Antifascistas: Resisting Spain's Far Right

Available for preorder.

This is a history of resistance that exposes how fascism adapts and how antifascism survives, learns, and fights back.

In Spain, the “transition” refers to the official passage from Franco’s dictatorship to parliamentary monarchy after 1975. But while democracy was being declared, the far right was regrouping. Old Francoism mutated into vigilante squads, state terror networks, neo-Nazi skinhead gangs, soccer ultras, and eventually new neofascist movements determined to claw their way into public life and state institutions.

A generation of antifascists came of age in the shadow of this violence. Faced with attacks on immigrants, dissidents, and anyone deemed disposable, they organized across neighborhoods, subcultures, and movements, refusing to accept the far right’s return as inevitable.

Drawing on firsthand testimonies, investigative reporting, and political and historical accounts, Ramos traces the antifascist struggle in Spain from the mid-1980s to the present. He documents how diverse individuals and collectives confronted neofascist forces, moving from urgent self-defense to coordinated offensive action. Antifascistas maps the crucial roles played by journalism, music, culture, institutions, and allied social movements, while reckoning honestly with internal debates, strategic failures, and hard-won victories.

Praise

“Miquel Ramos is not only the leading journalist of antifascist and far-right politics in Spain but also a longtime militant who has lived much of the history he chronicles in his magnum opus, Antifascistas. Finally translated into English, Antifascistas crafts a rich and extensive tapestry of the continuation of the antifascist struggle in Spanish side streets and barrios after the death of Franco. An instant classic, Ramos’s study is a compelling tale of everyday resistance and the first history of turn-of-21st-century antifascism in Spain.”
—Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook

“Antifascistas presents a unique perspective on the militant struggle against the far right in Spain. The book combines historical accounts of fascist organizing and violence from the 1960s to the present with firsthand accounts of efforts to combat fascism. In telling this story, Ramos shows the international links of both fascist and antifascist movements and analyzes how subculture is a point of conflict between these two ideologies. This is an insightful read for anyone interested in the history and internal dynamics of contemporary antifascist struggle.”
—Stanislav Vysotsky, author of American Antifa: The Tactics, Practice, and Culture of Militant Antifascism

About the Contributors

Miquel Ramos is a journalist specializing in right-wing extremism and social movements. Ramos has written about the far right in several collective books such as Gender and Far Right Politics in Europe, (2017), as well as contributing to publications specialized in far right research such as Searchlight and Hope Not Hate. He also published the report From Spain to the World: The Global Projection of the Spanish Far Right Against Sexual and Reproductive Rights (2025) and edited From Neocons to Neo-Nazis: The Radical Right in the Spanish State (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2021). He is likewise coauthor of the project crimenesdeodio.info, which works to preserve the memory of the mortal victims of racism, homophobia, and other forms of intolerance in Spain since 1990. He is the author of the podcasts Dios Patria Yunque (2024) and Crímenes de Odio (2025). He also works as a trainer on hate speech, hate crimes, and human rights for various organizations.

Tomas Rothaus is a lifelong anarchist and antifascist as well as an athlete and a father. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and his nomadic life led to him moving around, with stops in Athens, Boston, Buenos Aires, and Paris, followed by longer stints in Germany and more recently returning to Argentina. He has been involved with a broad range of organizations including the CNT-Vignoles, Collectif Anti-Expulsions (Anti-Deportation Collective), Barricada Collective, Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists, Antifaschistische Linke International, and Acción Antifascista Buenos Aires. He has been an active participant in militant demonstrations and antifascist mobilizations ranging from the Bush inauguration, the FTAA summit in Quebec in 2001 to the 2007 G8 summit in Rostock, Germany, and the 2011 mobilization to stop the march of several thousand neo-Nazis in the city of Dresden. PM Press published his first three books, Another War Is Possible; Argentina, a Tale of Two Utopias; and From Riot to Insurrection.

Click here for one-page information sheet on this product