In Spain, the word ‘insumisión’ directly refers to the civil disobedience campaign carried out by a large number of young activists during the last quarter of the twentieth century. This campaign consisted of the refusal to comply with both compulsory military service (CMS) and the alternative social service (ASS), disregarding the legal consequences that these actions would have. The aim of this paper is to analyse the resistance to military service in Spain during the 1970s and 1980s, a period when this resistance emerged and developed, first as a series of actions aimed at the recognition of the right to conscientious objection and subsequently as the insumisión campaign.
The paper concerns different aspects of the insumisión campaign. It shows how a demand for a minor issue during the Francoist dictatorship became a mass movement in the post-Francoist democratic system. During the transition to democracy, it is vital to understand why the Spanish youth supported so fervently the campaign, and in doing so, broke away from the cultural and social heritage of Francoism, particularly with regard to gender and the importance of the army as an institution. These transformation processes, which favoured the expansion of antimilitarism and social support for insumisión, are analysed against the background of the distinctive features of the Spanish context during the 1980s; finally, the contribution focuses on the impact of the insumisión campaign on fuelling the public debate over pacifist and antimilitarist issues, and its importance as a movement in testing the democratic legitimacy of post-Franco Spain.
Despite the importance of the antimilitarist movement during the 1980s and 1990s for Spanish society, there has been limited research on the issue, and most works have been produced by activists or groups which were close to this movement.Footnote 1 To offer a fresh view on social and political activism of the conscientious objectors in Spain, the article, for the first time, utilises the reports and minutes of the main assemblies of the groups of Movimiento de Objeción de Conciencia (MOC) and Mili KK in Catalonia and Spain.Footnote 2 The movement's depository, available at the War Resisters International Collection, comprises reports, pamphlets and correspondence between conscientious objectors of the 1970s. In addition, Casal del Pau, located in the Ateneu Enciclopèdic de Barcelona, holds hundreds of boxes with meeting minutes, correspondence, secretary's notebooks, magazines, pamphlets, etc., from the most important groups of objectors and insumisos of the last two decades of the twentieth century. Moreover, in order to understand the pacifist message as articulated in that period, all antimilitarist and pacifist magazines of the time have been analysed along with semi-structured interviews of the main activists from different antimilitarist movement groups.
Resistance during the Franco Dictatorship
Resistance to compulsory military service is an old practice dating back to the late eighteenth century. Until 1984, military service fostered social inequality, since the wealthier social classes always had alternatives to avoid the military service entirely or to do it under more comfortable and less dangerous circumstances. Moreover, military service represented a risk to the physical and mental health of conscripts.Footnote 3 This was still true during the 1980s. From 1968, compulsory military service lasted two years, subsequently being reduced in 1984 to one year and in 1991 to nine months. Alternative Social Service (ASS) was first recognised in 1984 with an initial duration of a period between eighteen and twenty-four months, subsequently being reduced to thirteen and eighteen months in 1991. Establishing a longer period than for the compulsory military service was considered a way of penalising the ASS, a tactic that was condemned by all objectors. However, the main reason for rejecting the ASS was the fact that large parts of the Spanish youth refused to carry out any kind of obligatory service to the state in the 1980s, a stance that became a common practice in the wake of the collective disobedience campaign, the so-called insumisión.
The insumisión campaign officially began in February 1989, but similar issues were addressed in previous campaigns demanding the official recognition of conscientious objection (CO). These protests took place in the 1970s to achieve the acknowledgement of a right that was not granted by the repressive Francoist legal system and formed a part of a wider struggle for fundamental rights and freedoms under Franco.Footnote 4 Conscientious objectors explored various strategies of resistance under a dictatorial regime. Many of the young activists who refused to do compulsory military service were imprisoned. However, imprisonment was skilfully used by objectors and their support networks as a way of shedding more light on the problem.Footnote 5 Despite the repression, the issue of conscientious objection developed a strong countercultural appeal amongst large parts of the Spanish youth.
Conscientious objection (CO) in Spain became a political issue during the 1970s. The first objectors were the Jehovah's witnesses, who resisted CMS in the late 1950s. The right to CO was never acknowledged within the legal framework of the Franco regime, which was no surprise given the important role of the army and the power of militarism within the regime.Footnote 6 During the dictatorship, objectors were imprisoned on the grounds of criminal disobedience, with prison sentences ranging between six months to six years.Footnote 7 Afterwards they were conscripted again, as they had not completed their military service.Footnote 8 A subsequent refusal resulted in a new sentence, and this process would go on until objectors reached thirty-eight, the age from which military service was no longer mandatory.Footnote 9 However, the objector was usually granted a pardon after several years of prison. This situation was perpetuated until 1973, when the refusal to serve became a crime which warranted prison sentences between three to eight years.Footnote 10
With the appearance of Catholic objectors during the 1970s, the issue of resistance to CMS clearly turned into a source of political conflict.Footnote 11 The first objector who was not a Jehovah's witness was Pepe Beunza, who refused to do CMS in 1971.Footnote 12 Five other objectors followed until 1975, when the first case of collective objection took place in the Can Sierra neighbourhood, in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat in Barcelona. In 1976, a similar collective declaration of CO occurred in the same neighbourhood as well as in other places such as Bilbao, Málaga, Reus and Vic.Footnote 13 Finally, in 1977 the Movimiento de Objeción de Conciencia (MOC) was created in Madrid as an umbrella organisation for all objectors in Spain.Footnote 14 Between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, MOC groups were established throughout Spain. Around 1981 the MOC consisted of between sixty and eighty groups, according to the activists themselves.Footnote 15 The most popular groups were those in the main Spanish cities: A Coruña, Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid, Málaga, Oviedo, Sevilla, Terrassa, Valencia, Zaragoza, etc.Footnote 16 MOC became the representative of all these local groups and the most important organisation of activists against compulsory military service. It began as a group of conscientious objectors who initially fought for legal acknowledgement of objection and, later on, during the 1980s, overwhelmingly opted for insumisión, although the name MOC remained.
