www.antorcha.org Letter From The Gen Sec of the Communist Party Of Spain (reconstituted) I ACCUSE MYSELF M.P.M. (Arenas) In this letter I am not going to spend time on the "legal" aspects of the trial which has been initiated, here in France, against my Party, as an extension of the one which has openly existed in Spain for 25 years now. And I stress the word "Party" because that is precisely what this is about: the criminalisation of a revolutionary proletarian political organisation. This is something which has already been demonstrated in the instructions to the police summary. For the same reason, I want it to be established from the outset that, as I declared before the police and ratified in front of Judge Brugi�re, I feel myself to be guilty of the crime of being a communist since the age of 14 and of having fought since then, together with my comrades, against the unjust "order" of the bourgeoisie. Equally, I want it put on the record that I do not have the remotest intention of renouncing my position of being a communist militant, and still less, as can be understood, of "repenting" for having consistently fought for 40 years against a regime as tyrannical as the one which continues to predominate in Spain and that, consequently, so long as I still have the strength and in so far as the circumstances in which I find myself allow me, I am going to continue this struggle against the most ferocious enemies of my class and of the whole of humanity. The are no grounds for even the shadow of a doubt, or for any ambiguity whatsoever about this guilt that I have taken upon myself and of which I feel very proud. I think it is necessary to refer to some political details concerning this trial which is being carried out against my Party, the PCE(r), which are either not taken into account or are passed over unnoticed by people in general, and which, nonetheless, are very important - at least I consider them to be so. First of all, though, I want to highlight that it is a question of a political trial, directed and initiated according to a political decision, a trial in which the Spanish state has had the initiative from the outset. This is a fact that has to be very much taken into account. It is precisely to denounce the political and economic pressures which the Spanish state has been bringing to bear on the French authorities for the past year, with the aim that the latter get mixed up with (implicate themselves directly) in the so-called "anti-terrorist struggle" or dirty war which the Spanish state has be waging in order to crush all forms of protest and political, social and democratic demands by the workers in Spain. Consider the well known fact that the Spanish state has on many occasions sent its death squads to France in order to commit all kinds of misdeeds and criminal acts (assassinations, kidnappings, extortion) against Basque refugees, in which many French citizens have been seriously affected. Similarly, in 1979, two militants of my Party (Francisco Javier Mart�n Eizaguirre and Aurelio Fern�ndez Cario) were assassinated in Paris by hired assassins paid for by the Spanish political police. It is clear that all these criminal activities, which really are acts of terrorism, carried out under orders of a state which is a member of the "international community", had as their prime purpose to force the French into collaboration with the repression of the Basque nationalist movement, as well as of the workers and people's movement in Spain. The creation, financing and direction of GAL by the Spanish State, initiated at the start of the 1980s (during the "socialist" government) was in pursuit of the same goal of directly implicating the French State in the dirty war, and this has been recognised, including by Spanish judges who cannot in any way be suspected of sympathising with the people's movement. And it is also shown by the fact that this organisation (GAL), part of the terrorist web woven by the Spanish state, was formally "dissolved" the moment it became unnecessary, after having guaranteed that the French would collaborate in the "anti-terrorist struggle". It is clear that from that moment on, they no longer needed GAL, since the French State would be giving much more effective (and of course "legal") collaboration than what had been provided by the mercenaries and thugs previously contracted for the same end. This is a reality which cannot be covered up, no matter how hard they try to do so: the Spanish state continues to be a Fascist State and it employs the same methods as before in the repression of the workers and people's movement, in spite of the "political reform" or the cosmetic changes which it has given itself. This reality is becoming increasingly clear every day in Spain. It would be enough to take this into account in order to completely discredit all the tall stories that the police are telling and all the false accusations they are using against the PCE(r), and to be able to uncover the essentially political nature of such "judicial" stage management. But in case any doubts remain about the matter, I want to remind those who are "forgetful", that Spain (its peoples and its working class) was the only country in Europe which resisted "domestic" fascism, in a bloody war which lasted around three years; I also want to remind them that after the war "ended" with the triumph of Franco's mercenary armies, the "victorious" fascists shot more than 200,000 Republicans, after having tortured them, and that the majority of these were workers and peasants. This is an official figure, which does not include the "disappeared" or the numerous other victims of the fascist terror who died in prison, in forced labour camps or in exile, abandoned by all the so-called "democrats". Furthermore, I do not think there is any need to show that the Spanish Fascist State has been the only one in the whole world to have remained "untouchable", in its openly terroristic form, for more than 40 years, without those who currently hold power and who own the greater part