We are risking democracy

In 2014, the pseudo-union Manos Limpias, the pseudo-consumer association Ausbanc, and the Popular Party of Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla agreed to set up a defamation campaign against us. Yes, a defamation campaign against FACUA and against me perpetrated by the PP with far-right organizations a decade ago. That business of spreading hoaxes and hate against leaders of citizen movements or political parties that are not of their persuasion comes from old times. What they have done since then in the PP has been to perfect the technique. Now they have many more far-right outfits to shoot garbage against their targets and then echo it feigning indignation. In fact, they have even had a corrupt commissioner and a patriotic police force to fabricate fake news from the sewers. And in recent times, in the PP they pay with public money to pseudo-media outlets like that of Javier Negre and Vito Zoppellari Quiles and even invite the latter to close some campaign event for them. Although, for some reason, they tell me that Quiles is not going to participate in the one for the Andalusian elections.

At FACUA, we have been for more than a decade the target to beat on the part of a long list of businessmen, pseudojournalists, agitators and politicians of what they used to call "reformist center" of "moderate right". That is to say, lifelong far-right people disguised as something else. Wolves in sheep's clothing, ultras with a smile.

They say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Today we are not the FACUA of a decade ago. Today we have close to a quarter of a million members, and a much higher number, although impossible to calculate, of people who support us and encourage us to continue doing our work. To fight against abuses, to confront companies that defraud, governments and political parties that do not work for the good of all and, sometimes, put themselves at the service of somewhat obscure interests.

I am not the same person from 2014 either, when from Moreno Bonilla's PP, Miguel Bernad's pseudo-union and Luis Pineda's fake consumer association unsuccessfully requested my indictment in a corruption case and publicly stated, even from the Parliament of Andalusia, that both FACUA and I were involved in the Los ERE plot and committed subsidy fraud. Accusations for which they never provided the slightest proof, simply because it was all a string of crude lies.

From those first big defamation campaigns we have learned a lot about how to confront hoaxes. We have accumulated enormous experience in media and judicial combat, and now it's time to put that experience at the service of the people because we are living an emergency situation. The emergency that the far-right ends up coming to power thanks to the hoaxes and hatred with which they are infecting the minds of hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Now it's time to make our small contribution to give thanks for so much support received and to help stop the far right.

We are launching an initiative. It is called thus: Stop the Far Right. We are going to visit big cities. We are going to do it together with figures from politics, culture, journalism, and social movements. We start in Seville on May 12 with Javier Aroca, Mercedes de Pablos, and Pilar del Río. We will continue in Madrid on May 21 with Sarah Santaolalla, Pablo Iglesias, and Óscar Puente.

We are going to do everything possible to contribute to no one stealing from us so many rights that cost so much to conquer. We are going to put all our effort into preventing hatred from continuing to divide Spaniards, into preventing the extreme right from continuing to convince people that the great evils we suffer are not the responsibility of the economic elites who commit all kinds of abuses, but of the most humble people, of those who suffer the most, of those who have it hardest to get ahead. Hopefully we can count on you in this initiative because democracy is at stake for us in it.