Spanish conscientious objection was deeply influenced by French groups of non-violent objectors in the Communauté de l'Arche of the Lanza de Vasto area, where a small spiritual commune was founded in southern France in 1948. As a result of the contact established with this pacifist and Catholic organisation in the late 1950s, a similar network was formed in Spain under the doctrine of non-violence. Based on religious ideas about non-violence, this network held annual meetings attended by Spanish followers of the non-violent doctrine, but also by members of foreign organisations.Footnote 17 In the Communauté de l'Arche, many young Spanish activists were introduced to conscientious objection. The French objectors explained to the Spanish activists what CO entailed and how it had developed as a movement in France. They encouraged them to carry out a similar campaign in Spain, putting them in contact with objectors from other European countries, mainly Belgium and Italy.Footnote 18 In fact, in France, Italy and Spain, the opposition to conscription had similar motivations among the young refractories: they suffered a strong state repression, which made them even more entrenched in their antimilitarism and disobedience that led to a social movement against the conscription, with also similar stages of development.Footnote 19 The only significant differences were those referring to the chronology and especially to the impact that the insumisión had in the Spanish case. However, the insumisión in Spain also had French inspiration, especially from the time of the Algerian war and the late 1970s, when objection groups in France were radicalised.Footnote 20
This process was crucial in providing a support system for the first objectors. In Spain, non-violent groups, together with Catholic organisations such as Pax Christi or Justicia y Paz, which were influenced by the progressive spirit of the Second Vatican Council, offered a helping hand.Footnote 21 While abroad, objectors received significant support from other groups of European objectors, especially in France and Belgium, as well as major international pacifist and antimilitarist organisations such as the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and War Resister International (WRI).Footnote 22 In 1970, WRI's General Secretary, Devi Prasad, informed Pepe Beunza about their interest in the struggle of objectors in Spain. As a consequence, WRI used its information channels to publicise the issue, reaching a significant number of pacifist and antimilitarist organisations across Europe and the United States, although sharing the limelight with other important issues of the international pacifist agenda, such as the Vietnam War, the first Italian objection law or the unilateral disarmament campaign of the Union Pacifiste in France. Pepe Beunza's case was considered by IFOR and WRI the first step of the pacifist struggle in Spain, as shown by the letter that IFOR Secretary Pieter Eterman sent to Prasad showing respect for (or support of) the conscientious objection initiated by Beunza on behalf of both organisations:
I do agree with you that the Action Pepe, if it would be interpreted as a ‘Support’, has very little significance, and that it should grow into, or rather remain as it started from the beginning, a campaign for the support of conscientious objection in Spain.Footnote 23
On the other hand, the Spanish objectors also thought that strengthening their international connections was a good strategy, not only to receive support but also to know how the pacifist work had developed in countries with democratic systems.
These transnational networks constituted only one part of the emerging strategy used by conscientious objectors during the 1970s to resist CMS. During the last decade of dictatorship, CO was part of a wider anti-Francoist movement (education, trade unions, feminism, etc.) which tried to topple the regime and fought for democratic rights and freedoms.Footnote 24 Objectors capitalised on the huge influence of the Catholic religion on the dictatorship and Spain's quest for an ameliorated international image to advance their claims.Footnote 25 In particular, the announcements and documents of the Second Vatican Council and its support by some Spanish bishops worked in their favour.Footnote 26
One of the strongest weapons in the objectors’ arsenal was their readiness to turn their own incarceration into an indictment against the repressive nature of the state. The objectors prepared themselves physically and mentally to spend an uncertain time in prison. Moreover, imprisonment triggered conscientious disapproval campaigns, such as hunger strikes, international marches, demonstrations in front of Spanish foreign embassies and consulates and mass petitions directed to the Spanish authorities.Footnote 27 Meanwhile, objectors in many Spanish cities organised the so-called ‘self-managed civil services’, which ultimately entailed community services and activities (nursery service, adult literacy workshops, maintenance of community premises, etc.) and thus constituted an alternative to military service and, more importantly, a way to channel resistance to the state. Through these actions, objectors condemned the social inequalities of Francoist Spain and projected an alternative to CMS, another way to ‘serve the nation’ without guns.Footnote 28
These actions were combined with the support of international groups which launched their own awareness campaigns once the objectors were incarcerated. For the Beunza case, WRI coordinated actions such as protests in front of Spanish consulates and embassies across Europe and the United States or a march supported by different international pacifist groups which was intended to travel from Beunza's prison to Geneva, but was intercepted in the Bourg-Madame frontier, between France and Spain.Footnote 29 Another example of a highly effective campaign was the hunger strike of Marco Pannella, an MP of the Partito Radicale d'Italia, in Barcelona in September 1977, in response to the imprisonment of seven objectors who were carrying out ‘self-managed services’ in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona).Footnote 30 Pannella's Partito Radicale got involved in the CO struggle in Italy and established connections with the Spanish objectors from the time of Beunza's campaign. These kinds of actions, from Pannella's campaigns to the international awareness campaigns coordinated by WRI, show the connection among pacifist and antimilitarist groups at an international level. These connections were also fundamental to compensate the limited number of objectors at that moment in Spain.
