Aliança Catalana is inspired by the Nazis in its latest campaign during Holy Week

BarcelonaThe Catalan Alliance claims not to be far-right, but all the facts point to the contrary: not only does it share the ideology (the party itself has admitted it agrees with Vox, except at the national level), but it emulates all the behaviors of the European far right. Thus, to boost the Easter holidays, the Alliance has chosen to copy from top to bottom a famous European far-right campaign inspired by one promoted by Nazism, and which has already been replicated by Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Vox. The campaign advocates the expulsion of "illegal and criminal" immigrants with a fictitious plane ticket to return them to their countries of origin, a formula widespread among the far right and one that the Nazis had spread, but with a "free" train ticket to send Jewish citizens to Jerusalem. The Alliance not only shares the anti-immigration stance, but in this case, even the same format and message as the entire far right. In his case, it's a year after Santiago Abascal's party launched the same campaign on April 9, 2024. In Germany, police investigated the AfD for a possible hate crime on that grounds, but this March the Prosecutor's Office announced that they would not launch any investigation because "there is not sufficient suspicion of incitement to hate."

"This Easter, airports will be filled with vacation crowds. We want to see plane tickets... but to deport illegal immigrants and criminals who endanger our security and coexistence," describes the message that Alianza has spread through social media, accompanied by a photograph of its two deputies in Parliament. "On March 12, we issued a return ticket for those who came to our land illegally," said Vox a year ago in a video also shared on social media. Or the AfD campaign with its ticket to a "safe country of origin" from Germany because "only re-emigration can save Germany." Calcat, with different population objectives, echoes the Nazi campaign of the 1930s with its "free trip to Jerusalem valid from any German station."

In conversation with ARA, far-right expert Jordi Borràs asserts that "it's exactly the same campaign, taking the idea from what the Nazis did to the Jews." Specifically, he emphasizes that "the Catalan Alliance imports successful campaigns" like this Nazi-inspired AfD campaign, and that Friday's gesture is "a boutade more in constant provocation campaigns." "The campaign denotes the Alliance's interest in the rest of Europe, such as Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands." He also noted the upward trend of expressing oneself "without mania," even employing concepts such as "re-emigration" or "sport plus, with the blame for all the evils on the Jews," that is, with "hate speech," and added that the target population has gone from being Jews to now being the most singled-out Muslims.

The Spanish far right accompanied the video with banners in the streets weeks before the May 12 Parliament elections. "Criminals in your neighborhood? We have a return ticket," they displayed, linking crime to immigration. The posters had to be removed by order of the Central Electoral Board, not because the message was xenophobic, but because they were put up weeks before the campaign, something ERC denounced. The AfD's initiative was also for an electoral campaign, unlike Aliança, which is doing so now.

The main difference between the AfD, Vox, and Alianza campaigns is the language: German, Spanish, and Catalan. Regarding the Nazi campaign, the target group has shifted from Jews to illegal immigration in general and focused on those of Islamic origin.