The ARA (Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance) has returned to the town of Torre Pacheco, in the province of Murcia, six months after the far right launched a campaign against Moroccan immigrants, incidents that marked a turning point in the xenophobic agenda in Spain. "There are no too many immigrants, there are too many racists," read a banner displayed a few days ago by Moroccan farmworkers during a labor protest in the town. Life in this town, as in so many others, is marked by segregation: locals and foreigners socialize in separate spaces. There is little interaction. The integration work carried out by schools and some associations is insufficient. Distance and mistrust persist, especially regarding the Muslim population: Islamophobia has taken root. The far right promotes it unfiltered on social media and is profiting from it, both in Spain and Catalonia, as well as in other parts of Europe. In fact, despite the diversity within the far right (for example, on gender issues), Islamophobia is the element that all continental far-right groups have in common.

Kesia Barranco arrived in Torre Pacheco more than two decades ago from her native Basque Country. She came with her partner, a Moroccan man, with whom she built her life in this small town in Murcia. Now 38, she is one of the leading voices in the demands of the Muslim community, especially after a group of men brutally attacked her 15-year-old son, Ismael, because of his physical appearance. This attack came two days after three young men of Moroccan origin robbed—and one of them assaulted—a 68-year-old man, Domingo, as he was taking a peaceful walk through the town. This incident prompted the far right will throw in the streets of Torre Pacheco.

A couple of kilometers from Torre Pacheco, about fifteen workers, all of them immigrants, harvest endives under the warm, restorative winter sun. On the other side of the field, another group toils to do the same with celery stalks. The tractors and trucks that will load the crates of vegetables destined for Europe are haphazardly parked on a dusty road. The seasonal workers repeat the movement cyclically, torsos bent over again and again to pull up the stalks. A movement repeated hundreds of times each day. Abdel is the foreman of the group hauling the endives. They are all from Morocco. He arrived 26 years ago in this Murcian municipality, where he lived in July 2025. some racist incidents Following the attack on a 68-year-old man, Domingo, by three young men of North African origin, the far right descended upon Torre Pacheco, "hunting" for North Africans. The ensuing nights of intense tension were only contained by a deployment of nearly 60 Civil Guard vehicles.

Christian LF, the leader of the xenophobic supremacist movementSport Them NowThe UE prisoner, imprisoned since July for instigating racist riots in the Murcia town of Torre Pacheco, had previously worked at the Can Llupià juvenile justice center in Barcelona. He worked there from November 2, 2022, to March 30, 2023, according to sources from the Department of Justice, who claim that he "never had access to the juvenile database." However, the Sicap Fepol union has demanded that the department conduct an internal investigation to confirm whether the man accessed this data.

In recent days, following the violent incidents in Torre Pacheco (Murcia), Vox leader Santiago Abascal has once again deployed his harshest rhetoric, calling irregular immigration a plague. In a press conference on July 14, he described the situation as a "genuine plague" nationwide. Other members of his party have demanded mass deportations and refuse to condemn calls by extremist groups to "hunt" migrants. The choice of word is not innocent: plagues are destructive, invasive, impossible to control; they provoke disgust and fear, and must be exterminated. For now, admittedly, Vox doesn't go that far: its platform doesn't literally propose "hunting" or extermination, but rather the immediate and widespread expulsion, even of the children of migrants already born in Spain. But then the words are: when it becomes normal to call a human group a plague, the next step—"hunting" or "extermination"—begins to be considered socially justifiable.

Yolanda Díaz's ministry, faced with the possibility that the labor reform "to reduce the working week to 37.5 hours" might not be approved in Congress, has decided to postpone its parliamentary debate to have time to negotiate with Junts.

The hunting The immigrant riots in Torre Pacheco are yet another example of the monstrous effects of hate speech promoted by the far right and fueled by social media. Cases are multiplying across Europe: in recent months alone, extremely violent xenophobic riots have occurred in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, and Italy. But it would be a mistake to think that the far right is to blame. Torre Pacheco is the effect of a Molotov cocktail brewed over a slow fire.

