cage during max. 3 hours with max. one other person.
-UNLIMITED
IN TIME: normally the statute gets revised every 3 months, but in reality it
gets prolonged every time so that the isolation can last years, even decades.
-LIVING
CONDITIONS: totally handed over to the whims of the penitentiary centre. They
can introduce censorship and limit correspondences, refuse visits, only airing
in a cage, complete search with arbitrarily use of X-rays, continuous physical
and psychological torture,…
F.I.E.S.
en lucha
Struggle
against the FIES has always been there, by individuals or small groups, but just
recently a number of FIES detainees have realised the necessity of coordination,
and through letters to other prisoners and support groups they started to
organise the struggle. Their first action consisted of ‘txapeos’ (refusing
to leave the cells for a walk), but they saw quickly that if their struggle
didn’t expand to other prisoners and if there wasn’t enough radical support
from outside, the consequence of their action would only be a sharpened
repression. Through the actions, letters, communiqués the struggle expanded to
other prisoners and groups outside the walls, like the AFAPP (Association of
Friends and Family of Political Prisoners, linked to the GRAPO), the Mothers
against drugs, Association against Torture, etc., and after a while there
existed an agreement on 3 basic demands:
1)
Abolition of the FIES regime and every form of isolation
2)
Against the dispersion of prisoners (towards prisons far from the place of
residence, family and friends; spreading of prisoners over different prisons,
and in the prison itself)
3)
immediate release of all incurable sick prisoners
With
these demands a collective hunger strike started
from the 16th to the 19th of March 2000. In spite of all the difficulties
about 400 prisoners participated in 21 different prisons. It was a symbolic
action (4 days like the 4 walls of a cell), a sounding out of the balances of
power, after the unexpected growth of the movement as well in as out of the
prison cells during the previous weeks, in Spain and beyond the borders.
In
Barcelona the creation of the AAPPEL (Asamblea de Apoyo a las Personas Presas en
Lucha, Assembly for the Support of the Emprisoned Persons in Struggle)
contributed a lot to the cause; information was spread through conferences,
radios, manifestations, and several actions. Also in the Basque country and
Galicia the information was spread and actions were done. In Madrid a FIES
dossier was put together and, in spite of the many frictions between the support
groups, there were demonstrations and actions carried out. Also in France,
Belgium and Italy support groups are set up, and information is spread
accompanied with actions. Here prisoners also join through solidarity statements,
or, especially in Italy, by turning
to actions themselves.
The
following months the actions in and outside the prison walls continue. The
reaction of the state doesn’t stay out of course. On the one hand there is
hard repression: massive transportations, censorship, beatings, torture,… the
communiqués of the prisoners are alarming, there are even a couple of deaths.
On the other hand there is a media campaign full of lies: the prisoners in
struggle are represented as dangerous criminals, they claim that they are led by
the ETA,…
On
the 24th of April 2000 a bomb letter is sent to the ‘journalist’ J.M.
Zuloaga of the paper ‘La Razon’, very active in the spreading of deceitful
articles about the struggle. The assault was later claimed by ‘Los
Anarquistas’. After this claim several prisoners in Villanubla turn to a walk
strike in solidarity with those who sent the bomb. In the period from May to
July several letters to fascist newspapers follow yet. None of these bombs
explode effectively. On the 9th of November, 2 anarchists, Eduardo Garcia Macias
and Estefania Maurete Diaz, are arrested; they are charged with the involvement
in the letter campaign. Also in several cities houses are searched. The media do
their best to send the police stories into the world: Eduardo and Estefania
would have formed an armed group with prisoners (in isolation!??) and would have
organised the assaults. Estefania gets released, without the charges against her
be dropped. She is the friend of Santiago Cobos, one of the most active
prisoners, and probably they wanted to break him by arresting her. Eduardo gets
released conditionally, but on the 17th of November, after serious pressure from
the government, he is arrested again and locked up in Soto. He’s a member of
the Anarchist Black Cross and that could be handy for the police, zealously
looking for a nonexistent ‘international conspiracy’ or an ‘international
criminal organisation’, to put up a construction to arrest and convict a lot
of individuals on that basis, a common practise.
In
the mean time, in the prisons, the call for an unlimited hunger strike is
getting louder and louder. A couple of prisoners already started this, like
Laudelino Iglesias and Gabriel Bea Sampedro. On the 1st of December (2000), a
collective unlimited hunger strike starts. This strike will end after a month,
50 prisoners participated while 150 others carry out support actions. It seems
that the repression and the total black out in the media led to some
demoralisation. But the evaluation is not all negative, a more sober and
realistic assessment of the situation is made now.
