Insubordinate movement in Spain

Broken rifle, main symbol of the Insubordinate Movement.

The Insubordinate movement (Spanish: Movimiento insumiso or Insumisión, Catalan: Moviment d'insubmissió, Galician: Movemento insubmiso, Basque: Matxinada) was a mass antimilitarist movement of civil disobedience to compulsory military service in Spain, the movement lasting from the early 1980s until the abolition of conscription on 31 December 2001.

History

The immediate predecessor of insubordination was the movement of conscientious objectors initiated in the last years of the Francoist regime, a movement seeking legal recognition of the right not to perform the, then, compulsory military service on conscience or moral grounds. Objectors, therefore, refused the army, but were nevertheless prosecuted and tried by it, and in many cases ended up in military prisons.

In 1984 the Congreso de los Diputados passed a law on conscientious objection, which recognised the rights of objectors, establishing a civilian service of 18 months, called "Prestación Social Sustitutoria" (Substitutionary Social Service, PSS), as an alternative to 12 months compulsory military service. The previous objectors were then amnestied and freed from military obligations. A few of them, however, considered that the longer duration of the PSS penalised objectors, amounted to forced labour, and deprived ordinary workers of jobs; they demanded complete abolition of military service. Those objectors therefore rejected the amnesty and returned to Spain apparently ready to be called up.

When the army tried to enlist them again, the so-called "Insumisos" (insubordinates) refused to join either the army or the PSS. By doing so they committed a crime and were tried again, but the existence of a largely unfavourable public opinion to compulsory military service made the judicial proceedings, especially when the penalty included imprisonment, a considerable political cost for the government.

Refusal to perform military service was punishable under the military penal code, and was part of the jurisdiction of the army, with a minimum penalty of a year in jail. Refusal to perform PSS was punished by the ordinary penal code, with two years, four months and one day in prison.

In subsequent years the number of young people refusing to join the army or, once recognised as conscientious objectors, refused to perform PSS, exponentially increased. If repression of the "insumisos" was difficult, given the broad social support that they had, it was even more difficult when undertaken by the military courts, because the military courts were denounced by antimilitarists as "judge and jury" in the army's own cause, and because the accused were not part of the army, but remained civilians. Also, the adjudication of civilians by military courts and sending them to prison evoked for many the Franco era.[1] Thus, the army asked the government to release it from the task of repressing the insubordination movement, which was finally agreed by the government. From then the "insumisos" were tried by ordinary courts. Despite this, in the first years the ordinary courts continued applying military law. Later the ordinary courts judged the "insumisos" by applying a reformed version of the ordinary penal code that included the crime of refusing to perform military service, with an increased penalty to equate it to that applied for refusing to do PSS.[2]

The Insubordination was a grassroots, nonpartisan and decentralised movement. Despite the nonpartisan character it was supported by several left-wing parties, like the United Left, Herri Batasuna, Republican Left of Catalonia, Galician Nationalist Bloc, Auzolan, Popular Unity Candidates, Socialist Party of Mallorca, Galician Socialist Party-Galician Left, Valencian Nationalist Bloc, Unitarian Candidacy of Workers, Communist Movement, LCR and many others. In all the major cities there were assemblies of "insumisos", co-ordinated with each other in different antimilitarist fora. The most important groups were the Conscientious Objection Movement (MOC), close to the ideas of nonviolence, and a constellation of groups generically called Mili KK, more linked to the extra-parliamentary left, although the dividing lines were never totally clear. Anarchist groups also played an important role in the antimilitarist struggle, promoting most of them total disobedience tactics (such as the CNT, CGT and FIJL organisations). In the late 1980s and the 1990s many antimilitaristic, magazines and groups appeared. On the eve of the disappearance of compulsory military service the number of "insumisos" exceeded the tens of thousands, probably more than the number of "no-insumisos".

