Internationalist Revolutionary Action Groups

The Internationalist Revolutionary Action Groups (French: Groupes d'action révolutionnaires internationalistes; Spanish: Grupos de Acción Revolucionaria Internacionalista; GARI) was a Spanish anarchist militant group which operated from Occitania against targets which it saw as collaborators of Francoist Spain. Established in 1973 by former members of the Iberian Liberation Movement (MLI), political repression in Spain had provoked them to take up armed struggle against the Francoist dictatorship. It attacked the Spanish consulate in Tolosa, kidnapped an executive of the Bank of Bilbao, and carried out bombings against organs of the Spanish tourism industry. After its leading members were arrested in 1974, its activities declined, but by 1976, they were released due to a legal technicality. After the Spanish transition to democracy, the GARI merged together with a Maoist militant group and established Action Directe (AD), which became involved in increasingly more extreme acts of left-wing terrorism during the 1980s.