THE sight of a stag party marauding through the Costa del Sol wearing t-shirts emblazoned with huge swastikas came as a shock to both tourists and locals alike.
Organised by the leader of an infamous Madrid hooligan firm who was letting off steam before his impending nuptials, it saw the dozen or more men fully embracing former nazi Adolf Hitler’s ideology down to the very symbol.
This was the notorious Suburbios gang led by Daniel MF – alias El Ratilla – so abhorrent that even their own football team, Atletico Madrid, has banned them from home or away games.
READ MORE: Hooligan football firm holds wild Nazi-themed stag party on the Costa del Sol
According to eyewitnesses they tore up Malaga, drinking heavily, openly making Nazi salutes and singing fascist songs in the sunshine.
They even uploaded photos of their antics to far-right social media channels – some with right arms raised, others with clenched fists, and all united in wearing the notorious symbol of the Nazi party.
This little jaunt south well illustrates the current climate in Spain, where Nazis feel increasingly emboldened and free to show their true faces.
Little did the hooligan leader realise, however, that the Spanish police were watching his every move.
El Ratilla – who boasts a swastika tattoo, plus a Hitler portrait, a SS skull and even a speech by the Fuhrer inked on him – was arrested shortly after his wedding, just as he was preparing to depart on his honeymoon on September 20.
A dozen or so members of his gang were also swept up by police.
Raids uncovered a trove of Nazi propaganda, including T-shirts with Hitler’s portrait, the Suburbios logo with the phrase ‘Sons of Hitler’, alongside numerous fascist pamphlets and literature.
But it soon emerged he was not being arrested for his political affiliations, but for his deep involvement in organised crime and drug trafficking.
Police unearthed five kilos of cocaine, more than €100,000 in cash, and a series of weapons including ‘nunchucks’.
Unfortunately, El Ratilla’s swastika-tattooed hooligans are far from the only Nazis to recently emerge in Spain’s social fabric.
Defending Christianity with ‘street militancy’
A relatively new, youthful group is called Nucleo Nacional.
Fronted by a mysterious pair of brothers, Ivan and David Rico, they address the public wearing black balaclavas, refusing to reveal their identities.
The duo have fostered a new class of jack-boot-wearing, skinheaded, romper-stomper style youth, promoting their ‘blood, soil and tradition’ ideology.
READ MORE: Spain’s king and queen visit Nazi concentration camp where thousands of Spanish republicans perished
The disciplined, alcohol-abstaining group claims to defend Spain’s white Christian identity through ‘nationalism, racial purity and street militancy’.
It was most recently linked to an assault on three young immigrants in Hortaleza in August, although it has not officially claimed responsibility.
However, its young leaders were recently unmased as brothers Ivan and David Rico, the wealthy sons of a former Partido Popular councillor with reported links to Vox.
The pair have set up shop in a plush new Madrid headquarters in Las Tablas, an upscale commercial district in the northern quarter, marked by the usual opaque financing that dogs such groups.
It’s a far cry from the usual dingy basement or squat holes often used by extremist groups, illustrating how far out of the shadows they have come.
READ MORE: Atletico de Madrid is fined €30,000 after fans performed nazi salutes during match against Benfica
Jews: the eternal enemy
The swanky setup was publicly inaugurated by another high-profile figure on the far right; the unabashedly out-and-out Nazi Isabel Peralta.
Just 23, Peralta first became notorious as a teenager, speaking at rallies praising the Division Azul, the Spanish volunteers who fought for Nazi Germany.
The youngster’s rap sheet puts even the most devout neo-Nazi to shame.
She has labelled Jews ‘the eternal enemy’, given Nazi salutes outside the PSOE socialist headquarters and shouted ‘death to the invader’ during an unauthorised protest outside the Moroccan Embassy.
While this earned her a one-year jail sentence for incitement in April, she didn’t have to spend a single night in prison as any jail term under two years in Spain is suspended.
Previously, she was deported from Germany and banned for life after she arrived at Frankfurt Airport in January 2023 with a Nazi flag and a copy of Mein Kampf in her suitcase.
Undeterred, Peralta has impeccable far-right connections around the globe, notably as European correspondent for Heritage & Destiny, a UK-based fascist magazine.
It led to her being stopped by UK counter-terrorism police, questioned for several hours, and had her devices examined before being released in 2023.
If Peralta represents the sharp end of the Nazi wedge, there are more figures in Spain’s political establishment offering indirect cover for extremism.
READ MORE: 11 NeoNazis in Spain arrested with guns and arms seized as leaders call for government overthrow
Anti-immigrant campaigns
Chief among them is Alvise Perez, a self-styled anti-system crusader who rode online outrage to win 800,000 votes and enter the European Parliament in 2024.
While not a swastika-saluting Nazi, the provocateur became infamous for his conspiracy rants, anti-immigrant crusades and constant attacks on institutions – generating the sort of paranoia and disinformation that supplies the oxygen to Spain’s neo-Nazis.
During the Covid era, he thrived on spreading hoaxes and conspiracies, including the false claim that Madrid’s former mayor Manuela Carmena got a respirator while ordinary citizens died.
The sevilliano even doctored images of ministers to smear them with false corruption claims and leaked a politician’s private medical records to insinuate drug use.
He has also pushed baseless election-rigging conspiracies and proposed building Europe’s largest prison in Madrid to lock up immigrants and anyone with ‘gang tattoos.’
Far-right rising
But the new kid on the block of Spain’s panoply of far-right figures is undoubtedly Silvia Orriols.
Dubbed the ‘Le Pen of the Pyrenees’, the 44-year-old mayor of Ripoll – a small town north of Barcelona – has built her platform on an ugly fusion of Catalan separatism and far-right ultranationalism.
Her Aliança Catalana party has declared Islam ‘incompatible with Catalan identity’ and vowed to expel foreigners from the town, which acquired notoriety as the hometown of the jihadists behind the 2017 Barcelona attack.
Since then she has faced hate crime investigations for her speeches, but continues to use her office to push an openly Islamophobic agenda while draping herself in Catalan separatist colours – a movement more commonly associated with the far left.
Alianca Catalana is now surging in the polls and could multiply its seats in the Catalan Parliament, while those same surveys indicate its popularity has climbed from a piddling 4% last year to currently 12% – on a par with far-left Sumar and even catching up with Vox itself.
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