During the 1970s the number of men who chose conscientious objection was very small. We can only rely on exact figures between 1974 and 1977. On one side, resistance to military service did not become a criminal offence until 1973, previously considered just a crime of disobedience. According to the available data, the number of conscientious objectors remained under 200 per year (Table 1), resulting in a maximum ratio of 0.08 per cent in 1976. On the other hand, in 1977 the government established a new category of ‘postponed incorporation’ for the individuals who declared themselves objectors, awaiting a new law that would address the issue of military objection.Footnote 31
Table 1. Crimes of ‘Disobedience’ and ‘Refusal to comply with military service’, 1970–1979.
Source: Military Statistical Yearbook (1970–9), chapter VIII, Justicia, 1. Body of army, classification of convicted per army according to the nature of the crime committed.
However, the determination of the first objectors, together with the international support and the structure of political opportunities offered by the transition process, resulted in the inclusion of conscientious objection in the legislative agenda of the transition process, although remaining unsolved.
The internationally coordinated actions carried out by IFOR and WRI put foreign pressure on the regime by condemning it for the lack of guarantees regarding fundamental rights.Footnote 32 The international pressure was rather effective since the Francoist regime and the transition governments were eager to join several organisations, with the most pressing issue being the association to the European Economic Community.Footnote 33
As we have already seen, in the 1970s the connection among the pacifist and antimilitarist groups was fundamental to compensate the limited number of objectors. Nevertheless, in the next decade, the figures changed significantly. We have no specific data until 1985, when the government published the figure of 10,213 objectors in ‘postponed incorporation’ since 1977.Footnote 34 What began as a temporary fix remained in place until 1989, when resistance to CMS had become a significant social movement firmly committed to insumisión.
Previously, the figures of individuals asking each year to be recognised as objectors was public, showing a sustained upward trend throughout the 1980s, which rocketed in the 1990s. As explained by Sampedro in his study, ‘the more than 70,000 objectors of 1995 equated to the 40% of the draftees conscripted that year’ (Table 2).Footnote 35
Table 2. Percentage of recognised objectors, 1986–1993.
Source: National Council of Conscientious Objection and Military Statistical Yearbooks (1986–93).
During the 1980s, the search for international support decreased significantly. This created some distance with the international groups, not so much for a lack of affinity but because the movement felt enough support within Spain to go another step further with regard to disobedience against the state, which would result in insumisión. This shift was also based on the high participation of young people in the movement.Footnote 36
All of these actions widened MOC's membership, with the arrival of young activists from different political backgrounds, mainly socialism and anarchism. This growth brought a real crisis to the movement, due to the different ways of approaching activism within the organisation, and a rising divergence over the aims and strategies of MOC's planned actions.Footnote 37 The organisation started to overcome its differences around 1982, when its activists came closer together, compromising on a unified ideological stance. After many internal discussions, individual withdrawals and splits, those who remained mostly understood activism within MOC as something beyond the issue of conscientious objection. As an external factor, Spain's entry into NATO also had a considerable impact. As a result, many MOC members thought that the movement had to develop a deeper antimilitarist activism. This internal shift became evident in a second ideological statement of the MOC, published in 1986, which defined the organisation as a space of political and social activism whose aims were beyond the mere acknowledgement of CO. In the short term they pursued the abolition of CMS and ASS, whereas in the long term they advocated a deep transformation of society:
Specifically aiming at antimilitarist duties, MOC is a political, radical and alternative movement, which participates in solidarity in the joint development of other revolutionary struggles. . . . Antimilitarism is a revolutionary movement that confronts the military structure and duties and its social implications, and opposes political, economic and ideological dominance.Footnote 38
Apart from MOC, other antimilitarist groups established at the time had considerable support from young people. One of them, Mili KK (‘Kakitzat’ in the Basque Country), became the rallying point for the antimilitarism of young activists who belonged to the two main parties of the radical left: the Revolutionary Communist League (Liga Comunista Revolucionaria; LCR) and the Communist Movement (Movimiento Comunista; MC). The radical left-wing parties had not shown any interest in resistance to CMS during the 1970s, but this changed in the early 1980s. Although this rapprochement was sought by both sides from the late 1970s, many MOC activists expressed their mistrust towards the two political parties at the MOC assemblies, so the activists who belonged to these parties were excluded from MOC's internal structure and therefore opted for Mili KK groups.Footnote 39
Mili KK mainly spread throughout cities and regions where both the MC and the LCR enjoyed significant support, for instance Asturias, Alicante, Barcelona, the Basque Country, Córdoba, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra and Sevilla. This group started in 1984 and expanded its activities to the entire country, thanks to the support of both left-wing parties.Footnote 40 Mili KK unreservedly endorsed the insumisión campaign, and its participation in the antimilitarist movement provided a higher convening power since it appealed to the parties’ activists, a strongly politicised sector of the population with a marked party discipline.Footnote 41 When these parties called for action, they could count on substantial support from their members. The involvement of the radical left-wing parties resulted in an increasing number of new activists and new channels of communication with young individuals, since these parties relayed the idea of insumisión to their activists, supporters and peer groups.
Finally, during the 1980s other antimilitarist groups with a younger age profile emerged.Footnote 42 However, MOC and Mili KK consolidated their authority as antimilitarist organisations in Spain.
Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party
In 1982, the newly elected Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español; PSOE) government intervened on the issue of CO by introducing the alternative social service (ASS) as a substitute to CMS.Footnote 43 The legal framework for both CO and ASS was integrated into a set of reforms concerning the army, which were passed as legislation in 1984. Within these reforms, the possibility of declaring oneself an objector after joining the ranks was not acknowledged, and the duration of the CMS was set at twelve months, the ASS at eighteen to twenty-four months. A new body, the National Council for Conscientious Objection (Consejo Nacional de Objeción de Conciencia; CNOC), was established in order to assess the objectors’ statements.Footnote 44
As a result of this shift and after many debates, MOC became committed to developing a wide-ranging campaign of civil disobedience to the state and prepared itself for the strategy of insumisión. Footnote 45 Prior to the implementation of insumisión and, as a consequence of the uncertain outcome of the campaign, a new strategy of collective disobedience was developed against the PSOE's laws regarding CO and ASS. This new, less confrontational strategy eventually enabled measuring the strength of the movement. This so-called ‘collective objection campaign’ began in 1985 to gather all antimilitarist objectors and try to hold back the law and duties of the CNOC.Footnote 46 The campaign challenged the CNOC, testing the limits of the objection law. According to this law, objectors had to submit a letter in which they explained their reasons for declaring themselves objectors. All objectors who participated in the campaign based their objection on political reasons, which were not included in the law.Footnote 47 Moreover, they submitted the same letter (the so-called collective statement), although the law specified that each objector had to submit a personal letter.Footnote 48 These collective statements were deliberately outside the confines of the law and left the CNOC with only two alternatives: accepting the statement or rejecting all of them, which would involve new imprisonments, as had already happened in the 1970s. The campaign was intended to test how far state institutions were willing to go in their response to offences against the regulations.
In order to mount a successful campaign, a high level of participation was needed to force the CNOC to face the challenge to accept or reject these collective statements. Eventually, on 15 May 1985, numerous objection statements were submitted in a public event at the town halls of several cities, and by the beginning of July a total of 1,714 collective objections had been handed in. By the end of 1985, almost 3,000 objectors had seconded the proposal, out of an approximate total of 10,000 objection requests. MOC gained huge support for its strategy, and the CNOC finally decided to accept all collective statements until 1987.Footnote 49
At the same time, objectors also tried to hinder the enforcement of the law through legal means. MOC lodged an appeal before the Constitutional Court and presented it to the Ombudsman Ruíz Giménez on 13 March 1985.Footnote 50 This appeal received the support of a hundred associations of all sorts.Footnote 51
Both strategies were effective in preventing the implementation of the law until 1988. Meanwhile, the number of objectors kept on growing each year. This did not necessarily mean that the upcoming insumisión campaign would receive massive support, but the figures gave cause for optimism. The aim was to obtain as much support as possible from all sorts of organisations, with a special focus on professional associations and trade unions as well as organisations such as Justicia i Pau, Amnesty International, human rights’ associations, Jueces por la Democracia, town halls, youth councils, etc. MOC was the group in charge of coordinating the insumisión campaign, mostly because of its presence at a national level with groups in major Spanish cities and its high level of coordination.Footnote 52 In particular, the groups of MOC Bilbao and MOC Cantabria coordinated an international campaign together with insumisos from other countries, mainly from France.Footnote 53
The main line of argument put forward in garnering public support was to explain what justified insumisión and rejection of the ASS. Insumisión was presented as a way of opposing military service and, at the same time, militarism, since CMS was considered a product of the culture of war, reactionary Spanish nationalism and patriarchal and authoritarian institutions, all of which the activists opposed. The arguments against ASS followed two basic lines: no one should be forced to offer a free service to the state and, above all, ASS was filling job vacancies, thus worsening the employment situation. The latter was particularly sensitive since the country was going through a serious employment crisis (the unemployment rate reached 21.5 per cent in 1986).Footnote 54 It was vital to persuade the immediate circle of family and friends of insumisos, since they would be called upon to hide the objectors when they were declared fugitives, before appearing collectively in a public event. Additionally, each insumiso needed at least four people from their support network who would incriminate themselves for encouraging and supporting the insumiso in his crime. The purpose of this strategy was, on the one hand, to achieve as much exposure as possible, and on the other hand, to widen the social involvement of the action. Inducing someone to commit a crime meant that the inductor was an accomplice and could receive the same sentence as the insumisos. Therefore, the insumisión of one subject could multiply the number of guilty parties responsible for the crime. Eventually, this would increase the political price that the incarceration of objectors would mean for the government. Some of the people who incriminated themselves were former MPs, university teachers, lawyers and well-known personalities from different fields.Footnote 55 However, none of them were ultimately prosecuted.Footnote 56
In order to launch the insumisión campaign, the government had to establish the military service or the ASS as obligatory, which happened in the late 1980s. On 27 October 1987, the Constitutional Court made its decision public, ignoring the pleas presented by the ombudsman.Footnote 57 Immediately afterwards, in January 1988, the government published the ASS Regulation, which was the precondition to implement the ASS.Footnote 58 Following the publication of this regulation, the CNOC stopped receiving collective statements. In 1988, the government incorporated the last objectors into the ASS (only the objectors since 1988), which meant that more than 24,000 men were exempted from the service, of a total of 26,656 acknowledged objectors (since 1977).Footnote 59 This measure was adopted mostly because the state did not have the capacity to absorb such a quantity of objectors, since it could only admit 2,500 candidates per year. According to the antimilitarist movement, this ‘amnesty’ was only adopted to demobilise the core of the movement, thereby significantly reducing their numbers.