A “communiqué from the resistance fighters in the La Moraleja prison”,
issued in January 2001, reads as follows:
“Greetings comrades,
Our evaluation of the hungerstrike of December latest
is rather positive in relation to the Movement of Prisoners in Struggle and
the solidarity in the street. That we make a positive estimation, doesn’t
mean that we are not aware of the fact that our mobilisation force in prison
and our possibilities to put “pressure” via the street are still very
limited... Let’s try to be objective. But remind that this a reflection at a
certain moment in the development of our movement of struggle and that as a
movement we only have made our first steps, laid the foundation
to move forward in a coherent and effective way, and that if we can
pursue this line of organized resistance we will broaden little by little our
action radius and will gain a greater strength as well inside as outside.
There is no other way if we want to move in the right direction;
from the perspective to make of our struggle a continuous activity
against the capitalist system, we take the struggle against the prison
apparatus as point of departure.
For the first time since the time of the COPEL one has taken a stand against
the criminal policy of the State in the
prisons, in a collective and organized manner, with clear objectives on the
short, middle and long term, and this movement persists and appropriates
itself the methods of struggle to win.
In our opinion it is crucial to lend continuity to our struggle and to secure
a basis that would make it possible to held on to the objectives we have set
ourselves.
Further, it is a fact that our struggle has brought about a dynamic with as a
consequence that a solidarity movement in the streets has been born which
expanded every day and delivered the proof of citizenship. Because of the
great diversity there are within this movement many contradictions; these came
to the fore especially in the weeks before the hungerstrike of december, but
nevertheless, it was demonstrated that with our “mobilisation”
these contradictions can be tempered and that unity in action prevailed.
This solidarity movement in its turn is made up of different sections of the
Resistance Movement, which
broadens even more the small marges from which we depart; anarchist unions,
associations of family members and friends of political prisoners (AFAPP),
unemployed committees, anti-imperialist comittees, neighbourhood committees (as
Amaitu), etc. actually did support our struggle. And then include those from
beyond our borders. As we strenghten our bonds with them and join their
struggle, our drum will meet more response, will be more difficult to silence,
to isolate, to suppress...
The combination of these two aspects, this of the
inside and this of the outside of the prisons, has given an important surplus
value to this strike. We are sure that a lot more people than only our
comrades can appreciate or observe this. The State for sure can’t let all
this happen, and tries to break the movement with all means at its disposal.
That’s the origin of the political frame up against the anarchist
comrades in Madrid, the house searches in Barcelona and other places to insert
fear, the ruthless criminalisation campaign meant to desactivate and curb the
support for the strike, the absolute information stop during the strike, etc.;
without speaking about the repression in the prisons itself. Of course there
are other cocks who crow now, as the humanists, the christians and all those
reformists who before short monopolized the “struggle” in the prisons and
thereby used those who run and control the stable. Now they can’t do
anything against us anymore and finally can’t infect us neither because of
their means nor because of their influence, we have to fight them too. As we
said already in a former comminiqué, they are part of the social mechanism of
the State/Capital and with our struggle we have come in direct confrontation
with them.
If the enemy
starts to “worry” so much about our little world,
that is only because of one thing: we are on the right way. It is
always distressfull not to be rewarded despite the hard labor, as was the case
during the hungerstrike of december. But we don’t even think about it to put
“opportunistically” our immediate objectives before our ultimate
objectives, because we are aware that our hard struggle has been transformed
in a real inspiring and binding force for a whole range of diverse concerns
which begin to unite in the struggle against the yoke of oppression and
capitalist exploitation which began somewhere between these damned walls...
and which might in time grow into a "material
force". From the spark comes the flame. Unity and struggle gives power!
Resistance inside and outside!”
It
is thus clear that the struggle will be long and harsh, and that such a prolonged
struggle will ask determination and a whole range of action methods that
leaves room for individual and local initiatives, according to the circumstances
(f.e. many prisoners are seriously ill and most of them cannot participate in
long term hungerstrikes). All prisoners can take action, talk about their own
situation and put their own demands forward,
but they will always connect with the movement by adding the principle
revendications: end of FIES, end of dispersions, release of all incurable sick
prisoners. In the beginning of 2001, also a 4th demand is
agreed upon: the release of all prisoners who have completed 20 years of
imprisonment (which should be, according to the Spanish law itself, the maximum
time), and a call is made to go on fasting every month. Besides that, at the
outside, the AAPPEL is transformed into the ACOP’S (Assembleas Contra les
Prisons), building a network to support the prisoners in struggle, “to break
the isolation and silence and to go beyond the concrete demands (which we
consider necessary) and to denounce the Penitentiary System as a tool of the
groups in power to maintain their hegemony and the existing situation of social
injustice”.
The
unity and continuity of the movement are thus secured by the four basic demands,
punctual collective actions (as the monthly chapeos and hungerstrikes),
broadening and strenghtening of the coordinations inside and outside, debates
about the prison struggle and its place in the social and political struggles
going on.
