31.7.1997. Analysis of July 1997 in Euskal Herria.

THE "JULIAZO". IN JULY 1997 THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT ORGANISED AGAINST THE BASQUE LEFT NATIONALIST MOVEMENT THE BIGGEST FASCIST MOBILISATION KNOWN IN EUROPE SINCE THE EXTINCTION OF NAZI GERMANY.

3. Six million demonstrators? Franco´s "Plaza de Oriente" again. Again the Spanish and fascist grotesque falsification of reality.

Even the young that because of their age didn’t get to know the historical fascist regimes (Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany) have a synthetic visual reference of them, given by documentaries and films. This reference is that of a mass gathering of individuals of both sexes focused by a speaker at a balcony or on a stage. A speaker that pseudo-converses with a mass that doesn’t talk but moos, because it is a crowd without their own words, tamed as a circus animal that has to be stimulated to make it grouse under the lashing (verbal and gestural) of the tamer (speaker). A speaker trying to generate a despicable verbal ecstasy by means of ideological radicalisation of all the irrational instincts of the middle class and that obtains as roared answers examples of the lowest level, emanation of the dirtiest cultural mire where the functionally illiterate population splashes about. That’s the case of the Spanish population today, mentally castrated by the lethal action of some mass media that go forward every day in their task of impoverishing the vocabulary and the ideas, and of egging on the mushiness and irrationality, the quasi pornographic exhibition of the feelings and the morbid, sadic and masochistic eagerness to know the most risqué details of the victimisation of women and children.

Mussolini had his balcony at the Plaza de Venecia, Franco at the Plaza de Oriente and Aznar has had his stage at the Puerta del Sol, in his case officiating through a vicar (journalist Victoria Prego).

The reference to Franco’s Plaza de Oriente is specially pertinent to understand the JULIAZO. Since Franco´s regime used to finish all its fascist mass mobilisations with a gathering at the Plaza de Oriente, where always used to gather ONE MILLION PEOPLE. Only after the death of that genocide was it possible to publish that, after measuring the extent of the Square, it was physically impossible to fit there more than one hundred thousand people.

The same has happened during the JULIAZO. The hundreds of thousands of demonstrators counted by Spanish journalists went higher and higher until they settled (so far) at the magical number of SIX MILLION demonstrators. On Sunday 13 a title page said that "more than one million people demonstrated in Spain to condemn the cruel outrage" (3). On Tuesday 15 the title cries out that "Three million Spaniards confront ETA" (4). The Minister of the Interior talked about demonstrations of «four million people in the streets» in an interview published in a magazine dated on Monday 21 (5). And another magazine dated on Monday 28 said that "Twelve million hands arisen to the sky. Six million people went out to the streets of Barcelona, Madrid, Zaragoza and Seville and all the cities and towns… ". (6)

Of course, all those figures are shamelessly exaggerated, multiplicated, falsificated. Actually, one of the facts that most clearly prove the continuity and extension without any changes between Franco´s fascist regime and the regime of the king designated by Franco, is the systematic, mean and shameless falsification of the amount of demonstrators made by the Spanish journalists and by the local, national and regional police forces. During the first seven months of 1997 628,656 cars were sold in Spain (7) and, logically, no paper or TV or radio or magazine thought of publishing a made up amount that said sales had summed up two million or three million cars. And, however, they often publish (and they’ve done it on a large scale during the JULIAZO) made up and false amounts, obviously implausible with regard to the number of people at demonstrations.

It seems unbelievable, but in a time where it is easy and cheap to make use of aerial pictures (taken from helicopters or skyscrapers) and where just a few people can make very accurate estimates of the frequency and number composition of the rows, but no Spanish media checks the key fact of the news about a demonstration: the number of people that came up to it. And they just publish the inflated or reduced figures, depending on the case and their interests, that the «appropriate» authority DICTATES to them.

There’s a single exemption to that behaviour in Spain, there is a daily that does count by itself the demonstrators. But it isn’t Spanish, it is the Basque nationalist newspaper EGIN. Whose journalists endure at the demonstrations called by the Left Nationalist Movement the criticisms, sometimes very virulent, of their readers and sympathisers, as they inform about their estimates. Because, having a bad habit due to the vicious deceitful practice of Spanish papers and media, they refuse to believe as real such low figures counted by EGIN. I know what I’m talking about because I have myself counted tens of demonstrations, along with EGIN many times.

Just an example: in February 1981 police, forced by their own lies on the demonstration on the 9th to protest against the death of Ryan, engineer of Lemoiz, said there were 200,000 people at the demonstration held in Bilbao on the 16th to protest against the tortures that led to the death of the ETA member Joseba Arregi. EGIN, that had reckoned on 45,000 the number of demonstrators on the 9th, reckoned on only 40,000 demonstrators in the later (besides Bilbao there were demonstrations in San Sebastian -20,000-, Vitoria -18,000- and Pamplona -9,000) . (8)

This so usual falsification of reality by the Spanish media has broken all shamelessness records during the JULIAZO and has reached points that would be laughable for their grotesque nature if there weren’t a wicked and fascist aim behind. Let’s take for instance the demonstration held in Barcelona on Monday 14, insistently and unanimously reckoned at ONE MILLION people (exactly the same as Franco’s million of Plaza de Oriente). DIARIO DE NAVARRA next day published an information from the agency COLPISA that said that: «More than one million people according to the city police estimates filled to overflowing the total extent of Paseo de Gracie, more than one and a half kilometres long and some seventy metres wide... (the head of the demonstration) set out at 19,30 and got to Catalunya Square 45 minutes later. At that moment the end of the march hadn’t yet got started». (9) It is easy to check it up: 1) let’s assume that the demonstrators were very much squeezed up against each other, so that there were TWO persons in every metre of Paseo de Gracia, one behind the other; 2) if we multiply it by the 70 metres wide it means there were 140 people every metre wide; 3) 140 people every metre wide by one and a half kilometre long sum up a maximum of two hundred and ten thousand (210,000) persons. WHERE WERE THE SEVEN HUNDRED AND NINETY THOUSAND (790,000) MISSING TO THE MILLION?

4. Another example of a demonstration where impossible and implausible amounts were given: Zaragoza.