A Brief History Of The Armed Struggle Of GRAPO In Spain
The First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups (GRAPO)
were formed in the summer of 1975. At that time twenty members of
the Re-Constituted Spanish Communist Party (PCE-r), an underground
party formed five months before, carried out their first armed
action against the fascist security forces. On August 2, 1975 two
Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) members were shot in the centre of
Madrid. One died and another was seriously injured. This was the
first strike back of GRAPO against the wave of fascist-inspired
terror known as "the summer of terror".
The PCE(r) had its own "technical section" created to carry
out expropriations of banks to support the revolutionary struggle
and punish police informers. From the core of this section emerged
GRAPO.
On October 1, 1975 five different GRAPO commandos executed
four policemen and seriously injured another one in Madrid. This
was their answer to the assassinations of five anti-fascists (two
members of ETA and three members of the now defunct FRAP
organization) killed on September 27 by police firing squads
applying death penalties ordered by the military authorities.
GRAPO didn’t claim responsibility for these actions until July
8, 1976 when 60 bombs blasted fascist targets throughout the
country. It was the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil
War won by the fascists.
In January 1977, the police arrested 40 PCE(r) and GRAPO
members in Madrid and Barcelona and succeeded in freeing
Lieutenant-General Villaescusa and a member of the Spanish
oligarchy Oriol, who had been kept prisoner by GRAPO commandos for
60 days in order to exchange them for political prisoners and to
force the government to apply an amnesty. A few days before two
GRAPO commandos had executed two policemen and one Civil Guard in
Madrid and injured three more Civil Guards in two separate attacks
on the fascist forces as a reaction to the killings of five leftist
lawyers by a paramilitary gang acting under Civil Guard orders.
On June 4, two Civil Guards were shot dead in Barcelona, this
was the day of the first general election since 1936 and the
reformist farce was going on. This action was a clear sign that
showed that the revolutionary organizations would not accept the
renewal of fascism under any "democratic" mask.
On September 27, 1977, Captain Herguedas of the National
Police was shot dead by a GRAPO commando in Madrid. He had been one
of the fascist volunteers who executed five anti-fascists just two
years earlier.
In 1977 and 1978, GRAPO actions continued, mainly bomb attacks
against army and military quarters but also against government
facilities. Some selective assassinations were also carried out. On
March 22, 1978, the General Manager of Prisons was shot dead near
his house in Madrid. He was responsible for the killing of an
anarchist prisoner in Carabanchel Prison, who was beaten to death
by guards who tried to get information from him about an escape
plan of GRAPO and PCE(r) prisoners.
1979 was the year in which GRAPO carried out its most actions :
on January 9 a judge from the Supreme Court was shot dead, on March
5 an Army General was executed when his car was attacked by a GRAPO
team on a centre street of Madrid, and on April 6 a chief of the
"Antiterrorist" Brigade of the National Police (NP) was executed in
Seville. Altogether 20 members of the fascist police were executed
that year in a combination of actions by the urban guerrilla
throughout the country, and there were many bombs attacks that year
as well.
On the other hand GRAPO and PCE(r) militants payed a high
price for this : 100 people were jailed - accused of membership in
these organizations. (Police claimed that the PCE(r) and GRAPO were
the same thing and many PCE(r) militants were arrested without any
evidence against them. The Party was banned again, just as it had
been under the military dictatorship). Seven members of the PCE(r)
and GRAPO were killed by the police that year. On June 28, Martin
Eizaguirre and Fernandez Cario were assassinated by a special team
of the Spanish military secret service in Paris. They were members
of the Committee of Foreign Relations of the PCE(r) and were in
exile. On April 20, Juan Carlos Delgado de Codes, a member of the
Central Committee of the PCE(r), was shot dead by the police in
Madrid - he was unarmed and didn’t belong to the guerrilla. Between
April and May GRAPO carried out 30 armed actions in response to the
killing of Delgado de Codes. This was later criticized by the
Central Commando of GRAPO and the PCE(r) as a falling into blind
militaristic tactics. From that moment on GRAPO aimed all its
efforts at maintaining the armed struggle and giving it a
protracted character, assuming that it is not only possible but
also necessary to follow a Protracted People’s War strategy and
that it is possible to develop this strategy in a developed
European country.