The
whole next year, and this till today, one can see a steady stream of
letters, communiquees, testimonies, … of prisoners in struggle, talking about
the daily horrors and repression they have to endure and about the resistance
and struggles going on inside (chapeo’s, hungerstrikes, workstrikes, letter
campaigns, sabotages, …). Also in
the streets a whole range of actions take place all over Spain –
demonstrations, info-meetings, conferences, direct actions, …
Internationaly,
the prisoners connect with prisoners and support groups in France, Italy, Greece,
Portugal, Belgium, Great-Britain, the U.S., where prisoners join by writing
solidarity statements and/or by participating in the monthly hungerstrikes. Many
also participate in the solidarity actions with the prisoners in struggle
against the introduction of the F-type prisons in Turkey. The struggle in Turkey
(with the ongoing deathfasts, the brutal military assault on the prisoners on
the 19th of December 1999, the struggle of the families), as well as
the struggles of prisoners in the U.S., such as
a collective hungerstrike in the isolation units of Texas in September
2001, make clear that the struggle against isolation units really is worldwide.
In
March 2002 another collective hungerstrike takes place in 38 prisons in which
close to 500 prisoners participate. Besides the success in numbers of prisoners
participating, important is also the mobilisation of women prisoners (in Alcala
f.e.). The silence of the press, imposed by the ministry of Interiors, is
deafening…
On
the 28th of May 2002, a huge uprising takes place in the Quatre
Camines prison in Catalunya. Following another senseless beating of two young
inmates by the guards, more than 250 prisoners decide to start a work strike. A
strike committee is formed which formulates 12 demands and asks to speak to the
Director of the Penitentiary Institutions, also the presence is asked of the
counceler of the Justice department of Catalunya and of the Red Cross.
Negociations start, but it is clear that the direction doesn’t want to give an
inch. The next day the Mossos (Catalan anti-riot police) storm the prison and
the rebellion is crushed with brutal force. The media this time couldn’t
ignore the actions and the problems in the prisons. But, as always, they just
did repeat the official, state sanctioned version of the facts. It would be
about a “group of dangerous prisoners” who rebeled because they didn’t
want to work and which was “contained” by the police and the prison
authorities. Not a word about what the prisoners themselves are saying for
almost three years. One prefers to look the other way if the prisoners talk
themselves and one beliefs what one wants to believe: that there is no violence
and torture in the prisons, no isolation regimes, no exploitation of their
labour, no transfers long from their families and friends, no inhuman
incarceration of people who are deadly ill, no prisoners who are held for
decades, ….
Till
now, except for some small armed attacks on the outside (such as those carried
out by ‘International Solidarity’), all actions have been non-violent. The
answer of the State though is nothing but violence. Inside, the repression
continues unabated, with constant transfers, censorship, denial of visits,
humiliations, abuses, beatings, torture, death. And although Eduardo was
liberated on bail (in November 2001), many others got arrested and enjailed;
overall the repression in the streets is growing. On the 15th of
October 2002, 4 anarchists active in the squatters’ movement are arrested in
Valencia. They are charged with “disturbance of the public order” and
“property damage” (related to an anti-fascist demonstration a week before)
and later, after interference of the chief of the Information Brigade of the
Spanish Police, with “terrorist association” … They risk 10 to 15 years of
imprisonment. The evidence seems, again, to be based on the contacts the 4 had
with some prisoners. It is clear that the State once more tries to frame some
comrades, and to intimidate all those working in support of prisoners and the
prisoners’ struggles.
With
the appearance on the European continent of the socalled
“anti-globalisation” movement (Prague, Göteburg, Genua, Brussels, Barcelona,
…), the second Intifada and the brutal military assaults by the Israelian army
(which moved and mobilized also the Arab and Muslim communities in Europe), the
popular revolts in Latin-America, September 11 in the States, … , it seems
that the party of the ruling classes of the world is over, and that they
seriously start to worry ànd to prepare themselves for a next reactionary
assault. The new laws against “terrorism” mean undoubtedly a fascisation of
the whole state and society, and it is no coincidence that it were Spain and
Italy (and Turkey) who eagerly followed the United States and urged the European
Union to accept the laws – as such they can now legitimize and intensify a
“dirty war” which is in fact going on since years. The last half year we
have witnessed a wave of arrests; dozens of members, ex-members or alleged
members of the armed groups (GRAPO/PCE(r), ETA, RB, N17, DHKP-C, …) have been
arrested and imprisoned. The last year we have seen more and more also the
support groups becoming a target of the repression machine, with the outlawing
of course of all political groups related with the ETA, but also members of the
AFAPP, the Socorro Rojo, the Cruz Negra Anarquista are subjected to
surveilllances, arrests and imprisonment because of their involvement with
“terrorist groups” …
These
are of course developments which we should carefully follow, analyse and discuss.
“If
they come for us in the morning, …”