Madrid, metrópolis (neo)fascista

From the hand of Pablo del Hierro we rediscovered a Madrid that acted as a center for dark businesses often linked to the art world, as a safe haven for fascist leaders where the nascent international justice was not applied, as a node for escape routes. Escape routes -rat routes- between continental Europe and Latin America (and vice versa), and as a meeting point for an extreme right that did not renounce terror while aspiring to once again influence the political future of its former countries. Simultaneously with the vital and anti-Franco Madrid, the Spanish capital consolidated itself as the great city of neo-fascist activity and imaginary. Rescuing that dark and abject history allows us to understand its role as an essential link that connects the Francoist victory and the post-1945 fascist dispersal with the ultra attacks during the Spanish Transition and some of the threatening movements of our days. The great European fascist regimes were defeated in the trenches of World War II. However, many of its champions managed to hide while waiting for better times, escape under new identities to third countries or retrain themselves as pawns of the new Cold War. All this diversity of circumstances converged, at one time or another, in the same geography: Madrid. Thus, while Francoist Spain tried to erase any memory of its sympathies in favor of Hitler and Mussolini and realign itself as a Catholic and anti-communist bulwark, the Spanish capital served as the de facto main neo-fascist metropolis.