By Corriente Roja, Spain
Every February since 1980, are hit by the weight of a painful truth: our comrade Yolanda Gonzalez was kidnapped by a fascist para-police commando and later tortured and brutally murdered for defending the banners of revolution and socialism. Her murderers, on behalf of the fascist party Fuerza Nueva, took from us not only a comrade, but also a daughter and a friend.
In the midst of the ebullience of Spain’s democratic transition, in a political context shaped by workers’ struggles and strikes, Yolanda was a militant of the former Socialist Workers Party (PST) and a prominent activist in the student movement. So much so that she was elected to represent the Vallecas Vocational Training Center in the Coordinating Committee of Secondary School Students of Madrid.
Year after year, we have to remember that her confessed murderer, Emilio Hellín-Moro, is still at large and has worked several times for the Civil Guard, providing training, technical advice, the sale of materials, and testimony many times as an expert witness. The most recent case in which he provided his services as an expert witness is that of Laura Borras, former president of the Catalan Parliament and leader of the Junts political group. Accused of embezzling public funds, Borras hired Hellín-Moro to write the report for her defense.
Yolanda, 44 years after your assassination, your memory is still alive because your comrades carry you with us in all the struggles we are fighting. No matter how much they want to erase your history, and no matter how much they destroy the squares and walls that commemorate you, we keep you alive in our memory. The new generations of revolutionary fighters see ourselves in your strength and will when you were only 19 years old.
We affirm that as long as your party lives, your legacy will remain present and your memory will remain unshakable in us.
We consider it just that the murderers of Yolanda are banned from participating in any trial and that the Law of Democratic Memory includes the victims in the hands of those who kept Francoism going during the so-called “Transition.” This demand is part of the struggle against the impunity of Francoism and its continuators and in defense of the memory of our much-missed comrade Yolanda Gonzalez.
Your friends and comrades of the Corriente Roja will not forget you, nor will we. And we will not forget your murderers either.
