Pompeyo González, arrested after his home in Miranda de Ebro, Spain, was searched in January. Photo: Santi Otero/EFE.
By Ana Iris Simón – Apr 28, 2023
[Editorial note: Pompeyo González Pascual, a 74-year-old resident of the Spanish town of Miranda de Ebro, was arrested in January for sending letters containing small quantities of explosives to the Spanish prime minister, defense minister and the US and Ukrainian embassies in Spain in protest against Spain sending weapons and funds to Ukraine. Initially charged with terrorism for making “letter bombs,” a Spanish court ordered the conditional release of González on April 14, with precautionary measures.]
Now that the courts consider that there are no indications of a second offense, we may take a look at the tragic and comic side of the story of the Spanish “unabomber.”
After almost three months in prison, Pompeyo González has returned home, to the solitude of his 430-square-meter apartment, like so many other retirees. Now that the judiciary considers that there are no signs of a second offense, and given that his actions did not cause any serious damage, it is possible to see the tragic and the comic side of his story.
One fine day, the well-aged Pompeyo decided to mail six rudimentary envelopes with a small amount of incendiary content. The recipients were a Spanish arms factory, a military base relevant to NATO and the EU, the prime minister of the [Spanish] government and his defense minister, the Ukrainian embassy, and the US embassy. Then, nobody knew who was behind it, but it was undoubtedly someone who was opposed to Spain’s military involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.
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The media reproduced, as usual, the recently published argument from The New York Times: the attack could only have been planned by the Kremlin and carried out by the far-right Russian Imperial Movement. That is nothing. The investigation did not lead to Moscow but to Miranda de Ebro, Pompeyo’s town. He had no relationship with any government beyond having been a public servant, and he leaned more to the far left.
Two weeks after his arrest, the FBI insisted on keeping the investigation open in search of other leads. Pompeyo seemed disappointing to them, too little. With no terrorist past, he had worked as an undertaker all his life. A retail undertaker for a local company, nothing to do with Solana or Aznar [Spanish government officials]. Washington didn’t like being bothered by a small-time hick who was subscribed to the Granma newspaper [from the Communist Party of Cuba], just as they were hassled a couple of years ago by other rednecks in Afghanistan, or earlier by a few Vietnamese, or by other Granma readers in Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. Although it seems that, in the end, The New York Times and the FBI took a liking to the archetype of the independent, homegrown terrorist: to divert attention from the supposed responsibility of the United States for the detonation of the NordStream II pipeline, they revealed that the saboteurs were supposedly individuals using a single boat. Perhaps they were also retired diving hobbyists.
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The fact is that unlike other old bomb lovers, like Biden, Pompeyo found himself thrown in jail. The judges feared that he would flee to Russia, like a septuagenarian Snowden, since he was also accused of being a dangerous disseminator of propaganda: he had his own YouTube channel with two subscribers. In the end, Pompeyo was labeled a crazy old man whose actions served no purpose other than putting postal and security employees at risk.
But, even if this were so, the Spanish unabomber had an intuition: that the enemy is not Russia, nor China, nor is it in remote deserts or distant mountains. As Lenin said, the enemy is always your own bourgeoisie, the imperialist block under which you live, the military-industrial complex that smothers your country. And, holding on to this idea, old Pompeyo was the last communist willing to send incendiary envelopes against NATO, while the rest of the left sent them rifles, cannons and tanks, but wrapped up in gift paper.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SF