On 20 February 1989 the insumisión campaign officially began when fifty-seven insumisos presented themselves in public simultaneously in different cities all around the country. At the end of the year, the number of acknowledged insumisos was close to 400.Footnote 60 This figure surpassed even the more optimistic expectations of the antimilitarist movement as, according to estimates, the number needed in the first year to be impactful was around 100.Footnote 61 As in the case of conscientious objectors, the insumisos expected repression to be unavoidable and an important part of their fight against the government. Thus, trial and imprisonment of each insumiso were transformed into a public event of political and social opposition by the antimilitarist movement.Footnote 62 The success of the specific campaign strategy is shown by the fact that, from 1989 until the definitive abolition of CMS in December 2001, only 100 insumisos ended up in prison out of an approximate total of 20,000.Footnote 63
The insumisión was not exclusive to Spain. The pacifist and antimilitarist groups had already put into practice resistance against military conscription long before in military conflicts, such as the war between the United States and Vietnam, the war between France and Algeria, or in the two world wars, especially in the first one.Footnote 64 However, in times of peace there have also been cases of ‘total resisters’ (to CMS and ASS) in European countries such as Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden, among others.Footnote 65 For Spain, the French case remained a particularly influential example, since the Comités de Lutte des Objecteurs from different parts of the French territory experienced a radicalisation of their ideas during the 1970s, shifting towards positions in favour of insumisión and creating specific groups for this purpose such as the Groupe d'Insoumission Totale, in Lyon, the Groupes d'Insoumission Collective, in Rouen, Caen, Paris and Dreux, or the Groupe pour l'Insoumission, in Nantes.Footnote 66 Another campaign which had some impact was the one carried out in 1977 by the International Collective Resistance which was started by twelve activists from France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. Nevertheless, no other country reached the figures of objectors that Spain had in this period.
In Spain, the government reacted to the insumisión movement with legislative changes, notably a law that passed in 1991, which established the increase of minimum sentences from one year to four years and four months, not to mention the loss of employment.Footnote 67 However, the government soon became aware of the consequences of imprisoning insumisos.Footnote 68 The movement had a large social base of support, and each arrest unleashed a new wave of protests, ranging from demonstrations to hunger strikes. The insumisos took advantage of every trial and imprisonment to draw the public's attention to the problem. On top of protesting, the movement launched another strategy that was carried out both by prisoners and activists who had not been incarcerated: reporting on the inhumane conditions of Spanish prisons, that is, lack of maintenance, abuses, drug problems, etc. In 1995, a new Organic Law on the Criminal Code, intended to avoid imprisoning insumisos, was passed and included in the criminal code. As a result of this reform, the crime of insumisión was punished with minimum prison sentences in times of peace: between six months and two years. Nevertheless, the law still envisaged the ‘total disqualification’ of all ‘honours, employment and public service’ during a period between ten and fourteen years,Footnote 69 a measure the insumisos reported as ‘civil death’.
Ultimately, the insumisión campaign was a great success with a large number of insumisos and the social support they received, the so-called ‘social safety net’ of insumisión. Support was also provided by many autonomous administrations which refused to collaborate with the government, by avoiding assistance in conscription duties or offering accommodation within the ASS.Footnote 70
Success of the Insumisión Campaign
Without a doubt, one of the main causes behind the success of the insumisión campaign was its ability to captivate a large part of the Spanish youth, both within the antimilitarist movement and, more specifically, within the initiative of resistance to CMS. Insumisión ended up being an act of formidable rebellion, eventually contributing to forming the identity of a sizeable part of the Spanish youth since the 1980s. The antimilitarist movement mainly consisted of young activists. Thus, the ‘veteran’ members did not usually exceed thirty years of age. Antimilitarism in the 1980s was attractive to the more politicised youth who defined themselves as left wing.Footnote 71 Many of these young activists were concerned with a myriad of issues and supported other social movements as well, such as environmentalism, feminism, the squatting of buildings, the defence of the so-called ‘free radios’, etc. – movements with which they established a dynamic interaction, reflected in the development of common projects of different natures. The common denominator of these activities was often the resistance to CMS itself.Footnote 72 The antimilitarist groups defined the movement as ‘radical’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘alternative’, ‘anti-capitalist’ and ‘anti-authoritarian’, features which fitted perfectly within the hallmarks of those environments.Footnote 73 Similarly, in other European countries a link was generated between radical youth culture and forms of antimilitarism.Footnote 74 In Spain, the act of insumisión to military service symbolised better than any other the rebelliousness, disobedience and questioning of authority by youth.
The influence of antimilitarism and insumisión within the youth counterculture was visible most vividly in the field of popular music.Footnote 75 Throughout the 1980s, many popular songs glorified insumisión and attacked the army, written by the main bands of the punk, radical-rock and heavy metal scenes, namely Eskorbuto, Guerrilla Urbana, La Polla Records and Reincidentes. Moreover, the 1980s witnessed the expansion of antimilitarist journals, newsletters and fan magazines, such as La Puça i el General and Mocador (Barcelona), Maldito País (Bilbao), Sin Cuartel, Oveja Negra and Zona Cero (Madrid), Stop Control and Mambrú (Zaragoza), among others, which offered information about other campaigns and social movements. Antimilitarist satire that emerged during that period was enormously popular in Spain. The magazine El Jueves, which included a section called ‘Stories of the Fucking Military Service’ (Historias de la Puta Mili) from 1986 and became an independent publication in 1990, inspired a theatre play and subsequently a movie.Footnote 76
Resistance to CMS represented a threat to the hegemonic masculinity that used to define Spanish identity. In this sense, it was a symbolic attack against the concept of masculinity which the dictatorship had instilled for forty years among the Spanish population.Footnote 77 This hegemonic form of masculinity was imbued with an exaltation of a virility based on authority, severity and rationality, claiming the expression of feelings as weakness. This concept of masculinity was also intended to encourage commitment to one's homeland and the defence of militarism, recalling the essential values of the European fascist regimes of the 1930s.Footnote 78
The principal role model of hegemonic masculinity during a large part of the Francoist regime was that of the nationalist veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Hence, the experience of war became a fundamental element in the ‘definition, affirmation and demonstration of Spanish male virility’. The ‘exemplary masculinity’ during the dictatorship was determined by the ‘experience of combat and military service’.Footnote 79 Thus, CMS was a simulation of the – warlike – rite of passage from which patriotic masculinity was shaped.Footnote 80 In the Spanish case, this meant giving continuity to the civil war which gave birth to the ‘brand new Spain’.
