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Neighbourhood patrols, vigilantism and counter-vigilantism in Spain by Gemma Galdon-Clavell, University of Barcelona

01 August 2013

Vigilantism, neighbourhood patrols and state sponsored informing are long established practices in Spain, and have been facilitated in recent years by new technologies and the growth of social media.

Vigilantism, surveillance and social control before democracy

Spain has a long history of vigilantism. As a country with a recent authoritarian past, social control and surveillance have been the norm rather than the exception. In the twentieth century, Spain suffered almost 35 years of military rule (General Primo de Rivera between 1923 and 1930 and Francisco Franco Bahamonde, El Generalísimo, between 1939 and 1975), a Civil War (1936-1939) and several episodes of military upheaval in the first years of the century. In 1936, before the alzamiento (military uprising), the electorate voted for the progressive and revolutionary forces of the Popular Front, but by 1939, in the immediate post-civil war years, Francoism needed to consolidate its military victory. Those who hadn’t died or fled into exile were tracked down and prosecuted. “All criminal activity committed in the national territory during the red domination” was brought before special courts set up in order to organise the purging of reds, communists, separatists and freemasons.

In a country where most of the population lived in rural areas [1] and power was organised locally, this meant establishing local networks of control structured around institutions controlled by, or aligned with, the regime: the Church, unelected city councils, the Falange [2] and the Guardia Civil. In this period, deviancy was not only political, ideological or criminal, but also moral. Local priests, councillors, Falangists, and later members of the Guardia Civil, were asked by the Courts to submit reports on the activities of virtually everyone - a task which, with exceptions, most fulfilled enthusiastically. The Church had a key role in the everyday surveillance of this “National-Catholic” regime, with local priests playing an essential role in rural areas. They were often responsible for issuing “certificates of adherence to the national movement” which were necessary for a myriad of daily tasks and were based on “good behavior” – mainly understood as the following of Catholic rituals and principles. Attending Church, and having gone to Church prior to 1939, was one of the best defences one could muster when faced with investigation.

Spain’s recent history shows a stubborn continuity of surveillance, control, domination and revanchism as a political strategy and social dynamic. [3] Informers were promoted and sponsored by the state when trying to consolidate military rule. While times have changed, there is little doubt that spying on others has a long tradition in Spain for cultural and historical reasons. Over the last few years, however, the landscape of vigilantism has diversified, with state-sponsored versions giving way to new practices of surveillance.

A recent history of neighbourhood patrols

The earliest examples of self-organised neighbourhood or citizens’ patrols (patrullas ciudadanas) in Spain were reported in the press in the late 1980s. They were often linked to high levels of insecurity and a crime wave blamed on a heroin epidemic that, at its peak, killed 300 people annually. In the early 1990s, 150,000 Spaniards were addicted to heroin.

This had an impact on community safety and people’s perception of insecurity, with drug addicts openly using in public areas, stealing in order to buy drugs and suffering overdoses on residents’ doorsteps. A perceived lack of response by the authorities led some citizens to organise patrols in notorious areas. In 1991, there were four patrols in Barcelona’s metropolitan area (Barcelona, El Prat, Badalona and Sant Adrià) which pursued drug addicts and dealers, beat them up and ejected them from their neighbourhoods. While different kinds of patrols appeared in places as diverse as Sagunto, Palma de Mallorca, Valencia, Alicante, Madrid, Almería, Cartagena, Huelva and Pontevedra, most communities responded to the problem with peaceful demonstrations and meetings with the authorities. However, in Móstoles, San Blas, Alcorcón and El Prat, there were instances of attempted lynchings. Members of these neighbourhood patrol groups walked around with “sticks, chains and umbrellas,” stopping busses to eject drug users and, in one case, chasing a drug addict to the top of a building and threatening to throw him off. There were also instances of fascist-like gangs joining neighbourhood patrols, creating a dynamic of poverty, prejudice and racism (most drug dealers were said to be Spanish Roma).

In this period, the authorities spoke out against neighbourhood patrols. They argued that the police force was the only entity that could confront the problem within the limits of the law. In 1992, Spain passed its first Community Safety law which increased police powers and established harsher fines for drug use in public places. The perception of increased police efficacy in dealing with drug users and dealers (the first instances of community policing in Spain date from this period), as well as decreasing rates of heroin consumption, meant that by the mid-1990s the patrullas ciudadanas seemed to be a thing of the past.

While in the 1980s and 1990s the authorities favoured the rule of law, from 2000 things began to change. A Cordoba district attorney’s office report suggested for the first time that, in view of the increase in crimes against property, some measures of “social defence” were to be encouraged, such as carrying weapons, installing alarms in one’s house or organising neighbourhood patrols. [4] The district attorney denied that his office was in favour of such measures and claimed that certain passages of the report had been poorly written. The Mayor, the police force and civil society all rejected the measures. The authorities responded similarly in Barcelona when neighbourhood patrols reappeared in the city centre during the spring of 2000. These new patrols did not mobilise against drug users or property crimes but in response to a general feeling of insecurity blamed on sex workers and migrants. [5] Police and civil society organisations quickly intervened to discredit the the vigilantes and call for an increased police presence.

