Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriótico
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The Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriótico ("Revolutionary Anti-Fascist Patriotic Front"), sometimes also called Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriota (Ruedo Ibérico), is better known by its acronym FRAP. It was a radical Spanish Marxist-Leninist revolutionary organization that has practically disappeared.
[edit] History
FRAP began operating around 1971 in the universities of the largest cities in Spain (Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid) as an obscure and vague opposition movement against Franco's dictatorship called Frente Republicano de Acción Popular. However, in 1973 it was renamed in Paris as the Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriótico, keeping the acronym FRAP and initiating a more serious career as a violent organization. Its goal was to establish a Popular Federal Republic in Spain through an insurrection and to fight against what it perceived as “Yankee Imperialism”.
The peak of FRAP’s success was around this time. On May 1st 1974 FRAP called for a demonstration in the largest universities against the dictatorship and the response of the Spanish students was positive. They came out to the campuses and the streets in great numbers and the demonstration ended in a big battle. The balance was: one dead policeman, about 20 people wounded and about 300 FRAP sympathizers arrested. During the following months the Armed Spanish police continued identifying and arresting hundreds of FRAP militants and supporters.
In April 1975, in the face of increased political changes in Spain, FRAP's permanent committee decided to change strategy and its rhetoric became harsher. FRAP militants tried to increase armed violence in the main cities by means of stealing weapons, bank robberies and attacks against offices and persons perceived as capitalist or pro-USA. There was going to be no dialogue with moderate democratic movements, nor with progressive Christian movements. This was called the "tension strategy".
This new strategy unleashed a more thorough wave of repression. The result was that 11 members of FRAP were arrested by the Spanish police and brought to a military court. Some of these militants were executed by a firing squad because they were perceived by Franco's state as military opponents, not criminals. After Franco's death in 1975 the FRAP movement continued its struggle against the newly-instituted monarchy, but it had lost much of its initial steam.
By 1978 the FRAP's "tension strategy" petered out, and the more recent GRAPO movement took over. However neither of these radical Marxist movements succeeded in destabilizing the Spanish government during the transition.
[edit] References
- Stanley G. Payne, Politics and the Military in Modern Spain. Stanford, California
- Pierre Celhay, Consejos de guerra en España. Ruedo Iberico. Paris
- Junta de Castilla Y Leon. El FRAP y el GRAPO en España
- On a recent attempt to re-create the FRAP: http://www.pceml.info/Documentos/db/index.php?documento=doc_029.htm