They want to be from somewhere, to have an identity, but they're not allowed to. Neither there nor here. They're not Spanish, nor Moroccan. Some left their country many years ago. Either their parents decided to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, and they were born in Spain, or they themselves, as teenagers, landed on the vast Murcian esplanade. That's why they must always claim their origins and their roots, because they feel they haven't been allowed to embrace the identity of the country that welcomed them.

And you, where are you from? This seemingly innocent question hides a ticking time bomb. It means you look like you're not from here. It means we have a prejudice about what people from here look like. It means you believe that if you look unconformable to that prejudice, you can't be considered from here. The consequence is that the person being asked the question perceives they're not considered from here, and they may feel annoyed, insulted, excluded, and discriminated against. Surely with good reason, even if the person asking the question may have done so with the best of intentions and out of genuine, friendly curiosity. Prejudices are also reflected in language and small details.

"What we've seen in Torre Pacheco is the crystallization of everything that has been brewing on social media over the last eight years in terms of hate speech. It's, on a small scale, like the assault on the Capitol, the transition from online to offline." This is how journalist and social media consultant Carmela Ríos puts it, believing that Torre Pacheco has seen a turning point in the actions of the far right, which has demonstrated both a strong capacity to rally and set the agenda based on an isolated incident.

These days, we've seen the consequences of the hate politics that cater to far-right forces. The events in Torre Pacheco were serious, and that's why we want to put them into context in this week's dossier. David Miró analyzes how the far right, especially Vox, has exploited them for political gain. Meanwhile, Albert Llimós has been on the ground and paints a picture of the situation through conversations with young people involved, his classmates at local high schools, and members of the Moroccan community in the Murcia municipality to understand why the teenagers were the ones who came out to defend themselves against the far-right attacks.

What happened in Torre Pacheco is not a deviation from the system. It is the system. Hooded neighborhood raids, lynchings broadcast on social media, hate speech uttered by public officials and amplified without restraint: all of this is unacceptable. But it is not new, nor inexplicable, nor the exclusive preserve of Vox. The far right did not invent racism: it has capitalized on it.

The escalating violence against local immigrants in Torre Pacheco has found another way to manifest itself: on television. Far-right groups and their sympathizers have escalated their aggression by attacking journalists covering the events. On Tuesday night, La 1 broadcast a special, Hate in Torre Pacheco, hosted by Marc Sala and Ana Roldán. A very interesting, though somewhat repetitive, program with experts, focused more on delving into the origins of these types of conflicts and the most pertinent way to address them from an informative, social, political, and economic perspective. They had four reporters on the ground, reporting from different vantage points. María Sánchez Chapinal was the journalist who connected from the start of one of the rallies. Around her, everyone, mostly men, could be seen in a kind of intimidating waiting state. Standing, wandering around the street, looking at their cell phones and observing from a distance how the reporter worked. Unlike her colleagues on the station, she didn't have a handheld microphone identifying the station, but rather a small microphone clipped to the collar of her sweater. She herself explained that, although it wasn't the optimal system, she had been forced to do it due to the intense tension surrounding her. During a subsequent connection, we viewers witnessed it. Her report was drowned out by shouts and insults. One of my recurring comments was bitch.

The Civil Guard arrested on Monday in Mataró director of the supremacist and xenophobic group Deport Them Now for his alleged role as instigator of the riots and racist "hunts" that have taken place in recent days in the Murcia town of Torre Pacheco. According to sources from the Ministry of the Interior who spoke to Efe, the arrested man is a 28-year-old man who lived in Barcelona and who last January obtained authorization to work as a private bodyguard.