However, informal contact was made between citizens’ patrols and Town Hall officials, who were flirting with the idea of giving watch members some form of official recognition to make them part of a public-private partnership against insecurity and crime. These efforts were never publicly acknowledged and, as members of the Mayor’s office admitted years later, it quickly became obvious that members of citizens’ patrol groups were not the best people to hand authority, because they tended to be violent and have problems dealing with others, including the authorities. [6]

State sponsored grasses

Barcelona’s experience left the authorities unwilling to promote neighbourhood patrols, but 12 years later the issue arose again – with a significant twist.

On 29 March 2012, a general strike saw thousands of people take to the streets to protest against austerity, wage cuts and labour reforms. Less than a month later, on 24 April, the Catalan Ministry of the Interior launched a website that carried 231 pictures of people causing property damage and/or attacking the police and others during the main demonstration in Barcelona. The authorities encouraged citizens to provide leads that would help police find and arrest those photographed. They were following the examples set by the UK’s Metropolitan police and the Vancouver Police Department after the London [7] and Vancouver [8] riots in 2011.

Several civil society groups raised concerns about the legality of the website and at least one family sued the government for posting a picture of their 15-year old son. Some of those featured on the website called a press conference in a public square a few days after its launch to expose its worthlessness. The site was taken down after a few months. Information on how useful the website was in identifying and arresting people has not been published.

The website received extensive media coverage and led to the unearthing of other instances of official ‘sponsorship’ of chivatos [grasses]. Around the same time, the government launched a mobile phone application to check train times and fares for a regional train line. It included a button to report “anti-social behavior” – this ranged from putting feet on seats, smoking, playing music outside authorised areas and begging. The application even allowed the user to classify a beggar under different categories before sending the report. An online petition against the application was launched shortly after its release and was signed by more than 50,000 people in a matter of days. The application was eventually removed.

State-sponsored informing also entered the school system. By 2012, the Department of Education was encouraging parents to report ‘cheating’ parents who used inaccurate residential data to gain admission for their children to a particular school. In a move that defied not only common sense but also data protection legislation, the government gave parents access to the names and addresses of other parents upon request so that they could report any wrongdoing – and potentially free up spaces for their own children. Previously, when someone was suspected of using a false address the town hall was responsible for checking the veracity of the information. In 2012, parents became responsible for spying and reporting on each other.

Another worrying development, which seems to have been put on hold for the time being, is a proposal to legalise so-called somaténs, a paramilitary police corps which was established in medieval times in certain areas of Spain. The somaténs were banned during the democratic periods of Spain’s history, but recently an increase in criminal activity in rural areas (mainly involving the theft of cattle and farm tools) has seen a revival of the scheme in which groups of individuals arm themselves to patrol areas they feel are vulnerable to criminal activity.

There are currently a handful of these rural patrols in Catalunya. Up until late 2012, the regional government was exploring the idea of legitimising their activity as a civil aide to the police force, but a change of government seems to have halted those plans. However, the somaténs continue to operate and, in May 2012, a man being chased by such a group suffered a heart attack. [9] While the man’s death was ruled accidental, it could be argued that the situation was provoked by a group of armed men chasing someone they believed to be a thief. In theory rural patrols should alert the police to cases of suspicious activity and never engage in pursuit or arrest. This protocol clearly was not followed during the events of May 2012, but the case did not receive much media attention or legal scrutiny.

The watchers go online

New technologies and digital media mean that vigilantes can now operate online. There are already several examples of neighbourhood patrols using social media to communicate and instances of crowdsourcing the act of ‘watching.’ The best known example of this is probably Blueservo, a project proposed in 2006 with the intention of crowdsourcing policing of the US-Mexico border and ‘empower[ing] the public to proactively participate in fighting border crime’ – that is, reporting migrants trying to enter the USA. [10] Another example is ‘Internet Eyes’, a UK website that gives paid subscribers real-time access to CCTV footage and cash rewards for ‘positive alerts.’ [11]

Not all crowdsourcing is CCTV-based. In 2010, an English-speaking Barcelona resident launched a website and Facebook page called ‘Robbed in Barcelona’ in order to “raise awareness of the situation in the city and to embarrass the local authorities into action.” [12] The site encourages people to anonymously submit pictures, videos and advice on pickpockets and thieves. It often features robberies, detailing the methods and physical appearance of those identified as the perpetrators. While some comments just describe events, others tell stories that are difficult to believe.

