Spanish minister and leftist leader receive letters with death threats and bullets

Two political leaders and the head of a law-enforcement agency in Spain have received letters containing death threats and bullets, according to reports to which EL PAÍS has had access and to information provided by the Interior Ministry.

The targets are María Gámez, head of the Civil Guard; Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Pablo Iglesias, head of the leftist party Unidas Podemos and a candidate in the upcoming Madrid regional election, a race that he joined after stepping down as a deputy prime minister from the PSOE-Unidas Podemos coalition government.

“You have 10 days to resign. The days of laughing at us are over. National Police. Civil Guard. Time is not on your side for the taponazos [very loud gunfire or explosion],” reads an anonymous letter postmarked April 19 and addressed to Grande-Marlaska. Inside the envelope were two 7.62x51mm bullets, according to the police report filed by the minister. An investigation is underway to identify the sender.

Civil Guard chief Gámez received a similar, handwritten message a day earlier, although it was also postmarked April 19. In this case, there was no mention of police forces although it used the term taponazo once more. There was one 7.62mm bullet inside the envelope.

Sources at Unidas Podemos on Thursday confirmed that Pablo Iglesias had received a letter containing “a serious death threat” but had not yet filed a formal complaint. The same sources added that this is not the first time that Iglesias has been sent messages of this nature.

“The Interior Ministry has received a letter addressed to me containing death threats against me and my family,” the political leader revealed later on Twitter. He included an image of the missive, which carried the following message written in capital letters and without punctuation marks: “Pablo Iglesias Turrión, you have let our parents and grandparents die. Your wife, your parents and you are sentenced to the death penalty. Your time is running out.” The party originally said that it contained two rounds of the type used with Spanish CETME rifles, but Iglesias himself said there were four.

“This is just another consequence of normalizing and whitewashing the hate speech of the far right. And it is also a consequence of impunity,” said Iglesias on Twitter, lamenting that there has been “not a single arrest” over the attack on his party’s headquarters in Cartagena (Murcia) with a Molotov cocktail in early April.

Iglesias also noted that a former member of La Legión, an elite military unit, “got off scot-free” after firing live ammunition at photographs of government members in front of a camera and laughing about it. He also mentioned the lack of legal consequences for the retired members of the military who talked about executing 26 million “red” Spaniards on a social media chat group. “How can they not feel absolute impunity to send us death threats with assault weapon bullets?”

Iglesias went on to say that the attacks are not just against him and his family but about “you, your right to vote for whomever you like and to exercise your freedom. They are threatening democracy.”

The PSOE candidate in the Madrid election, Ángel Gabilondo, turned to Twitter to show support for all three targets of the death threats. “Hate speech and divisiveness have very serious consequences for our democracy. Let’s avoid an escalation of cruelty.”

Mónica García, the contender for the small leftist party Más Madrid, wrote that “there is no room for hate and violence” in society.

English version by Susana Urra.