HUNDREDS of right-wing demonstrators made fascist salutes and shouted insults against gays, Muslims and immigrants at a rally marking the 30th anniversary of the death of dictator General Francisco Franco yesterday. Waving Spanish flags with the insignia of the Franco regime's Falange party, the crowd gathered at the Plaza de Oriente, in Madrid, beside the royal palace - a traditional meeting place for Spaniards nostalgic for Franco's rule. Franco died on 20 November, 1975, aged 82, after nearly 40 years in power. Representatives of far-right parties from Germany, Italy and France attended the gathering. At several points during the rally the 1,000-strong crowd shouted insults about Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain's socialist prime minister.
Franco supporters are a small minority in Spain and there is no significant far-right party. The demonstrators ranged in age from the elderly to young couples pushing prams with babies. Boys in their teens or younger walked around wrapped in the Spanish flag. Blas Pinar, the ageing leader of a largely defunct far-right party called New Force, told the crowd that Franco had transformed Spain from a country riddled with poverty and illiteracy into one with "enviable industrial development" and an acute, unified national identity. Pinar then depicted Spain's post-Franco, democratic constitution of 1978 as the root of all ills in a country he described as riddled with crime, decadence and regional separatism that threatens to break the country apart. His grandson, Miguel Menendez Pinar, spoke insultingly of homosexuals and Muslims, adding: "Spain is dying, or better said, Spain is being murdered."