On December 17, 1979, five prisoners of GRAPO escaped from
Zamora jail through a tunnel dug for months by GRAPO and PCE(r)
prisoners (some of them were miners). It was a real shock for the
government, which tried to recapture them at any cost. Three of
them were finally killed by the police (in 1980, 1981, and 1982)
and the other two were recaptured shortly after they rejoined the
struggle.
In 1980 and 1981, GRAPO was a weak organization due to the
repression carried out against its supporters. In these years GRAPO
carried out eight executions, including two Army Generals and one
Colonel to denounce the role played by the army in the dirty war
and counterinsurgency. A few policemen and civil guards were also
executed. GRAPO, as an organization that aims at becoming the core
of the future People’s Army, has never targeted innocent civilians
nor used dangerous devices against civilians in its military
actions and sabotage. In 1980-81, nine members of GRAPO were killed
by the police in a clear shoot-to-kill policy. One PCE(r) militant
died as consequence of torture in 1980, and on June 19, 1981, Crespo
Galende, a PCE(r) prisoner, died in a hunger strike (he lasted 94
days) against the policy of torture, isolation, and annihilation of
the political prisoners. The government was forced to reunify the
prisoners and allow them to keep their Communes in the jails. (The
Karl Marx Commune - 80 prisoners of PCE(r) and GRAPO - in Soria
Prison lasted until 1989 when the social-fascist government
dismantled it.)
In October 1982, the PSOE (social-fascists) came to power. The
PSOE began by killing Juan Martin Luna, leader of GRAPO, who was
shot six times in Barcelona in an undercover-operation. He was
unarmed, and some years later three policemen were charged with
murder, but they were acquitted. On the eve of the elections
(October 28), GRAPO planted 30 bombs in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia,
and twelve other parts of the country. The blasts were aimed at
promoting a boycott and to denounce the electoral farce.
In 1983 and 1984, GRAPO recovered from its previous weakness
and carried out many armed actions. During this time GRAPO carried
out about 70 bomb attacks - aimed at police targets, in support of
worker’s strikes, in support of other countries’ revolutionaries,
etc., and also against the bourgeois mass media (eg., bomb attack
against the German consulate in support of the RAF prisoners, bomb
against the Employers organization).
During this time GRAPO also carried out some executions. In
April 1983, a Lieutenant of the National Police and a Civil Guard
were executed in Valencia and Coruna, the first one by a bomb in
his car and the second one was shot dead.
On January 2, 1984, two policemen were shot dead in Madrid.
1984 saw GRAPO make frantic efforts to support the proletarian
struggles throughout the country (46 bombs attacks that year), to
strike back against the repressive forces, and to collect the
revolutionary taxes needed to keep the struggle alive (100
businessmen paid the revolutionary tax that year). On September 5,
three separate GRAPO commandos launched an offensive to force the
exploiters to pay the revolutionary tax. In Madrid a businessman
who had refused to pay was shot dead and in Seville another GRAPO
team executed Manuel de la Padure, a well-known businessman and
chairman of the Employer’s Association. In Coruna, the head of the
National Radio Broadcasting was seriously injured in retaliation
for his counter-revolutionary propaganda. This was a warning to the
reactionary mass media which continually discredits the
revolutionary struggle. One of the GRAPO militants who had carried
out the action in Coruna was killed by the police some hours later
and another one was injured and captured when the GEO-Squad (NP
special assault squad) raided the house where they were hidden.
The repression launched against GRAPO and the PCE(r) that year
was very harsh. In June, Manuel Perez Martinez "comrade Arenas",
Secretary General of the PCE(r), left prison after having been
jailed since 1977 accused of "unlawful association". He, as many
other former prisoners of the PCE(r), had to go underground again
as the only way of developing the struggle away from police
control. Since the 70’s some of the PCE(r) and GRAPO leadership and
clandestine organization has been based in France, and the Spanish
police have never been able to destroy it.
