The harvest

The harvest. Cartoon of 13/07/2025 in CTXT

Translation of the cartoon: "This season our crop of hate is doing very well".

A fifth night (Tuesday 15) of various incidents on the streets of Torre Pacheco, a town of 40,000 inhabitants in Murcia (Spain), after an assault on Domingo Tomás Martínez, a 68-year-old resident of the town, took place on Wednesday 9 July.

Today everything has been much calmer. The rally called for this day had a very small turnout, partly because the Guardia Civil prevented the demonstration of the ultras to avoid altercations. About a hundred people, at most, gathered in the vicinity of the Torre Pacheco Town Hall and apart from a few insults to some of the media and a few stale slogans, there were no incidents of note.

The riots and disturbances have already left at least 14 people arrested and 120 identified, most of them with a history of violence.

Two of the three North Africans involved in the attack were arrested on Monday. According to Mariola Guevara, delegate of the Government in the Region of Murcia, these two people "collaborated and covered up for the alleged perpetrator, who has already been identified", the two arrested are not residents of Torre Pacheco.

Shortly afterwards, the Ertzaintza arrested in Rentería (Gipuzkoa) the third of those allegedly involved in the attack on the Torre Pacheco resident when he was about to board a train bound for Irún, supposedly to travel to France. The San Sebastian court ordered the 19-year-old detainee, who according to various media reports has no declared address in Torre Pacheco, to be remanded in custody without bail and was sent to Martutene prison.

Among the total of those arrested is also the leader of the racist group"Deport Them Now" who was arrested in Mataró (Barcelona) for instigating "hunts" of immigrants in Torre Pacheco from a Telegram group.

From minute one, violent reactions have followed one after the other, which are beginning to have repercussions. Thus, the PSOE has denounced the president of Vox in Murcia, José Ángel Antelo, to the Public Prosecutor's Office for a hate crime, and the Public Prosecutor's Office has opened proceedings and is investigating various publications on social networks. Podemos will also take public officials of Vox to the Public Prosecutor's Office, accusing them of "disseminating and encouraging videos of lynchings" in Torre Pacheco.

The prosecutor against hate crimes considers that the calls to "hunt the immigrant" in Torre Pacheco are "clearly a criminal offence".

The PP, always in that right-wing that tries to disguise itself as a centre, has condemned violence in general without pointing the finger anywhere, as usual. Lest they end up raising their arm to ask for a taxi as a reflex action. That was his only useless contribution.

It goes without saying that the explicit calls for violence, the hunts and the spreading of racist and hate messages are not an isolated act due to the events in Torre Pacheco, it is the result of something that has been brewing for a long time, little by little, from different fronts. Some call ita "cultural battle", others want us to believe that this is what politics is all about and a few useful fools, grouped in a diffuse mixture of undocumented reactionary"strimineros", manipulators and liars, mobile phone in hand, claim it is "journalism" or the new "truth".

Following all the known stages and in the same order, the first step was to alter reality to invent a new one in line with the violent people's thinking, and add it to the resident hoaxes, thus giving them more oxygen during the first hours of the riots.

This facilitated open-faced hunts against residents of Torre Pacheco by young ultras who came from different nearby towns, and also from cities in other provinces, who even went for a walk with Nazi salutes, shouts of "Arriba España" and all kinds of racist and fascist messages such as"España, una grande y libre","Moros no, España no es un zoo", or"España cristiana y no musulmana", armed with sticks and machetes through the streets and even attacked and smashed a Kebab.

According to data provided by the Torre Pacheco Town Hall, published on its website, the population of the municipality of Torre-Pacheco is 41,684 inhabitants spread over an area of 189.4 km2 and the population of the Torre-Pacheco municipal centre is 20,429 inhabitants.

The inhabitants of the eleven districts of the municipality of Torre-Pacheco are broken down as follows:

Balsicas - Population 3,653.
Camachos - 151 inhab.
Dolores de Pacheco - Population 2,449.
La Hortichuela - Pop. 1,013.
Los Olmos-Hoyamorena - Population 2,014.
El Jimenado - 1,400 inhabitants.
Los Meroños - 450 inhab.
Roldán - pop. 8,139
San Cayetano - pop. 1,477.
Santa Rosalia - 203 inhab.
El Albardinal- 306 inhab.

In terms of foreign residents, there are 96 different nationalities, between European Union and non-EU countries, leaving the map of our municipality as follows.

Spaniards: 28,780 inhabitants.
Foreigners European Union: 977 inhabitants.
Non-EU foreigners: 11,927 inhabitants.

Data updated to 01/01/2025.