Juan Ignacio González - XXVth Anniversary

[Menydh]

On December 12th it will be 25 years since Juan Ignacio González, the Secretary-General of Frente de la Juventud, an organisation which could have been the trigger of the National Revolutionary movement in Spain during the post-Franco years, was assassinated.

Today we, a group of old and new comrades, have wanted to make of this year 2005 the year of homage to his persona and, especially, to his political fight.

Twenty-five years later, the assassination of Juan Ignacio has not yet been resolved and no one has been judiciary enquired for this crime. Our aim is that justice must be done after all these long years of impunity. It is with this goal that we have constituted the Comisión Pro-Homenaje a Juan Ignacio, to give a push during this year to the actions and acts in his memory and, above all, to avoid that they forget our demand to incarcerate his assassins.

However, we know that the best homage to our Fallen is the fight and the compromise; so, without surrendering, we make ours the motto of the Frente de la Juventud: "We fight, and you?"

[Menydh]

A brief history of the Frente de la Juventud, in the XXVth Anniversary of the assassination of our comrade and political leaderk, Juan Ignacio González Ramírez

In 1977, Fuerza Nueva was the main political party of the "National opposition". After the first democratic elections, despite obtaining some modest results, the campaign helped to create a dynamics in the party from inside in a way that, after the same of the same year, in September, all the local HQs had been reinforced and some of them saw massive requests for membership. Under such circumstances, there were errors which would be paid later and which derived from the proximity of Francoism, and because in the ranks of the "National opposition" politics were conceived just as they had been in the structures of the Movement (Gen. Franco's regime): uniforms, militarisation of the party, etc. The impossibility of educating politically the masses of militants made that the political conciensce was substituted by the discipline of the para-military structures.

In practice, there where there were good politica leaders it was possible that these militaricised structures worked at their maximum, and there where these circumstances did not exist, the remedy was worse than the illness. Among all the political reponsibles of the time in contact, both from the highests ranks and from the troops, there were two militants who stood out: José de las Heras and Juan Ignacio González. The former as Secretary-General of the party, and the latter as responsible of the security and order services.

The times were strange. 1978-79 was the year when most of the students militants in the "National forces" lost. We were living a state of permanent mobility: campaign against the referendum for the Constitution, succesive campaigns against terrorism, campaign for the national unity, rallies for the reconquering of Gibraltar, rallies against the policies of UCD and against the astute and disolving works of PSOE, constant stands on the streets for propaganda, mobilisation of the militants to face the aggressive groups of the left and far-left, provocations arrived from different points... a state of watch that did not allow us to concentrate on our studies, work, or any other social activity.

But there was some time to give use to the brains and the ideas. For some militants of Fuerza Nueva it started to be clear that Francoism was dead and that it would be nearly impossible that the forces which were the protagonists of July 18, 1936, could ever have any in this new period.

The first split of militants took place in Barcelona, creating the Frente National de la Juventud (FNJ).

In Madrid, the inner explosive potential accumulated until it came the split in 1978, which took several hundreds of militants of Fuerza Joven in Madrid, Valladolid and Valencia. Among this group there were also José de las Heras and Juan Ignacio González, who took the direction of the new group: Frente de la Juventud.

All the divisions of political parties which have been throughout history have followed this same process: in the start, the disident group takes on a crazy political work to try to overpass the original group. When the rythm of work falls, it can be observed that both the split group and the matrix group have been weakened and that not all those from the original split continue active, nor the matrix has weakened completely, reinforced by others who have filled the casualties of the division.

This situation was perceived both in Barcelona and Madrid by mid-1979, and it was one of the reasons which drove the Frente Nacional de la Juventud and the Frente de la Juventud to get close to each other, and subsequently to integrate the former within the structure of the latter.

Shortly after it was celebrated the First Congress of the Frente de la Juventud in the facilities of the Centro Cubano in Madrid, with the result of the election of a new direction made up by Juan Ignacio González, José de las Heras, and Ernesto Milà. Few months later, near the end of July 1980, Ernesto Milà, after an illegal rally in Barcelona, had to go on exile, but he stayed in contact with the direction of the Frente and met their representatives in various occasion in Paris.

Right at this moment, the Frente de la Juventud kept a "revolutionary" strategy. The objectives were to work from the extra-parliamentary camp, but without molesting those organisation which worked politically with a parliamentary vocation. The idea was to achieve a strong parlamentary party like the Italian MSI, preceded by a revolutionary vanguard similar to Ordine Nuovo and Avanguadia Nazionale in Italy.

Only later on, when it was evident that Fuerza Nueva was in serious problems, even about to be declared illegal, after the accusation of come irresponsible elements from their ranks (Case Yolanda), and when it was also evident that the Home Ministry was provoking to try to isolate and blame Fuerza Nueva, it seemed advisable to contact with other independent groups, to constitute a new political party. In the talks held in Paris and Madrid (October 1980), it was decided to realize this plan. But at that moment the "conspiration of 23-F" was already in march.

Some military people contacted with the Frente de la Juventud, offering to take part in the conspiration and its consequence, with some concrete assignment. However, between the December 1980 and the first days of 1981, the Frente de la Juventud was literally swept out of the political scene. First, Ernesto Milà, exiled in Paris, was falsely made responsible for having taking place in the terrorist attack on the synagogue at the Rue Copernic, Paris. Some Spanish police infiltrated in the left police unions of the French police, a dossier about Milà, written from the confidences of a lawyer from Barcelona. Milà, who until then had been able to move freely in France, had to extreme his security measures and leave France.

A few days later Juan Ignacio González was assassinated when he returned home late at night, after having been with his comrades of Frente de la Juventud from Madrid. Three weeks later, José de las Heras and thirty militants of Frente de la Juventud from Madrid and Valencia were detained during a raid that took them to prison. This was later translated in heavy sentences and in the exile of some of them. In nearly one month, the Frente de la Juventud had been completely dismembered and all the members of the direction had been the object of repressive measures which went from imprisonment to assassination.

From this moment on it was evident the political realism: the forces against which the Frente de la Juventud tried to react and to build a political alternative, were too strong to be defied. There was a need for new ways and, at this point, every militant felt free to take whatever measure he thought convenient. In 1983, the Frente de la Juventud was officially dissolved. Some members joined the Movimiento Falangista de España and most went to a state of "active reserve" in their homes, with their families, trying to restructure their lifes after five years of crazy activity.

From the Frente de la Juventud there remained more than fifty militants condemned to different prison sentences, a dozen of exiled --some of which suffered represion, imprisonment and torture in South American countries, and the memories of our comrade assassinated, Juan Ignacio González, the first among all of us to who, those of us who knew him, loved from the first moment.

[Menydh]

"Gracias por tu ejemplo.
Que Dios te dé su eterno descanso y a nosotros
nos niegue el descanso hasta que sepamos
ganar para España la cosecha que siembra tu muerte."
José Antonio (10/02/1934)

Juan Ignacio González
¡PRESENTE!