This is not the only instance of informers going online. Recently a somatén in Riudellots de la Selva, a town of 2,000 people, launched a Facebook group and a ‘whatsapp’ account that was used by members to exchange information and pictures of any aberrant activity they observed. [13] The contributions are a mixture of self-promotion, dissemination of relevant news pieces, comments about specific crimes and stories about people begging, looking for a place to squat or just wandering around the village. Images of individuals (personal data) are circulated without their permission or consent. There is little data to suggest that such schemes contribute to the reduction of crime.

Tales from the other side: neighbourhood care, countering vigilantism and policing the police

As the above cases show, there is a thin dividing line between neighbourhood patrols and vigilantism. Even when citizens’ patrols are state-sponsored or intended as a civil contribution to a community’s safety, it is difficult to ignore the impact of prejudicial and racist profiling through which these schemes create an ‘other’ to be placed under observation. As anti-drug neighbourhood patrols from the 1980s demonstrate, it is always easier to chase a drug user than a drug dealer. Those pursued by vigilantes are always the most vulnerable – victims of drug addiction, victims of trafficking in women, or exclusion in the case of sex workers.

However, there are also examples of ‘neighbourhood care’ schemes that defy stereotyping and explore self-organisation in solidarity with the community. As the ‘Robbed in Barcelona’ website shows, petty theft is common in Spain. Often it is the elderly who are affected by this type of crime; who are most vulnerable after they have withdrawn money from a cash machine or when running errands whilst wearing jewelry. Many elderly people only dare go out with help and support from family, friends and neighbours.

There are few accounts of these informal solidarity networks, but community groups maintain that it is common for volunteers to accompany older people when they go shopping, visit the doctor or spend time at the community centre. [14] In Reus, a medium-sized town in Catalunya, neighbourhood residents accompany elderly people on the streets to help them regain confidence. Contrary to the examples mentioned previously, these groups do not seek publicity nor do thay make specific demands on the authorities. [15]

In summer 2011, in the Andalusian capital Seville, several patrullas combined to draw attention to situations they felt resulted from a lack of policing. These included the growing number of informal ‘parking attendants’ (who make a living by requesting tips from drivers who want to leave their car in a specific area) and shanty towns erected on the outskirts of the city that are mainly inhabited by people of Romanian origin. The patrullas were quickly dismissed by some of the more established neighbourhood associations and authorities. Radical organisations linked to Indymedia exposed links between some of their members and the far right. [16]

As members of the patrullas gathered regularly in different shanty towns to harass the informal parking attendants, groups affiliated to the local radical left organised contra-patrullas. They met at the same time and location as the patrullas, forcing them to dismantle the scheme with some degree of success. [17]

A similar development occurred in Madrid, when activists felt members of the central neighbourhood of Lavapiés were being harassed due to their origins or appearance. This time, however, the profiling was not done by other citizens but by the police.

Several sources have pointed out that police profiling is pervasive and illegal in Spain. [18] Stopping people to conduct identity checks because they “do not look Spanish” is a common procedure that is neither discouraged nor punished by police authorities, even if there is evidence that the profiling is discriminatory. In 2011, after the 15M (indignados) movement abandoned the public squares to continue its activities at local level, the Lavapiés neighbourhood decided to make the struggle against racist police stops one of its main activities. Videos of police stopping people of migrant ‘appearance’ are regularly posted online [19] and community members alert one another of police operations via telephone, twitter [20] and other means. These Neighbourhood Brigades to Observe Human Rights Compliance are one of the most long-lived and active instances of neighbourhood patrols in Spain. [21]

A close look at vigilantism and neighbourhood patrols in Spain exposes a counterintuitive picture. Vigilantism inspires both state-sponsored schemes and counter-vigilantism: the observed appropriate the ways and means of the observers, and the hierarchy of control is subverted. Suddenly, a nation of grasses meets a nation of whistleblowers that use the same social media, community rhetoric and appeals to the greater good to explain and justify its existence.

Endnotes

[1] In 1930, only ten Spanish cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants (Atlas Histórico de España).

[2] Falange Española, or El Movimiento, was the social organisation of Francoism.

[3] For a general history of this period, see, for instance, Carr, Raymond. 2001. Modern Spain, 1875-1980. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks.

[4] El Pais, 16.5.02: Vigilantism, neighbourhood patrols and state sponsored informing are long established practices in Spain, and have been facilitated in recent years by new technologies and the growth of social media.

[5] El Pais, 29.8.00: link

[6] Interview with Barcelona’s then Councilor for Community Safety (interview conducted in April 2010).

[7] Metropolitan Police website: link

[8] Vancouver Police Department website: link

[10] link

[11] link

[12] Robbed in Barcelona, 9.3.10: link

[13] link

[14] Interview with community worker (May 2013).

[15] el Periódico, 16.5.13: link

[16] Indymedia estrecho, 6.7.12: link

[17] A tweet written by a member of the counter-patrol on 23 February 2013 reads: “Xenophobic citizen patrol deactivated! Racists out of #Seville! #againstfascismnotonestepbackwards”

[18] See, for instance: link

[19] link

[20] link

[21] link