In Vic, in the 1990s, there were already some neo-Nazi groups. I watched them from afar, and I remember how they provoked an almost instinctive, visceral fear in me. morophiliaThe uprising against the Republic, in fact, could not have taken place without the numerous troops recruited in the Rif. But if there is one thing that characterizes these postmodern fascists, it is their ability to defend contradictory values. They no longer declare themselves anti-Semitic, but if the phenomenon of immigration did not exist, where would these nostalgic people, who were already walking with firefighters And tight pants presented themselves as reactionary anti-system rebels? What the surveys tell us about the shift towards the extreme right among youth is a continuation of those gangs of skinheads, only with a massive reach thanks to the radiating power of digital media. Encouraging people to go out and "hunt the Moor" is nothing new, and one only needs to review the newspaper archives to discover cases such as El Ejido and Ca n'Anglada and other episodes of racist violence directed at the "other" par excellence.

They are best friends. One, Ismael, was born in Morocco; the other, Daniel, is a Spaniard born in Torre Pacheco. Both attended the unauthorized gathering that the extremist groups had held for eight o'clock in the evening in the Murcia town. According to one of the organizers, the agitator posing as a journalist, Vito Quiles, the rally didn't take place because the Civil Guard had informed them they were in danger. A threat also targeted the leader of Desokupa, Daniel Esteve, who didn't even show up in the town. However, police sources did not confirm these threats announced by Quiles. "The Civil Guard forced them to leave the town peacefully," sources from the Murcia government delegation stated. "We have no record of any threats," a local police officer confirmed.

The events and images from Torre Pacheco hold up a mirror to the politics of hate fueled by the far right, an incendiary reality spreading across Europe like wildfire through social media, seeking places to disrupt coexistence with easy enemies. The immigrant population—even though they are sometimes second and third generations with Spanish nationality—and marginalized communities are in the crosshairs, all rife with Islamophobic and racist rhetoric. The case of the fire at the new Piera mosque, still under investigation, could also respond to this logic. In its various acronyms, forms, and versions, the underlying discourse and street actions of the European far right respond to the same pattern, with more than plausible digital connections. Communities with elements that ignite a spark are sought everywhere, and calls for violent activism are issued. Then the hunt for immigrants begins. In the wake of the chaos, the targeted group is generically blamed, creating a general climate of fear, also among the native population. This is how bridges are easily burned and a culture of suspicion is established.

1. Portraits. The immigrant hunt organized by the far right in Torre Pacheco is yet another warning of the threats to democracy. And it's no small feat. The targeting—elevated to persecution—of people who come from abroad to survive, to find work unavailable in their places of origin, has become an alibi upon which the far right builds and attempts to legitimize its xenophobic discourse and aims: Spanishness as a self-evident characteristic of people, as a condition for recognition of people, a mechanism for patriotic unification. As always, using the weakest as scapegoats—and using lies as an argument for legitimization. This case, like so many others, stems from one fake: from the image of the attack by some young ultras, those who are now outraged, on an elderly person from Alicante. The narrative is in reverse, with an obsession with constructing a portrait of the enemies and turning the fight against them—filled with hatred, but also expressive of one's own weakness—into a political priority.

The Civil Guard has arrested a man in Mataró, CLF, for his alleged role as instigator of the racist disturbances that have occurred in recent days in the Murcia town of Torre Pacheco. According to a brief statement from the Civil Guard, after entering and searching the home where he lived and confiscating two computers, sufficient evidence has been gathered to assume that the arrested man held "leadership positions" within a supremacist and xenophobic group operating online against the Maghreb community.

The Superior Prosecutor's Office of the Region of Murcia will open an investigation this Tuesday to study whether there is evidence of a crime in the public statements made by the regional president of Vox, José Ángel Antelo, in relation to the riots in Torre Pacheco. This includes recent media appearances, in which he has linked immigration and crime. "All the violence experienced in Torre Pacheco is the fault of the PP and the PSOE for financing and filling our streets with illegal immigration. With Vox, deportations, security, and peace in our neighborhoods," Antelo told the media last Saturday.