Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
This is a history of resistance that exposes how fascism adapts and how antifascism survives, learns, and fights back.
In Spain, the “transition” refers to the official passage from Franco’s dictatorship to parliamentary monarchy after 1975. But while democracy was being declared, the far right was regrouping. Old Francoism mutated into vigilante squads, state terror networks, neo-Nazi skinhead gangs, soccer ultras, and eventually new neofascist movements determined to claw their way into public life and state institutions.
A generation of antifascists came of age in the shadow of this violence. Faced with attacks on immigrants, dissidents, and anyone deemed disposable, they organized across neighborhoods, subcultures, and movements, refusing to accept the far right’s return as inevitable.
Drawing on firsthand testimonies, investigative reporting, and political and historical accounts, Ramos traces the antifascist struggle in Spain from the mid-1980s to the present. He documents how diverse individuals and collectives confronted neofascist forces, moving from urgent self-defense to coordinated offensive action. Antifascistas maps the crucial roles played by journalism, music, culture, institutions, and allied social movements, while reckoning honestly with internal debates, strategic failures, and hard-won victories.
“Miquel Ramos is not only the leading journalist of antifascist and far-right politics in Spain but also a longtime militant who has lived much of the history he chronicles in his magnum opus, Antifascistas. Finally translated into English, Antifascistas crafts a rich and extensive tapestry of the continuation of the antifascist struggle in Spanish side streets and barrios after the death of Franco. An instant classic, Ramos’s study is a compelling tale of everyday resistance and the first history of turn-of-21st-century antifascism in Spain.”
—Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook
“Antifascistas presents a unique perspective on the militant struggle against the far right in Spain. The book combines historical accounts of fascist organizing and violence from the 1960s to the present with firsthand accounts of efforts to combat fascism. In telling this story, Ramos shows the international links of both fascist and antifascist movements and analyzes how subculture is a point of conflict between these two ideologies. This is an insightful read for anyone interested in the history and internal dynamics of contemporary antifascist struggle.”
—Stanislav Vysotsky, author of American Antifa: The Tactics, Practice, and Culture of Militant Antifascism
01. Introduction: A Personal Matter
02. Spain, the Eighties: the Francoist Hangover
03. State Terrorism, Spies, and the Gladio network
04. A Black Panther in Francoist Spain
05. Homage to Hitler in Madrid
06. Autonomous Bases (BB AA) and the National Revolutionaries
07. The Arrival of the Skinheads
08. The 20N 1988 and the neo-Nazi Attack in Tirso de Molina
09. Antifascism as Self-Defense
10. The Elderly Jewish Woman who Defeated the Nazi SS Officer
11. Rostock and Silvio Meier: the neo-Nazi Terror in Germany
12. Sonia
13. SHARP: Anti-Racist Skinheads
14. "We had to learn to play spies
15. What is Antifascism?
16. Flora 6, Guillem and Davide
17. Acts of Hooliganism and Urban Tribes
18. Color Power and Hip Hop Culture
19. The Coming Fascism
20. The "Democratization" of the Far-right: A New Challenge for Antifascism
21. Barcelona: 12 of October 1999
22. Squatters, Anarchists, Police Operations and neo-Nazis
23. Internet, Infiltrators and Stalkers
24. Everything is ETA
25. The Fencewalkers and the Seduction of Violence
26. The Antifascist Offensive
27. Carlos Palomino: Mourning through Militancy
28. “Too bad, they’re good kids"
29. Music as an Antifascist Tool
30. The Neocon Revolt and the New Right
31. Different Fronts of Antifascism
32. Alfon: To Be Young and Antifascist in Vallecas
33. Neo-Fascist Social Movements
34. Hogar Social Madrid and Reorientation of Antifascism in the Neighborhoods
35. Whoever Rules the Terraces, Rules the city
36. The Emergence of Vox and the Institutionalization of Hatred
37. Community Building:The Labor of Slowing Down the Far Right
38. The Feminist Movement and the Fight against LGBTQ+phobia
39. "Guillem's friends”
40. From Auschwitz to the Cuelgamuros Valley
Epilogue, by Betlem Agulló i Salvador
Acknowledgements