This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/cricri3007 on 2025-09-25 09:28:13+00:00.

each section ends with a bold summary of it, if you do not want to read it all. I also tried to keep the post itself as objective as i could, and will provide my own opinion in a comment

Part 1: Historical Background, Francist Spain

In 1935, Spain entered into a civil war between the Nationalists (various right-wing groups backed by Italy and Nazi Germany) and the Republicans (groups of leftist organizations backed by the USSR). This civil war lasted until 1939 when the Nationalists won and their leader, the general Francisco Franco, was declared Head of State. While there are some scholarly debates on if Franco’s Spain was fascist or merely authoritarian, Francist Spain was generally extremely friendly to the Axis during the Second World War. Franco ruled Spain as a dictator, violently suppressing dissent and silencing his political opponents. One of the more peculiar aspects of Franco’s rule that diferenciated him from other fascists was a general disinterest in expanding Spain’s territories. During the Second World war he largely focused on revitalizing Spain and its existing colonies, never joining the Axis Power in an official capacity (despite this, Franco allowed volunteers to aid Italy and Germany) while he continued his brutal crackdown on left-wing dissenters in Spain, further cementing his own power. Due to this relative neutrality, after the war Spain was reluctantly allowed to remain in international organizations, entering the Cold War era as an anti-communist ally of the United States.

Unlike other fascist regimes, Franco’s rule of Spain ended not by assassination, overthrow or revolution, but with a willing transition of power. Franco realized he had become too old to rule and stepped down, appointing a successor in November 1975. His successor did not last a full week before relinquishing the title of Head of State back to the Spanish royal family, where it has remained since (Spain is a a constitutional monarchy, where the title of Head of State goes to the king, but the actual head of state is an elected Prime Minister). Because of this harmonious transition between Franco’s regime and the current political system, many feel that Spain’s political landscape still carries traces of fascism even today.

In short, Spain was not a case where fascism was defeated so much as it got old and retired. This left a number of Spanish laws and organizations with a lingering bias that is sometimes at odds with modern culture and even the rest of the world.

Sources: Francist Spain : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francoist_Spain

Fransisco Franco wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco

Part 2: Historical background, Games Workshop, Warhammer 40,000 and Fascists

In 1983, British miniature company Games Workshop created Warhammer, tabletop wargame in which players build and paint armies of figurines and make them fight using game-established rules, set in a fantasy world. A few years later, in 1987, they released Warhammer 40 000, a space equivalent to their fantasy setting. Warhammer 40 000 (referred as 40k from now on) quickly grew to completely dwarf its fantasy father in popularity, becoming the flagship franchise of Games Workshop. The universe has massively expanded over the years, appearing in multiple forms of media as the game released new editions, multiple novels were written, comics, and videogames as well. As of today 40k remains popular and ever-evolving, with new content added all the time.

In the 40k universe one of the main factions is the Imperium of Man. Their theming and lore combines a mish-mash of the Middle Ages, Ancient Rome and Nazi Germany. It is also undoubtedly the protagonist of the franchise, receiving inordinately more content than any other faction. For example, The Horus Heresy, a book series recounting the Imperium’s backstory, comprises more books than every other faction combined. The favoritism is not subtle.

Because the Imperium is the human faction of the setting (and so drenched in fascist iconography) it tends to attract a sub-set of fans that view them as aspirational good guys. Given the nature of the Imperium’s lore, this has created a vocal but toxic minority within the fandom that can best be described as Nazi-adjacent, While these fascism-revering fans are a minority, denying that they exist would be to deny some very real problems in the 40k community.

All this to say, Warhammer 40 000 is a tabletop wargame set in a sci-fi/fantasy universe and its “main character” faction can be pretty accurately described as “Catholic Space Nazis”. This tends to attract a vocal subset of fans who love two or more of those things.

Part 3 : The Event

Enter the first week of November, 2021. With the ever-increasing popularity of tabletop wargaming (especially the 40k universe), tournaments are now being held all over the world. These tournaments are organized by various organizations in each country and come with varying degrees of official support from Games Workshop. One tournament in particular, the GT Talavera, would go down in infamy that year. This was the biggest 40k tournament in Spain, taking place in Toledo and organized by a local gamestore (Invasion Talavera) and a local wargaming club (Cobrador del waaaagh!), with additional support from the city government. While not run or directly sponsored by Games Workshop, such a huge tournament was made with Games Workshop’s approval and hosted by the game store as a “business associate” licensed to sell Games Workshop products. This tournament, the 9th edition of GT Talavera, boasted an extremely impressive 800 attendees, most of them split into teams of 10 players where winning individual games would grant points to the winning player’s team.

One particular team, the Princessos (princesses), drew widespread media attention due to a player’s name. In these tournaments players usually compete under an alias for ease of play, using a unique handle to ensure that everyone knows who won a match versus having to ask things like “Which Daniel?”. In this case, a player on the Princessos entered the tournament under the alias Austrian Painter or Pintor Austriaco. Lest anyone mistake this for something innocent from Austria’s long artistic history, the player also wore a hoodie sporting Neo-Nazi symbols while playing.

When called out on it, his teammates defended him by saying he was free to wear what he wanted. Said “Austrian Painter” also defended himself by explaining that he was wearing clothes ”reflecting his ideology”.

Understandably no one wanted to play 40k against a guy calling himself Hitler and decked out in a Nazi hoodie. Players meant to compete against him refused to do so, leaving the tournament organizers with a choice to make.

This is where Spain’s history with fascism comes into play. Spanish law bans wearing hateful iconography at sporting events but allows wearing the same iconography in public spaces. This created a grey area legally (is a gaming tournament a sporting event? Was this a public gathering?) where tournament officials had to make a call.

And so they did. They awarded Austrian Painter a win for every game that his competitors forfeited against him.

Allegedly the player threatened to call police and denounce the tournament organizers for "discriminating against his ideology” if he was kicked out for his clothing. He was careful to remain otherwise polite and well-behaved, sporting Nazi iconography but otherwise being non-confrontational.

From what I have read, his team did not win the GT Talavera, but thanks to Austrian Painter’s ”strategy”, however, they ended up in a pretty good place on the rankings.

At a tournament taking place in November 2021, a player went under the alias of “Austrian Painter”, wore a neo-nazi hoodie, and was allowed to remain. When plaayers refused to play against him, he was awarded victory by the tournament organizers.

Source: Spanish article going in-depth onto the event : https://descansodelescriba.blogspot.com/2021/11/el-regresoa-que.html (i recomment checkign that one, if only because it has the actual picture that was posted and started this whole thing)

Part 4: The drama, and Games Workshop’s statement.

As soon as the picture of the player and his hoodie were posted they began to go viral. The story quickly escaped the spanish tabletop sphere and began appearing in various nerd publications and forums and was soon picked up by various websites, and people were not happy. This was yet another “40k fans are Nazis” story with the added flair of complicit tournament organizers and the drama of an unfair victory. Since most people online are not familiar with Spanish law, there was also a lot of confusion and anger at the tournament organizers for not kicking the man out immediately. This was not helped by a (since deleted) Twitch livestream in which the tournament organizers were very defensive of their choice, stating that they wouldn’t kick out a well-behaved player “just for his ideas” and anyone who complained was the real asshole.

Obviously this started to reflect very badly on Games Workshop as a company. Even though th…

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