The objectors of the 1970s considered themselves as pacifists and peace loving, in direct contradiction to this stereotypical hegemonic masculinity. The prosecutors of the Francoist institutions discredited these people as ‘mentally ill’, questioning their manhood and even suggesting that their nationality should be revoked.Footnote 81 For their part, the insumisos of the subsequent decade distanced themselves from this concept of absolute pacifism,Footnote 82 highlighting their antimilitarist status, rejecting military values and considering CMS a total waste of time.Footnote 83 Even so, the insumisos remained targets of public defamation, which included contesting their manhood.Footnote 84 However, for a large number of young people the military experience ceased to be the necessary rite of passage towards manhood at the time.
Another important factor in contesting the hegemonic concept of masculinity was feminism, promoted and propelled by the considerable number of female activists who were involved in antimilitarist organisations. Many of them were also actively engaged in feminist groups and addressed gender issues within these groups, which led to an interesting dialogue within the movement, not without controversy. Since the Beunza case in 1971, a significant number of women were active members and played a important role in support groups, which was still the case with the subsequent objectors. These women became more visible with the establishment of MOC and, most importantly, the appearance of exclusively female groups such as the Group of Women of MOC in Bilbao, founded in 1978. In the following decade, one of the common features within the organisation was the existence of female groups that promoted feminism within MOC. The importance of this issue became evident in the second ideological statement of MOC:
. . . MOC is committed to overcome the current situation of oppression exerted upon women by enhancing both the feminist work being developed within it and a refreshing and non-sexist spirit of personal relationships. Moreover, MOC will insist on the critique and reprobation of the role of the army and militarism as the vehicle and promoter of macho and patriarchal values.Footnote 85
Thus, feminism and antimilitarism were two sides of the same coin, since the feminists identified militarism as a clear manifestation of all negative aspects of patriarchy. In this sense, they considered the army as an institution whose objectives and values directly favoured the oppression of women.
The ideological strengthening of military values directly confronts the values we want to banish, which have been used to keep us under submission. These military values are the hierarchical organisation of society . . ., the exaltation of virility as a value used to dominate women, of strength, of violence, standardisation and confinement of all remaining values to the private sphere.Footnote 86
Some activists of antimilitarist groups were also linked to the gay liberation movement.Footnote 87 Gay activists participated in antimilitarist campaigns and regarded the army in a very similar way to feminists, that is, a military institution which stood for an ideology and values that hindered homosexual liberation.Footnote 88
Nevertheless, the active presence of activists of gender liberation organisations did not mean the antimilitarist movement fully and immediately embraced these ideologies, let alone applying them in daily life. It should not be forgotten that Spain was coming out of a forty-year, deeply male chauvinist dictatorship, where only one type of sexuality and masculinity was accepted and where women played a secondary role.Footnote 89 The main criticism of the gay liberation groups referred to the language and the ideas of manhood that members of the antimilitarist movement occasionally expressed in their public campaigns.Footnote 90 Likewise, women had to fight back and raise their voices for their demands to be taken into account on the antimilitarist agenda. Indeed, during the 1970s and 1980s it was common for female issues to be downplayed on the groups’ agendas.Footnote 91 This inequality became clear through the use of language in public statements, which only mentioned male objectors, omitting women or their contributions to the protest repertoire and relegating women to support groups as well as through the extremely low number of articles written by women for antimilitarist magazines such as La Puça i el General. The emerging tensions were reflected in the minutes of MOC's assemblies,Footnote 92 with many women eventually abandoning the antimilitarist organisations. In some cases, these women decided to develop their own activism within exclusively female antimilitarist and pacifist groups. One of the most important examples was the group Dones Antimilitaristes (DOAN), in Barcelona.Footnote 93
For a significant sector of society, the army had held a negative image since the years of the Civil War. A part of the army rebelled against and defeated the republic, which contributed to the genesis of the Francoist dictatorship, where it played an active, repressive role. In some regions it was even considered as a ‘foreign occupying force’.Footnote 94 Furthermore, both antimilitarist activists as well as a significant part of the regime's opposition perceived the army as a threat during the entire transition process, a fear that was exacerbated with the failed coup d’état of 23 February 1981. Many activists from social and antimilitarist movementsFootnote 95 interpreted this event as a warning from circles close to Franco's regime on the limits of political openness during the transition and as additional evidence which proved that the army still represented a real ‘counter-revolutionary’ threat.
At a symbolic level, the antimilitarist movement considered and condemned the army as an institution that promoted, among others, ‘male chauvinist’, ‘authoritarian’ and ‘fascist’ values, which directly collided with the ideology of the antimilitarist organisations.Footnote 96 Moreover, in regions such as Catalonia and the Basque Country nationalist motivations also contributed to the rejection of the Spanish army. But undoubtedly the argument that resonated the most with the Spanish population, regardless of their political affiliation, was the considerable personal risk that the military service entailed. The official figures of deaths by accident or suicide and the number of cases of drug addiction during military service in the 1980s further discredited the institution and lent support to resisting military service. In Spain the popularity of the insumisión campaign particularly increased due to the polarising political and social climate of the period.Footnote 97 The crisis of military conscription grew into a Europe-wide phenomenon.Footnote 98 In particular, the question of Spanish membership in NATO and the ensuing referendum in 1986 proved a fertile ground for ongoing debates on antimilitarism.
