No to NATO and AFRICOM in Spain

The following are edited excerpts from a news release from the Global Platform Against War, which organizes across the Spanish state:

On the afternoon of July 7, coinciding with the parliamentary debate in Madrid on the defense agreement with the United States which makes the military base of Morón, 40 miles southeast of Seville, the permanent headquarters of USA-Africom, people gathered to show their rejection of it.

Convened by the Global Platform Against War, the demonstrators challenged the holiday season and the scorching heat that plagues Madrid to denounce that, “de facto, we became a country occupied by a foreign force. On that territory we have no control or jurisdiction, one airborne force directly following the orders of the military command of the United States that is prepared to intervene in Africa, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean.”

The slogans chanted were “Imperialism is terrorism!” “We do not want, we do not feel, to be an American colony!” “Yankees get out of Cuba, out of Argentina, out of Latin America and out of the Rota military base outside Morón!” The most emblematic and historic was “NATO no! Bases out!”

In the warmongering escalation of European and American imperialism that uses NATO as its military instrument par excellence, the platform denounces the extension of the agreement with the U.S. It occurs as part of the largest maneuvers since the Cold War that NATO announces it will carry out in October in the Strait of Gibraltar, as “readiness to react to a crisis … given the increasing instability from the Middle East to the north of Africa.” This instability has been triggered since the war and occupation of Iraq.

The Global Platform Against War calls on the people of Madrid and all peoples of the Spanish state to organize to express with all possible force their opposition to the sale of its sovereignty to a foreign power and its servile complicity with imperialist wars, made concrete by the NATO exercises in October.

Photo: Demonstrators tell Spanish parliament: ‘NATO no, bases out!’

Credit: Global Platform Against War