of the country's wealth (amassed through the blood of the people) having had enough sense of shame to condemn it, even if just for the sake of appearances, in the name of this "democracy" and the "new State of law" which they say they are defending. It is natural for them to carry on in this way, since, as the "legitimate" heirs to Franco, they are afraid and have good reason to be afraid, that this could give rise to a trial for the crimes committed against Humanity in Spain, a trial in which, without a doubt, they would be the accused. The whole of this reality, and a lot of other things besides, like the lack of rights that the workers still suffer from, the oppression of the different nationalities, the systematic practice of torture and the existence of hundreds of political prisoners inside the jails, are what are determining the political and social life of the country and are exacerbating the class struggle to the limit, giving rise to an Antifascist Resistance Movement that is growing more extensive and better organised day by day. And it is this new Resistance Movement that they are trying to crush using all methods, including State terrorism, seeking the collaboration of France and other so-called "democratic" countries. Of course, this collaboration which the Spanish oligarchy and fascists are forcing the French big bourgeois into, does not come "free of charge"! There are many economic, commercial and geo-strategic interests at play, covered up under the label of the "European Union." However, we know full well that the Spanish oligarchy, despite the advantages and the profits which it is gaining from the intensification of its relations with Europe, is not really interested in the "European project". Its fundamental interest lies in the "reconquest" or recolonisation of Latin America, where it has already invested the greater part of its "excess" capital. Of course, in order to achieve this "little place in the sun" of the new imperialism, it needs the approval of its champion: the Yankee gendarme, which, besides, dominates this zone in an almost absolute way. This is the reason for the Aznar government's submission to the political and military dictates of the USA; this is also the reason why it is acting, together with the British government, as the Yankees' "Trojan Horse" within the "European Union" and why they do not miss a single opportunity to sabotage the initiatives of their German and French "partners" directed at creating a great European imperialist power capable of competing with the USA and disputing its global domination. It is clear for all to see that the French monopoly bourgeoisie has done its calculations regarding the Spanish oligarchy and fascists very badly, and of course it is making a complete mistake if it thinks that it is going to succeed in attracting them to its own camp or alliance through collaborating with them in the "anti-terrorist struggle." Furthermore, what crimes is it that they are accusing us of? They have made the accusation that we, the militants of the PCE(r) who have been arrested and are being held in prison in France, form part of a criminal association implicated in acts of "terrorism" for the simple reason that we give political and moral support to the armed struggle of the anti-fascist resistance which has been developing in Spain since the 1940s. They might just as well be accusing us of having invented the class struggle in all its forms. But, in reality, as I pointed out at the beginning of this letter, both in the police and the judicial interrogations that I have been subjected to, all that has resulted has been that light has been shed on our revolutionary political ideas and our Party's history of struggle. Similarly, light has also been shed on the long sentences that they have imposed on us in Spain and which I myself have served for committing these same "crimes", as well as on the torture, the humiliations of all kinds, the continual police persecution and the numerous assassinations of militants that we have suffered from for the same cause for more than 25 years. Where is the proof of the accusations, of the "terrorist crimes" which they are attributing to us? To give political and moral support to the heroic armed anti-fascist resistance in Spain not only is not a crime: it is a duty for every genuine democrat and revolutionary, since it is a question of a just and legitimate struggle, a right enshrined in every democratic Constitution: the right of any people in the world to rise in arms against tyranny. We, the communists of Spain, will never renounce this right. But the fact is, there is also the strange situation whereby not even the Spanish judges dare make such an accusation against the PCE(r), after it has been demonstrated a hundreds of times that it is without foundation. Without doubt, this has been influenced by the growing influence of our Party among the mass of the workers and other sectors of the working people who are well aware of the activities carried out by the PCE(r) in defence of their rights. A "criminal association" which regularly publishes a newspaper (RESISTENCIA) and a theoretical review (ANTORCHA), as well as numerous books and pamphlets; a "criminal association for which numerous martyrs for the cause of the workers and of the people have given their lives, and which currently has dozens of its militants in jail, subjected to the constant torture of isolation, for long periods which in some cases exceed 20 years, for the "crime" of being faithful to their class and to their communist ideas and not wanting to accept the unworthy offers of "reintegration" which the State wants to impose on them; a "criminal association which today is recognised by the revolutionary proletariat of many countries for its revolutionary political consistency and its proletarian internationalism . These are some of the facts about the real situation and the charges they are making against us and for which we are going to be "judged" and condemned. Fresnes Prison, January 20, 2001
