There are folks in the frontlines that for one reason or another are widely known and mentioned often. Other people chip away at the enormous rock that is oppression throughout their whole life without asking for credit and without wanting notoriety. Sometimes those people fall through the cracks and only those who knew them personally remember them once they are gone.
Fernán was one of those people. Fernando Sanchez Grassa. An animal liberationist involved with the Spanish ALF (FLA), an anti-fascist, a fighter against Daesh who joined the YPG in Kurdistan and an incredible human being who is remembered by his friends with the love and rage reserved for those who truly meant something to your life.
Fernán died climbing a mountain in the Himalayas on the 4th of November 2019. A year later, an unnamed group liberated a dog tethered to a dairy farm and called him Fer.
When talking to people who knew him, they only have words of adulation. “He was incredibly sweet, a revolutionary to the core”. “He was in the riots in Italy, 2001, when Carlo Giuliani died. There are pictures of him at a mink raid, placing incendiaries at a fur farm and even some photos during a partridge farm liberation”.
And indeed, Fernán was photographed many times during FLA (ALF) raids. In 2003, after having visited a mink farm in Lubia, Spain, and having found that all the animals had already been killed, they planed and took action by setting the farm on fire. That arson would be the only recorded fur farm arson in the country of Spain. They would later dedicate the action to not only Barry Horne, but also the Palestinian people.
He was photographed cutting the fence of a game farm breeding partridges for hunters to shoot, and on a different occasion, at a mink farm raid where over 1000 mink were released before the farmer interrupted the raid.
There is no doubt that Fernán fought against oppression at a completely different level that many of us would only dream of. And after having learnt about him, we felt you too should know his name. He never took action to gain fame, but his memory should be powerful enough to still inflict blows in the oppression machine that devours the earth.
He was also a published author and we would like to end this with a quote from one of his books that perfectly explains what his life and history should do to all of us:
“We hope this article is nothing but a germ that replicates and creates more memories and love. We now pass you this weapon; take it”.
