A first coincidence is the anonymity of the motivators of the mobilizations, even if the communication routes are different. In early October, unsigned posters were placed on the portals of the Vitorian neighborhood of Errota, calling residents to a concentration on the 8th day, with the motto “Delinquency and occupation of flats” and in favor of a safe neighborhood without crime. A week later, the call shifted from concentration to demonstration and since then is being held every Tuesday, with more appeals and participation from more neighbors (about 300 last Tuesday). What happened in the San Sebastian Region is better known, as it has received a greater impact. The concentration, convened through the anonymous accounts of Instagram and the Telegram group, called Donosti (LQNCD), will be held on 22 October and will be mobilised every Monday.

Such racist manifestations have existed before in Trintxerpe, without going any further in the beginning of October, but the events of Egia and Errota share a double qualitative leap: on the one hand, they propose permanent mobilization and, on the other, they seek confrontation among the citizens. In Egia, La Cena Solidaria de la Calle has convened several concentrations at the same time and in the same place where food is distributed to the neighbors. At the Molino de Vitoria-Gasteiz, the demonstration travels the way between two camps occupied by racist youths who have participated in the protest. In both cases there have been incidents and tensions in the fire area.

What is the role of pp?

In Donostia-San Sebastián, three councilors of the city council’s PP have participated in the two mobilizations carried out so far and in the first of them there were clashes “between the councilors Jorge Mota and Vanesa Vélez, who asked the KAS followers who were there, and insulting them at some moments”, according to Xalba Rámilorez de Iko. Is this a matter directly related to the LQNCD PP? Ramírez, who analyzed the Instagram and Telegram channels of the movement, has not given any answer, Safety or the decoy of the new extreme right? report. He says that most of the followers of LQNCD are citizens who “do not join the parties”, but also who feed back between the movement and the PP, with several examples: Since 2022, the Instagram account has shared various videos from the PP campaign or, “I don’t think that profile is alarming, what they do is demonstrate many things that happen in Donostia through social networks,” said the spokesperson and councilor of pp at the City Hall, Borja Corominas.

In the Molino there have also been some councillors of the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz of the same party (as well as a representative of the Council of Vox). The resident association Errota Zaharra has accused these parties of being "the objective of seeking tension, conflicts and voting among the neighborhood's neighbors". “The demonstrations in the mill are related to Vox and the PP,” the digital media Gasteizberri published on October 23. As ARGIA was aware, one of the promoters of the mobilization of the Molino met with two representatives of the City Hall of Vitoria-Gasteiz, just beginning the protests. One of them, moreover, serves in the party beyond the municipal policy of Vitoria-Gasteiz, according to all the signs (and makes illegal business to the anti-occupation campgrounds, which are then brands in the real estate sector).

What's clear is that pp is driving mobilizations and confrontation, and they've done it publicly. But can it be that it goes further and is organized from the shadow? If so, can we be faced with a global and sustainable strategy for the future? The above data tell us that the answer can be affirmative, but to date it cannot be assured. In any case, it would have a complete political logic. The PP plays two main cards in the Spanish State, ETA and insecurity immigration crime. In Euskal Herria, the first is an expired product; the second is a letter of great potential to get out of the present ghetto.

Meanwhile, the PSE-PNV coalition, which runs together in Donostia-San Sebastián and Vitoria-Gasteiz, continues to nourish the framework of its alleged rival, placing the solution in the police and in the “firmness” in the face of crime. The institutional political spectrum continues to turn right: Pp in the theoretical position of Vox, PNV and PSE in the position of pp, and the leftist parties in general, too silent. But that shift to the right is not just a matter of political parties.

Racists, not extreme right

Over the past few weeks, I have had discussions with a number of neighbors and friends of the Molino, who have been affected by what is happening, most of those engaged in the social agents of the neighborhood, as well as with some of Egia and Donostia. Similar situations arise: most of the citizens who have approached these racist mobilizations are not extreme right-wing, many will probably not identify with the right (although Donostia's touch seems to have an ultra-rapid touch); beyond mobilizations, racist and punitive violent comments have proliferated in conversations between bars, shops or friends, even among the people on the left. What's going on? A lot of things.

It is true that some of the racialized young people who have taken the spotlight have been robbed, even violent (including some of my friends), and who have been disturbed in the streets, most of the time among them (those who cannot be detached from the material misery they live, from their hard past and their lack of future, from the permanent violence they suffer from the hands of the police, from the disregard they receive from society, from the problems of drug use. But neither Errota nor Egia are the jungle, and there are many conflicts and problems of coexistence that can generate insecurity in our neighborhoods: police abuse, evictions, domestic violence, male violence... However, there are no alterations in size. Why do racialized young people?

On the one hand, machismo in our society, as racism is transversal, nidifies more or less for everyone. That is why, among other things, if the person who creates crimes or altercations is one of the targets, the author is “person” and responsible, while if the author is another, if he is the other, we call him with a collective characteristic (in this case and depending on the degree of racism, the vulture, the Moor, the Muslim, the Maghreb…). On the other hand, several media and social media accounts have long launched a daily campaign in which they continually focus on these crimes and conflicts, in a sensationalist way that fuels insecurity, fear and racism (in Álava, the work and influence of El Correo is decisive in this sense, and as I am told in the case of Gipuzkoa one from El Diario Vasco). The extreme right and the extreme political right do the same. After all, the right is doing its job. What about the left?

The weakness of the left

The people mentioned above unite in that the Left and the popular construction are very weakened in this area, their discourses and proposals barely connect with those neighbors who feel insecurity and fear, are not being able to break the ultra imposed framework by the right political and media, lack theoretical and practical tools. Fortunately, there are answers: KAS continues dinners, the San Sebastian demonstration was multitudinous, ten associations of neighbors of Vitoria-Gasteiz have protested against racist demonstrations and have called for “social” and “comprehensive” solutions, several of Donostia have expressed themselves in the same direction, have called for the anti-fascist mobilisation against LQNCD... The work of all of them and many others is to be applauded and indispensable. But it's not enough to stop the racist, authoritarian drift.

“They have managed to establish the framework, and in that framework we cannot win,” a political representative said to me these days with concern. “We go to the neighbors with the discourse of the social model and the responsibility of the institutions and we do not touch them, ‘they will come with your qualities’…” explained to me by a member of a neighborhood association. It does not matter to what extent the fears are ‘real’, to what extent they are ‘created’: if they exist, they act politically, and they also have to be answered, which sometimes requires entering the mud. He talked to me about the need to play in the current framework to connect with the concerns and fears of citizenship: What does the offender pay for? Yes, but in the logic of restorative justice, security? We all want to live safe, we don't give the word to the right, we recharge it ... Playing also in the current framework, but feeding others at the same time. And, above all, to work before there are interested conflicts and racist mobilizations, with neighbours and with ourselves, friends and relatives supposedly non-racist, so that no more mobilizations are put in place and when they do so to deal with them from a better position.

The factors that explain what we are experiencing these weeks in Egia and the Molino will be repeated and deepened in the coming years, we are not special in that, at least it is a Western phenomenon. What is intended for the right and above is clear, we are already seeing it, what are we going to do for the left and for the bottom? Successful action will be one of the key to deciding whether in the coming years we will continue to move towards fascism or open the door to profound transformations.