On February 1, 1980, Yolanda González Martín was assassinated by the Basque-Spanish Battalion. Yolanda was a young student and member of the Socialist Workers Party (PST, a party that formed part of the international Trotskyist current promoted by Nahuel Moreno), she was born in Bilbao, Basque Country, in 1961.
Yolanda began her political activism very young, at 16 she was already an activist at her school. She was one of those brave young women who staged mobilizations in post-Franco Spain in defense of public education and student lockdowns. That they supported the struggles of the working class facing the first years of an agreed Transition.
In 1978, Yolanda moved to Madrid and continued to be part of the student struggle. In 1979 she joined the PST. On the night of February 1, 1980, Yolanda was kidnapped, tortured and riddled with bullets. Her body appeared the next day. With repression, attacks and the assassination of Yolanda, the regime, which was very worried, tried to defeat the student struggle and stop the emergence of new revolutionary organizations such as the PST. But they did not succeed.
The response was overwhelming. An impressive student strike paralyzed classes in Madrid and Bilbao, demanding the investigation of the murder and the punishment of those responsible. As a result, five days later, the material authors of the murder were arrested: mercenaries on the payroll of far-right party Fuerza Nueva. The PST demanded that the fascist named Blas Piñar, Secretary General of Fuerza Nueva, be arrested as the mastermind of the murder.
Emilio Hellín, the perpetrator of the crime, was sentenced to 43 years in prison, as were his accomplices. Fuerza Nueva was banned forever and disappeared as a political party. But the presence of the Franco regime in the courts and in the security forces were still alive. That is why Hellín managed to escape from jail twice helped by his friends, he later managed to change his identity in the State’s own records, and only served 14 effective years in prison.
In 2013 a journalistic investigation revealed that Hellín had an intelligence agency in which he gave courses to the civil guards and police, and that these “educational services” were paid for by the Ministry of the Interior of the Spanish State. In addition, he acted as a scientific expert in the National Court.
Said Agency made the news again these days, since the defense of the former PP leader Cristina Cifuentes, judged these days for the alleged falsification of her master’s degree, has hired the services of the Hellín company, Net Computer Forensics SL, to provide an expert opinion of the official agenda of Cifuentes when she was a government delegate in Madrid, in 2012. The agenda is provided on a pendrive to the court and with it the defense of Cifuentes will try to prove that July 2 of that year is marked on the agenda as the day she personally defended her Master’s Thesis.
In this way, it is demonstrated once again how the impunity that the monarchical-parliamentary regime continues to offer to its friends has no limits and, in fact, extends to the present. Over the years, the close links between Hellín and the now defunct Fuerza Nueva and state institutions became evident. Links that the progressive government of the PSOE-Unidas Podemos has not dared to disarm.
The enemies of yesterday are the same enemies of today: the right, the extreme right and those who whitewash their actions. Those who continue to defend the same regime molded by Francoism to save the capitalist system. Spain is still shaken today by a deep political crisis. Governments and alliances come and go, but none of them responds to the needs of the people and nationalities.
More than four decades have passed, a thousand years may pass, and we will continue to ensure that the new generations of revolutionaries know her, pay homage to her and follow her militant example. For the murderers of yesterday and today there is no forgetting or forgiving anywhere in the world. Yolanda González: Until socialism always!