A Alicante-born journalist and PhD in History has authored successful novels such as Our Own Blood and Murder of the Marquises of Urbina. His investigative piece Anatomy of Crime is celebrated in detective literature circles. His non-fiction titles include Ricos por la Patria, La familia Franco SA, Los ricos de Franco y Villaverde, all exploring the fortunes and fall of the Franco era and its aftermath, sparking deeper research into Franco SA in 2003.
He has now released a comprehensive study titled The Long Ultra March, subtitled “From Franco’s Death to Vox (1975-2022),” which traces the trajectory of various far-right groups in Spain up to the present and the rise of Vox. Extremist parties are not a new topic in his bibliography, with The Children of 20-N appearing earlier as a violent history of Spanish fascism, accompanied by a foreword from a renowned crime novelist.
What does the new book add? “It offers a different perspective,” the writer states. “The Children of 20-N ends in 1992, while The Long Ultra Walk with Vox continues to the present. I have revisited themes I touched on before, such as the murder of Lucrecia Pérez Matos. The new work complements the earlier volume and expands on crucial issues like xenophobia, nostalgia for the Franco era, and how rhetoric among these groups has evolved.”
In its opening pages, The Long Ultra March examines how during the Franco regime the regime itself, along with the far right, claimed key symbols of the Phalange. The yoke and arrows, the blue shirt, and the Carlist red beret became distinctive elements of nationalist fascism. With democracy, the ultras sought refuge mainly in Fuerza Nueva, a group modeled after the Italian Social Movement, which drew inspiration from figures abroad. Another faction where Franco-era nostalgists gathered was Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey, led by a longtime figure associated with the movement. From 1975 to 1982, street violence aimed at destabilizing politics left a dark record, including the tragic week of January 1977 that saw the killing of workers’ lawyers in Atocha, the stabbing of the satirical newspaper El Papus, and the brutal murder of Yolanda González Martín.
The book explains that these groups framed their rhetoric around portraying democracy as flawed and fragile, a nostalgic and neo-fascist phase. As time moved on, the discourse began to shift away from direct attacks on the democratic system and toward hostility toward immigrants, drawing on echoes of European far-right currents. A key figure who emerged in this period was a controversial political actor likened to a Spanish version of a well-known European figure, whose influence helped shape the movement’s later direction. Violent actions then increasingly centered on immigrants, with Lucrecia Pérez Matos’s murder in 1992 standing out as the period’s most notorious incident.
According to the author, the narrative of Francoism, denialism, nostalgic rhetoric about democracy, and anti-immigrant sentiment gradually gave way to a critique of the reforms associated with Vox. The work traces four decades of evolution, from embedded support within the Franco-era pillars to marginalization and the current parliamentary strategy that brought Vox into the spotlight in 2018.
Spanning more than four hundred pages, the study delves into the darker corridors of national fascism, from Nazi affiliates in the region to the broad spectrum of far-right organizations and their intellectual foundations. It also situates these groups within a global context, noting connections with broader fascist movements and the ideological currents that have persisted into contemporary times.