Facebook has decided to close at least 17 accounts and pages that operated in three different far-right networks using names such as Spanish National Unity, Everyone Against Podemos and Fight for Spain. According to the newspaper El País, the pages were coordinated from Barcelona and Lanzarote and had achieved more than seven million interactions in 2019.
In the case of Lanzarote, the person who coordinated the pages was Antonio Leal, who has been behind several associations on the island, as well as the Titerroygakat Federation. According to El País, Leal had the accounts Todos contra Podemos, Todos contra Pedro Sánchez, Apretando tuercas and Zarote TV open on Facebook. In addition, the national newspaper includes statements from Antonio Leal, who states that the suppression of his pages is an "attack" against his "freedom of communication" and has announced legal action.
"They have not communicated anything to us at any time. This morning they have all appeared disabled. I can't find an explanation for why six pages stop working", he told El País. "If you don't want this cheeky jerk to defecate on you, don't vote PSOE", said one of the messages he published, along with an image of Pedro Sánchez as "the great caganer", according to the newspaper.
"Protecting the integrity of elections"
For its part, Facebook has issued a statement in which it explains that its objective is "to protect the integrity of elections in Spain, Europe and the rest of the world". In addition, it clarifies that the reasons for this decision - adopted as a result of an investigation by the global activist organization Avaaz Christoph Schott - are based on the behavior of those responsible for these pages and "not on the content they posted". Thus, the pages have been removed for the use of fake accounts and the creation of accounts with the same name, which violates Facebook's policies.
The group of pages that have been closed, most of them coordinated from Barcelona, revolved around Spanish National Unity and had names such as National Pride, Spanish Army, Adelante España or Barcelona stays in Spain. The coordinator that Avaaz detected is a well-known far-right militant from the Barcelona area, Javier Capdevila Grau, who has appeared in chronicles about the far-right in several Catalan media.