On January 19, 1985, the Spanish political police succeeded in
capturing most of the GRAPO militants in Spain : 19 of them were
captured in nine different provinces, the police discovered 17
apartments and lots of weapons, ammunition, and money collected
through the revolutionary tax. This disaster was possible due to
the breaking of many security and clandestine rules by GRAPO in its
aim of carrying out too many actions in support of the people’s
struggles. The strict compartmentalization within the organization
had been broken and this allowed the police to carry out this
strong strike in only forty-eight hours.
The reorganization of GRAPO was slow and difficult. In 1985 it
almost ceased to exist. But the spirit of sacrifice of the new
militants, most of them without any previous guerrilla experience,
allowed the struggle to continue. In 1985 and 1986 they carried out
some bank expropriations, some went wrong and seven GRAPO members
were captured. Money had become the main problem since they were
not strong enough to collect the revolutionary tax - they needed
apartments, cars, and facilities to develop the urban guerrilla
successfully from the underground. Weapons were also desperately
needed.
1987 was a small turning point. In that year they carried out
six armed actions, according to police sources. There were some
successful bank expropriations (small ones) and a headquarters of
the local police in Malaga was attacked to obtain weapons. Three
constables were disarmed and tied up. (They were not executed as
they were not considered proper targets. The local police are
mainly concerned with motor vehicle traffic and play no special
repressive role.) In another operation, a GRAPO commando tried to
attack a National Police station in Valence to seize blank identity
cards - there was a shooting and a policeman was seriously injured.
In 1988, GRAPO carried out some armed actions to collect the
revolutionary tax again. On May 27 the President of the Bank of
Galicia was shot dead in his house ; he had refused to pay the tax
and had alerted the police about GRAPO activity. He was a well-
known exploiter who had impoverished many people (especially poor
farmers), and he was also responsible for the closing of many
factories due to banking speculation. Two months later another
businessman was shot and seriously wounded.
On October 4, GRAPO succeeded in seizing 800 blank identity
cards from a police station in the centre of Madrid. A policeman
was shot dead and his weapon seized. (Most of GRAPO’s weapons came
from its actions against the police and security guards.)
On March 10, 1989, GRAPO executed two Civil Guards in Santiago,
the same day that the TREVI group was having a meeting in Madrid.
(TREVI was then the visible head of repression in Western Europe.)
In July 1989, GRAPO solved their money problems by expropriating 148
million pesetas (one million dollars) from a bank in Castellon.
In November, the political prisoners of PCE(r) and GRAPO
started an indefinite hunger strike demanding an end to isolation
and their reunification in a single prison. (The political
prisoners’ communes had been dismantled by the PSOE government in
1987.) To support the struggle of the prisoners, GRAPO launched an
offensive in December. On the 13th an Army Commander was shot in
Madrid and seriously injured ; on the 15th an Army Colonel was shot
three times and seriously injured in Valencia ; on the 18th a member
of the secret police was shot dead near Barcelona while he was
leaving his house ; and on the 28th two Civil Guards were executed
in Gijon while they were guarding an official building. The
government’s response was to arrest militants of the PCE(r), jail
them, and blame them for these armed actions. (One of the lies
spread by the mass media is that GRAPO members are recruited only
from among the militants of the PCE(r), so trying to present this
clandestine revolutionary party as the "political branch" of
GRAPO.)
As the hunger strike went on many prisoners were moved to
hospitals where they were chained to their beds, disturbed by
police, and forced to receive "forced feeding" in a desperate and
torturous measure by the government to avoid the death of these
revolutionaries at that very moment (preferring instead to
annihilate them slowly and silently in the prisons).
