Anti-Islamic movement reaches Spain

THE German anti-Islamist group Pegida has opened several social platform accounts in Spain.

Pegida – German abbreviation for ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West’ -was born back in October in Dresden, with around 500 initial members. 

Since then, it has been organising public demonstrations, aimed at the German government, to encourage all citizens to display their European and German pride. 

The Spanish branch of the organisation has created a Facebook account and already counts on more than 900 followers on Twitter, where they stress the importance of ‘getting together with other European Patriots against the Islamisation of the West’, as stated in the accounts’ first tweet. 

Shortly after the first one, they tweeted: “The Islam does not have a space in free, democratic societies as the Europeans” and described their movement as ‘0 per cent racist’ and ‘0 per cent fascist’. 

After that, they uploaded a painting depicting the expulsion of Arabs from Granada (Spain) in 1492, with a comment which read: “We did it 400 years ago, and we will do it again”. 

Prime Minister of Germany, Angela Merkel, has criticised Pegida, saying that the association’s leaders are deeply prejudiced and hold hatred against immigrants.