Insubordination was mostly a purely antimilitarist movement. There were also, however, people who joined the insubordination for other reasons, especially, in more recent times, people favouring a professional army. One of the most important components of the insubordination movement were the Basque, Catalan, Galician or Canarian nationalists, not necessarily anti-militarist, although the majority were also strong antimilitarists and antiimperialists; that especially applied to the Galicians and Canarians, who denounced the presence of any military force in their respective territories, and routinely protested against them. The Basque Abertzale left also considered the Spanish army an occupation force in the Southern Basque Country, and campaigned for full withdrawal of any Spanish army from Euskadi;[3] who refused to serve in a "Spanish" army. Another reason for insubordination was the popular perception of the Spanish army as a fascist and/or francoist institution, a perception renewed by the various coup attempts in the 1980s, like the 23F in 1981 or the 2J conspiracy in 1985. Some people also opposed military service on religious grounds, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses or some pacifist Christians.[4]

Tactics and strategy

Regarding the strategy to follow in civil disobedience, there were also different viewpoints:

Those who could not be "insumisos" (for example, men who had already completed military service or women) put up initiatives of "self-incrimination": based on the legal principle that whoever incites someone to commit an offence is also guilty, they signed statements accusing themselves of promoting insubordination. Self-incriminations were generally not accepted by the courts. Many people used self-incriminations to establish an active link with the insubordinate movement, among them prominent intellectuals, politicians, filmmakers, singers, actors and other personalities and celebrities.

The Spanish insubordinate movement was a civil disobedience movement unparalleled in any other European country, its closest precedent in the Western world being the disobedience and insubordination to the Vietnam War in the United States.[5] Attempts to do something similar in other countries, such as Germany and France, failed due to the lack of a social base and popular support. The success of insubordination in Spain has been attributed to an antimilitarist sentiment supposedly rooted in the Spanish society and linked both to the resistance against conscription during the Carlist Wars and during the Rif War between 1909 and 1927, and even some have tried to establish a relationship of this movement to the wide diffusion of anarchism in Spain (a minor phenomenon elsewhere), specially in the first decades of the twentieth century.[6]

Insubordination was one of the main causes of the reduction of military service from 12 to 9 months and, later, of its total abolition. The other main cause was the 1996 pact between the People's Party and the Basque Nationalist Party and Convergence and Union in 1996, that included the disappearance of military service in 2001.[7]

Chronology of the movement

1937

1960-1970

1970

1971

Pepe Beunza in prison at Jaén.

1972

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

One of the main ways of propaganda of the Insubordinate movement was music, mainly within the punk scene, but also in pop and pop rock, Metal, Ska and other scenes. Antimilitarist music was very popular among the youth during the campaign against Military Service. Some groups like Negu Gorriak even donated their profits to the movement. Among the most notable songs and hymns are:

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Mario López (2004) Enciclopedia de paz y conflictos. Granada, Universidad de Granada.
  2. ↑ Mario López (2006); Política sin violencia. La noviolencia como humanización de la política. Bogotá. Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios. ISBN 978-958-8165-28-8
  3. ↑ Eoin O'Broin; Matxinada: historia del movimiento juvenil radical vasco. Tafalla, Editorial Txalaparta, 2004. ISBN 84-8136-385-5.
  4. ↑ Arturo García Lucio; Insumisión, respuesta coherente al militarismo. Iglesia viva: revista de pensamiento cristiano, ISSN 0210-1114, Nº. 173 (SEP-OCT), 1994, pages 499-517.
  5. ↑ Insumisión, 25 años de desobediencia.
  6. ↑ Xavier Díez; La insumisión voluntaria. El anarquismo individualista español durante la Dictadura y la Segunda República (1923-1938). Germinal: revista de estudios libertarios, ISSN 1886-3019, Nº. 1, 2006, págs. 23-58.
  7. ↑ El fantasma del Majestic sobrevuela CiU.
  8. ↑ Real Decreto Ley 1/1988, de 12 de febrero.
  9. ↑ Insumisión, 25 años de desobediencia.
  10. ↑ "La insumisión, el primer gran movimiento de desobediencia civil en España"
  11. ↑ Insumisión, 25 años de desobediencia.
  12. ↑ Ejército y Navarra
  13. ↑ Fool the last.
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