The issue of Spain's NATO membership dominated the electoral agenda of 1982, with all left-wing parties opposing it. The issue gained even further relevance when the PSOE promised to call a referendum on this issue in case it won the elections. Felipe Gonzalez, the successful PSOE candidate for prime minister, fulfilled this promise. However, once in government, the socialists progressively changed their position until they eventually became the main advocates of remaining in the alliance.Footnote 99 Finally, the government's stance won by a very close margin.Footnote 100
During the referendum campaign the PSOE was heavily invested in keeping Spain in NATO. The governing party had to campaign hard to counter the popularity of the ‘movement for peace’, which comprised numerous pacifist and antimilitarist organisations specifically created for the occasion, as well as territorial platforms in major Spanish cities, such as the Coordinadora Española de Organizaciones Pacifistas or the Coordinadora Estatal por el Desarme y la Desnuclearización Total. Antimilitarist groups from MOC to Mili KK, but also other local antimilitarist organisations, played an active role in the anti-NATO campaign. All these diverse platforms brought about a wide heterogeneity of social movements: neighbourhood associations, feminist groups, student groups, trade union sections, pacifist organisations, political parties and, of course, different organisations affiliated to the antimilitarist movement.Footnote 101
The movement for peace was without a doubt the social movement with the biggest reach and the highest social and political impact on the entire country during the first half of the 1980s, bolstered by the pan-European mobilisation of the previous years in the wake of the planned deployment of US Cruise and Pershing missiles. The peace movement therefore strengthened the antimilitarist movement in three distinct ways: firstly, the huge public endorsement of the pacifist message brought to the fore issues such as the legitimacy of the Cold War, disarmament, military spending, etc.Footnote 102 Against this background the insumisos were able to make their resistance to CMS relevant for a large segment of the Spanish population.Footnote 103 Moreover, the high mobilisation of those years allowed the antimilitarist organisations to substantially expand their support networks and infiltrate other social movements. Finally, the extremely close result of the referendum in favour of NATO membership convinced the antimilitarist movement that a significant part of the population was able to understand and might even support the insumisión campaign.
Their observations were not off mark. Indicatively, in the early 1990s, only 74 per cent of the Spanish population was against the imprisonment of insumisos, a percentage that increased up to 87 per cent when younger people were included in the survey. Furthermore, the ‘Manifesto for the Abolition of Military Service’, published by the antimilitarist movement in 1989, was endorsed by some of the main parliamentary parties in Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country. In 1993, only the PSOE and PP still advocated forced recruitment.Footnote 104
It should be noted how the political circumstances favoured once more the insumisos in the early 1990s, when the Gulf War broke out. Spain sent around 1,200 soldiers, of whom 150 were young men on CMS.Footnote 105 Thus, the threat of participating in a real war was no longer just a theoretical possibility, which brought about more support for insumisión. Indeed, between 1989 and 1990, 1,200 men declared themselves insumisos, and by 1994 MOC estimated there were 10,800 insumisos.Footnote 106 As explained by Oliver, the judges showed a great disparity in the sentences of insumisos, most of which were under a year, and even in some cases resulted in an acquittal. The insumisos continued with the line of action incorporated at the time of Pepe Beunza: using incarceration as a way of discrediting the government, which eventually avoided the solution of incarceration.
Eventually, both CO and the ASS were suspended in 2001, as a result of the 1996 government agreement between the People's Party (Partido Popular) and the Catalonian party Convergence and Union (Convergència i Unió). By doing so, Spain joined other NATO countries which had abandoned conscription: the United Kingdom (1962), Luxembourg (1967), the United States (1973) and Canada, which did not have obligatory conscription in the first place. Throughout the 1990s, more countries which were culturally and geographically close to Spain also opted for a fully professional army: Belgium (1994), the Netherlands (1996) and France, which declared its end in February 1996, becoming effective in 2001. Following this trend, during the first decade of the twenty-first century, an important number of European NATO members also chose a professional army, but not all of them.Footnote 107 There is no single cause which explains the reasons for the suppression or suspension of obligatory conscription. On the contrary, each country's stance is the result of its own tradition and geostrategic context.Footnote 108 And yet, some academic analyses prove the existence of certain elements which had an influence on the transition towards a professional army. Firstly, it is important to consider the general context in which, by the second half of the twentieth century, the appropriateness of mass armies and even conscription were questioned.Footnote 109 Within this line of thought, some voices supported the reduction and specialisation of the troops, while others questioned the legitimacy of conscription considering the citizens’ individual rights.Footnote 110 Some of the political discourses have been based on budget; according to these approaches, which endorse the abolition of conscription, the labour costs are lower in professional armies, although this argument triggers a debate.Footnote 111 Another position is based on the perception of security in each specific country. In this sense, the end of the Cold War and the lack of territorial tensions in many countries contributed to the transition towards a fully professional army.Footnote 112
Within the catalogue of arguments which defended the maintenance of conscription, we find, for instance, certain discourses where the draft army is considered to provide specific social and political profits, such as a certain capacity of social cohesion and mixture, the conveyance of civilised values and a greater openness to democratic stances.Footnote 113 In the Spanish case, this line of thought lacks soundness, for several reasons. Firstly, the compulsory military service established in Spain since the nineteenth century was never free of significant differences according to the social status and economic capacities of the recruit's family. Secondly, the military uprisings have been recurrent in Spain's contemporary history, up to the point where the first democratic period, the Second Republic, ended as a consequence of the civil war caused by the attempt of the military coup d’état in 1936. During the Francoist dictatorship, the army became one of the foundations of the regime, used as a space of social control and political indoctrination.Footnote 114 Even during the transition process, the army became a reactionary threat, particularly with the attempt at a new coup d’état on 23 February 1981. Taking all this into account, it is easy to understand why the antimilitarist movement's discourses during the last third of the twentieth century in Spain tried to discredit the army on the basis of its antidemocratic character, and also because it conveyed authoritarian, male and Spanish chauvinist values (without respecting the different national realities of the Spanish territory).Footnote 115
On the other hand, if we analyse the Spanish case we can find many of the arguments which supported the professionalisation of the armed forces. For instance, Spain did not experience any tension on its frontiers, it was a member of a military alliance and, finally, as already pointed out, there were other countries which had already started the process of professionalisation of their armed forces.
