Banned Fascist anthem played at Spanish bullfight
Stadium in Palma de Mallorca plays Falangist song as demonstrators protest outside
A stadium in the Spanish resort city of Palma de Mallorca played a banned fascist anthem on Sunday amid controversy over the reintroduction of bullfighting to the Spanish island of Mallorca.
The song, known as “Cara al Sol,” or “Facing the Sun,” was the anthem of the Falange, the far-right party of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, who ruled the country until 1975. Sunday’s match was the first since the song was banned by the local government two years ago, The Guardian reported. The ban was subsequently overturned by the supreme court.
As the anthem played, hundreds of demonstrators stood outside the arena in protest, yelling that bullfighting was “torture” rather than art. Bullfights are frequently reported on in the culture pages of Spanish newspapers.
The Falangists were a major component of the nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War.
“Anti-Semitic propaganda, including the notorious fictional work ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ circulated throughout the Nationalist-held territories” during the war, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Among the attendees supporting the fight was Jorge Campos, the local head of the far-right Vox party. The platform of Vox, whose name means “voice” in Latin, is to defend Spain from what it says are the dangers of separatism, Muslim immigration, feminism and liberals.
In March, the party tapped a Holocaust revisionist as a congressional candidate for the central Spanish city of Albacete. The candidate, historian Fernando Paz, quickly dropped out of the race, citing the intense scrutiny he faced in the Spanish media. Among Vox’s other candidates are retired generals who defend Franco’s far-right regime.
In April, the Likud party’s foreign affairs director, Eli Hazan, apologized for endorsing Vox ahead of the country’s general election on Sunday. Hazan had tweeted good luck to Vox’s leader in the general election, and called the extremist party “Likud’s sister party” in the EU Parliament.
