On 24 March, a trial was launched against the Canarian Ruymán Rodríguez, who was charged with a crime of attack on authority by three civilian guards in the Islamic state. The reason for Rodríguez’s indictment is the 2015 event, in which the Civil Guard stopped on April 29 of that year when he was heading for his job and was transferred to the Guide’s headquarters in Gran Canaria, where a judicial proceeding has been opened against him for having kicked one of the agents. The prosecutor asks Rodríguez for an 18-month prison sentence and a fine of 700 euros.

Following this event, Rodríguez reported that the detention was illegal and that during his detention he was tortured by three civilian guards, bringing the complaint to court. Thus, the complaint filed against three tortured civilian guards and the one filed by one of the agents against Rodríguez were crossed, since both were admitted to the proceedings. In the trial, therefore, they have been both accused and accused by both sides. Rodriguez’ defense has called for a seven-and-a-half year prison sentence for civilian guards, according to Interior.

In this context, the judicial route was opened last Wednesday, although its implementation was delayed in the first hour. In the trial, the defence of the civil guards argued that the case should be settled in a provincial court and not in a criminal court, arguing that the agents are apprehended. Thus, the trial is delayed until the judge decides whether or not to accept the request for the defence of civilian guards.

Strategy to gain time

Rodríguez is a member of the Anarchist Federation of Gran Canaria (FAGC) and the Union of Tenants of Gran Canaria (SIGC), and from the very beginning of the events he has had the support of his environment. According to these two groups in a statement made public in early March, the trial is “a police and judicial assembly” that aims to “cover a new case of torture by the State Security Forces and Bodies”.

In view of the course that the trial took, FAGC made public the same day the reading of what happened: “Our opinion: pressure has scared them.” Two days after the trial, once the defendants received numerous alerts and messages of support, the federation, through social networks, deepened its reading. In his words, the Civil Guard judge ' s claim to postpone the trial was motivated by a succession of unexpected events. As they have indicated, the other party did not expect a case of "attack on the authority" to be able to turn around and that torture and illegal detentions could arise that were concealed behind them, as it did not expect the identification numbers of the agents involved in the torture to be made public. In addition, they have stressed that the social response to this case also has a great deal to do, that they did not expect Rodríguez's case to be known to people living outside the island, that they received support and solidarity to the extent that they received from "isolation on the island", or that the news would spread beyond the island. “They didn’t know that they would make you our cause,” they’ve transferred all the people who have denounced Rodríguez’s case and shown their support.

“They didn’t expect anything from everything that has happened. Your reaction? Gain time. They declare themselves overwhelmed by the fact that they do not want to be tried by a conventional court. They want to use privileges because fear has partially changed,” they read. They point out the strategy behind all this: "With this you will gain time, you are expected to lower the tension, you do not know how long it can take until you know the date of the trial and the new instance, and in the meantime many things can happen that can displace the focus. That is your intention: that we should now put all the blame on us so that when the process is put back in place we do not have fuel. Let us all forget the case of Ruyman and hope that there will be a thousand things that distract his attention and his forces. That’s their strategy.”

First of all, they have sent a clear message to the four winds: that it is worth fighting. Although at first glance Rodríguez's case has been taken for granted, social pressure has prevented this from happening.

La Esperanza as a backdrop

SIGC is born of the FAGC, a union that stands out among the agents who work in the housing problem. As stated in the article recently published in ARGIA on its trajectory, Xabat Petrikorena Uranga has created in a few years seven communities to offer a housing alternative to the most defenseless layer of society through occupation. Among these seven communities is La Esperanza, which has served as a model for other communities that have formed and which the FAGC and SIGC groups regard as the reason for the assembly, which they claim to destroy this project with a police and judicial assembly. Rodríguez was one of the drivers of the constitution of the community.

The community La Esperanza consists of four buildings owned by Sareb, in which approximately 200 people live, all of them in vulnerable situations: women victims of male violence, unemployed, migrants… “We have seen the institutional misery. In the Canary Islands we have housed more people than can be counted among all public administrations, and we have organised and politicised that “chusma” – as the civil guards called them while torturing our colleague. That’s why, because of their ignorance and clumsiness, they have prosecuted our partner, because they believe that once their head is cut, the snake will die.”

In view of this, they have made it clear what the way forward is: to continue working in the neighborhoods and with the neighbours and neighbours. “Anarchists want us away from neighborhoods and neighbors and neighbors. In this way, when they conduct their media campaigns of criminalisation and montages, the citizens will not question them. The case of Ruymán and our anarchism located in the neighborhood does a lot of damage, because it breaks myths and clichés”.

Networks and trade unions based on mutual assistance

The case of Ruymán Rodríguez is similar to the persecution being carried out at the level of the Spanish State against the groups that follow a certain form of struggle. In recent years, groups that are being organized have been formed, strengthened and expanded from collaboration and self-defense, either to respond to housing problems, or to seek solutions to other structural problems experienced by the working class (focused on the work environment, food…). In recent times we have collected several examples of harassment of these people.

Jaime Palomera Zaidel, a member of the Syndicate of Llogateres of Catalonia on 11 March, reported on social networks that they had received the warning that real estate owners and vulture funds are trying to qualify housing unions as terrorists, pressuring the media with that idea. Many households are working at various points in the state to curb the wave of evictions that has been aggravated by the COVID-19 crisis, and they are obviously a burden.

We have just been informed that the vulture funds and the real estate employers are moving a slogan among them: "egin dago gara, sindikatua tenants as terrorists. This is a possible dialogue." Eta press suffocating the media.

Hori dugu esan gaude.

— Jaime Palomera Zaidel (@Jaime Palomera) March 11, 2021

On the other hand, this is a police operation against the Bilbao Self-Defense Network. Last February, the National Police arrested several members of the network to be transferred to the police station after a conflict with the cleaning company Limpia Arana. The Police has arrested six people in connection with the open process of denouncing the abuses suffered by Mireya, a company worker, and demanding payment of their debts to the company, which they are called to testify on 15 April.

As suggested by FAGC, it seems that power is mistrusted by the way groups organize. Signal of action force.