Lucrecia Pérez was 32 when she was shot dead in a squalid room in the abandoned building that was once the nightclub. Four rosesin Aravaca (Madrid). Four neo-Nazis had gone “to hunt down immigrants”. They found her, originally from the Dominican Republic. His murder, on 13 November 1992, shook Spain from north to south: while the streets of the neighborhood were filled with protests, overturned cars and cries of pain and anger, the entire country mobilized in rejection of the first contemporary racist hate crime recognized as such. Lucrecia Pérez has since then been a symbol of the fight against xenophobia, a name with which to unite the acronyms of the entire political arc. Until now. This Wednesday, 33 years after her murder, it became known that José Luis Martínez-Almeida’s PP decided not to support a declaration of homage to the woman murdered in the Moncloa-Aravaca district, despite having approved in 2021 and 2022 the same text that is proposed now. A decision which, according to Más Madrid, brings it together with Vox and blocks the institutional declaration, precisely on the grounds that it is repetitive, and given Más Madrid’s intention for it to be repeated “every year”.
“The Almeida government has once again demonstrated its hypocrisy and lack of principles by refusing to support the institutional declaration in memory of Lucrecia Pérez,” explains Sara Ladra, councilor of Más Madrid, the group proposing the declaration, through an audio message. “It is exactly the same one they voted on in 2021 and 2022,” he adds about a text that was not voted on in 2023, because the district councils were still being established, according to Más Madrid; nor in 2024, because it was replaced by another reference to the dana that affected the Valencian Community. “This is due to the PP’s increasingly evident drift towards positions typical of the far right, which mask racist and xenophobic speeches to capture votes (…),” he believes. And he adds: “It is a lack of respect towards the memory of Lucrecia Pérez, and reveals the worrying turn of the PP towards positions typical of Vox.”
Twenty years after the murder of Lucrecia Pérez, Kenia Carvajal, her daughter, had only one sad consolation: “My mother’s death served to decrease racism in Spain,” she said in a 2012 interview with this newspaper.
Because when Eleucrecia Pérez Matos arrived in Madrid, in the 90s of the 20th century, those were times when Plaza de los Cubos, in Moncloa, served as a meeting point for the skinheads (the shaved ones from the Cubos section) who then went around the capital from beating to beating. Years in which a community of Dominicans settled in the heart of Aravaca, one of the most expensive neighborhoods of the capital, but still full of low and humble houses in the center. Months in which some help others, even just to bring food, to look for work by word of mouth or to find a room in the semi-ruined nightclub that borders the Castilla motorway and the A-6, next to another full of neon, the old OH! Madrid…despite being surrounded by racist graffiti, whispers and even some stone throwing.
So comes November and the murder. Civil guard Luis Merino Pérez arrives in the area with Felipe MB, alias Palalo, Víctor FR, alias Oxi and Javier QM, the last three of whom are 16 years old. They arrive in a Talbot Horizon. Luis carried his service pistol. Victor, a mountain knife. Felipe, a knife and an awl. The murder that the PP and Vox now do not want to remember is about to be perpetrated.
Martínez-Almeida’s team justifies its refusal because, in its opinion, a sufficient tribute has already been paid to the victim of that murder committed in 1992. “A square has been built with a sculpture that bears his name”, defends a spokesperson for the municipal group. Furthermore, since an institutional declaration on the subject has already been agreed on other occasions, the People’s Party believe that there is no point in repeating it. “Every year we have to make an institutional proposal on the same thing…” adds the same spokesperson.
The PP thus joins Vox’s rejection. As it happens, the far right had already vetoed a similar initiative in 2022 (institutional declarations require unanimity). Then, as in 2021, the PP approved the text, according to Más Madrid. In 2023 there was no institutional declaration because the district council was being formed after the municipal elections and in 2024 what there was was on the dana (there can only be one plenary declaration). Therefore, it is the first time that conservatives are not in favor of honoring Lucrecia Pérez. At least for now. Más Madrid has chosen to present a proposal that provokes a vote and allows the PP to rectify its position. Everything, in memory of Lucrezia.
