the strikes many times finish in violent clashes, in battles with the police. The young people were very active as well. They support the workers struggles and most of them were in the fights with the police and in verbal and physical confrontation in a daily basis. They at the time weren’t called openly occupation forces but they were see like that. The TV was starting slowly to expand. But more important, the streets were flooded with drugs. The social situation, the oppression and exploitation make that thousand of young people turn their heads into the easy escape of the drugs. And hundreds paid this with their lives. The plague of Heroin decimated many generations in the Cantabrian People.
The social situation of the ’80 exploited at the end in many battles against the police in villages and cities as Malianu. It finished tragically in 1987 with the Battle of Reinosa where the cantabrian worker Gonzalo Ruiz (near cantabrian and socialist positions) was killed by the police in the clashes that took place to defend the jobs and the future of the valley. All the people of Reinosa were in the protests. The Police occupied the city for many days with tanks, helicopters and hundreds of armed guards. It was a small war operation. The news travel around the Spanish State and Europe. Solidarity came to Reinosa and Cantabria. But for that time the biggest trade-unions already had betrayed the workers and of course the class struggle. And many activists and revolutionaries were in the way of giving up the fight, some of them falling in drugs, and many simply emigrating out of Cantabria. And in the young generations specially in working class neighbourhoods the plague of drugs was very effective spreading dead and addiction.
The’90 decade is a strange one. In Cantabria we saw a relative calm, but still with a flood of drugs and bad general conditions for the working class. The consequences were that many, hundreds and hundreds, young people died and many went into jail because the addiction made them turn into robberies for example. And many of them as they hate openly the police they finish fighting with them and many times with weapons.
Is the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and media made a very good job. The revolutionaries organizations, especially communists, were cornered by all this. Many people give up in politics and social activism after so many defeats. The society of information and the expansion of the influence of TV was deep and very negative.
But even with this black panorama and reactionaries winds the red flame was still burning in Cantabria. At second half of the ’90 the students movements were quite strong, but in the middle levels more than in the university. Some soft clashes with the police happened. The mobilizations were quite big but the was not a serious strategy, the organizations involved were from very different backgrounds, even many of them were genuinely Spanish and follow Madrid orders… and in the middle the young generation didn’t go clearly for any one. In the elders generations the activity was decreasing fast.
The most important political events were some carried out by green groups in defence of the Cantabrian environment, the Student protests and the many activities of Internationalist and Solidarity groups, like with Sahara people, Kurdish and Basques. Also small groups appeared to defence our Culture, the language and were active, as in the music many folk musicians and groups were created.
Since 1998 to the present. Moving forwards:
The ideals of Luciano Malumbres, Juanin, Ayala and others were in the air. The reborn in the ’80 and specially ’90 of cultural activity, came with the sense of Identity that was never lost. The sense of national pride of been Cantabrian was growing again, slowly but forwards.
We have to remember that in all this decades the clashes with fascists activists and organizations were a reality, but unfortunately for them most the times they took the worst part. In the ’90 were a little bit organized but the Antifascist mentality and resistance was (and 