On March 27, 1990, a GRAPO commando executed doctor Munoz in
Zaragoza. In their statement GRAPO called him "a torturer" ready to
follow the government’s instructions to submit the prisoners to the
agony and torture of the forced feeding. He had refused orders from
a judge to stop this kind of torture and was a firm supporter of
the government plans of extermination. (As well, he was a cousin of
the Spanish Attorney General.) As a consequence of the force
feeding, the hunger strike became very prolonged. On May 25, Jose
Manuel Sevillano Martin died after 177 days on hunger strike - he
was a member of GRAPO and had been imprisoned since 1987. GRAPO
decided to avoid entering into a tit-for-tat battle, because this
could only benefit the already alert security forces, and after a
retaliation action (the execution of an Army Colonel on June 15 in
Valladolid) centred themselves on carrying out an offensive to take
the initiative again in September.
In September 1990, GRAPO planted six bombs in Madrid,
Tarragona, Barcelona, and Gijon. On the 6th three bombs went off in
Madrid (one in the Stock Exchange, another one in the Supreme Court,
and the last one in the Ministry of Economy). None of these actions
resulted in any civilian casualties. On September 8, a bomb blasted
petrol facilities in Tarragona causing damage of 3 million dollars ;
and on the 10th the PSOE central office in Barcelona was bombed
causing damages valued at 100,000 dollars. September ended with a
GRAPO action in Gijon in which a commando raided an official
building, seizing one thousand blank driving licenses and then
planting a bomb that blasted the facilities. In November 1990, two
more bombs rocked two official buildings in Barcelona.
In 1991 and 1992, GRAPO continued with its bombing campaign
against official buildings : in April 1992 GRAPO bombed the National
Institute of Industry and the Ministry of Employment in Madrid, two
Civil Guards were injured. One year earlier, in February 1991, a
GRAPO bomb cut, for six hours, the military NATO pipeline that
supplies the U.S. air bases in Spain. The intent was to sabotage
this pipeline which was being used by the U.S. B-52 Superfortresses
that had devastated Iraqi cities. There were also sabotage actions
against the facilities of the energy monopolies in 1991 and 1992 as
well as bank expropriations.
In 1993, three GRAPO militants died in Zaragoza in an attack on
an armoured car that was blown up with explosives to expropriate
the funds that it contained. One security guard died and two more
were seriously injured. That year seven bombs exploded in official
buildings in Madrid (in the Employers Association, PSOE offices,
and other offices involved in the industrial reconversion which had
laid off thousands of workers).
In 1994, GRAPO actions were intended to seize funds that were
desperately needed. Some expropriations were carried out. In
January, two bombs exploded in Madrid on the eve of a general
strike, a Tax office and an Unemployment office were bombed. In
July and December, two armoured cars were attacked and money was
expropriated (about a half million dollars).
In 1995, GRAPO carried out one of the most important and
decisive actions of the last few years. On June 27 they kidnapped
Publio Cordon, a wealthy businessman and president of the insurance
company PREVIASA ; he was freed on August 17 in Barcelona after
paying 400 million pesetas (about three million dollars). He had to
pay another 800 million pesetas after his liberation but he decided
to flee (his businesses are not very clean, he was also consul of
Guatemala and has important business in that country). In November
the police arrested three GRAPO members in Barcelona and Valencia
but they could not recover the money.
Nowadays it seems that GRAPO is undergoing a new re-organization
and one thing is very clear : the fascist Spanish state has lost
the battle in the sense that it has not been able to
annihilate the armed organization nor the revolutionary party, the
PCE(r).
In the past 21 years, 3,000 people have been arrested by the
police in relation to GRAPO and the PCE(r), of which 1,400 have
been jailed. Nowadays there are 54 prisoners of PCE(r) and GRAPO in
Spanish jails. From 1975 to 1995, GRAPO has carried out 60
executions, more than 300 bombs have been planted, and over 3,000
armed actions have been carried out. (The Spanish government
recognizes 545.)
Twenty GRAPO militants have died by police action or as a
result of premature explosions. Seven PCE(r) militants have been
killed by the police and paramilitary gangs. According to police
sources, there about 100 PCE(r) and GRAPO members in clandestinity.
We hope this brief history of the armed struggle of GRAPO -
unique due to the Protracted People’s War strategy followed by the
PCE(r) and GRAPO - has been useful and interesting.
Association Of Relatives And Friends Of Political Prisoners (AFAPP)