However, the main cause which brought about the end of conscription in Spain was the political and social influence of the antimilitarist movement, which succeeded in the task of discrediting conscription and convinced a wide sector of Spanish society. As a matter of fact, the Defence Minister, Julián García Vargas, considered the phenomenon of objection and insumisión as a ‘problem of State’ which was driving ‘Spain to a dead end’.Footnote 116 As has already been explained, the antimilitarist and insumisión movement ended up becoming a space of socialisation for a wide sector of Spanish youth, which also provided an identity through different social practices. This latter feature had a special relevance in some territories with an important national identity, such as Catalunya, Navarra and the Basque Country.Footnote 117
The objective was the complete professionalisation of armed forces and the end of the problems that derived from resistance to compulsory military service.Footnote 118 However, the transition to the new model was not easy, due to the difficulty in filling the number of vacancies for the new army. In 2000, a year before the suspension of conscription was made effective, there were candidates for only 60 per cent of the 17,500 vacancies announced.Footnote 119
Conclusion
The fight against compulsory military service, from CO to insumisión, was an important exercise of resistance against the state itself, challenging its authority to force its citizens to carry out compulsory services, either military or civil, both in the last period of the dictatorship and during the transition to democracy. The antimilitarist movement advocated, in a tacit way, individual freedom by questioning the obligations towards the state. The insumisión campaign also constituted a way of testing the limits of the new democratic system, which was politically consolidated by 1982. During the forty preceding years, the dictatorial regime was enormously repressive in the face of any sign of protest, with its public image being the only area in which the Francoist elites showed any sensitivity. The transition to democratic rule required the dialogue between state and society to be changed. Even though the new state relied on political and social legitimacy to pass legislative reforms and implement the latter, the methods of subduing citizens under these regulations could never reach the level of repression the previous regime had applied. In spite of what the law declared, the repressive methods used against insumisos were reduced during the 1990s due to the social support that insumisión received.
The insumisión campaign presented a real challenge for the newly emerged democratic system in Spain. It was the first significant test for the government, with a certain social group antagonising the authorities by deliberately breaking existing laws. The insumisión campaign became part of a battle for legitimacy in which the government initially had an advantage. In 1988, the PSOE government commanded huge social and political legitimacy, which enabled it to force conscription and implement the transition towards the full establishment of professional armed forces, in terms of the necessities and momentum of the state itself. In 1986, the PSOE had just won the referendum to stay in NATO, albeit by a very narrow margin; it regained an absolute, although reduced, majority in the elections of the same year, and the Constitutional Court had ruled in its favour regarding the appeal on the laws of CO and ASS. Besides, the government had freed all objectors up to that year from the obligation of doing CMS, thus discarding the ‘historic activists’ of the insumisión campaign. However, around 20,000 people became insumisos between 1989 and 2001, meaning that the government had to deal with an important act of collective disobedience which was able to redirect state repression against the state itself.Footnote 120
The insumisos could reverse the situation in their favour by capitalising on the repression they endured. The registered repressive acts were a constant embarrassment for the government whilst generating sympathy for the movement within Spanish society and even certain local administrations and political parties. It was the combination of these two key factors – the strategic use of legal penalties and the abundance of societal support – that determined the success of insumisión. However, there were other aspects that contributed to this success, such as the negative image of the army, inherited from the Francoist dictatorship, the political opportunities generated by the referendum and the general discontent with the Gulf War.
Beyond political issues, antimilitarist activism contributed to endorsing the social and cultural changes Spain witnessed in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Firstly, activism within antimilitarist groups attracted a considerable sector of Spanish youth who openly opposed Francoism and were critical or sceptical about the new democratic scenario. The antimilitarist groups became the first space of political activism for many young people where they tried to break away from, or at least challenge, the values promoted during the forty years of dictatorship. Thus, they openly questioned the army, one of the main pillars of the dictatorship, but they also threw doubt on values associated with this institution: a strong Spanish nationalism, blind obedience, authoritarianism and virility.
Secondly, antimilitarist activism became a crucial platform for the exchange of political ideas. In this regard it is important to point out the role insumisión played as a tool for establishing a network of relationships between different social organisations. The debate and subsequently the referendum on NATO membership contributed to the convergence of several social and political movements such as the student, neighbourhood, feminist, environmental, nationalist, pacifist and antimilitarist movements, together with the left-wing parties. The following insumisión campaign helped maintain this interaction between social movements in a latent way and kept going the public debate regarding the causes of antimilitarism and pacifism. This explains why a good part of Spanish society accepted the arguments of the insumisos. Moreover, it sowed the seeds of pacifist culture in Spanish society, which would blossom years later in the significant protests against the Gulf War (1991) and the Iraq War (2003).
Finally, the insumisión campaign has set an example for organisation, action and success in the imaginary of Spain's social movements of the last thirty years. However, the context in which it took place is often ignored: immediately following the years of a highly militarised dictatorship and shaped by a heated public debate regarding membership of NATO. It is also crucial to note how the government kept on changing throughout the years its methods of dealing with the social movements’ strategies, mainly by prioritising fines and employment disqualifications, and resorting to imprisonment only in specific cases. Having said that, we have witnessed an increase in repressive forms, including incarceration, during the last decade.
