Bad winds blow in Europe for the independence movement. Two recent official reports link Catalan separatism to terrorism and Russian espionage to destabilize the European Union. His ties to organized crime even come to light. In short, Europe is beginning to distance itself from sovereignism and its methods. One of the works prepared by community leaders is entitled Hybrid Threats. A comprehensive Resilience Ecosystem (Hybrid threats: a comprehensive resilience ecosystem) and was developed in March 2023 by Rainer Jungwirth, Hanna Smith, Étienne Willkomm, Jukka Savolainen, Marina Alonso Villota, Maxim Lebrun, Aleski Aho and Georgios Giannopoulos.
This study states openly that in 2017 “Catalan separatists intended to create their own structures, separate from their Spanish counterparts, in the banking, telecommunications and energy sectors, seeking external support and financing, constantly using different platforms to disseminate campaigns of misinformation and propaganda”.
The story is priceless. “The Catalan dispute was instrumentalized by Russia in an attempt to undermine and damage the integrity and functionality of democracy, create cascading effects in other Member States and include in decision-making processes. The former leaders of the Catalan independence movement were linked to Russian intelligence agents and organized crime figures.. The aforementioned police and European intelligence reports even establish links between the destabilization attempts in Catalonia with those connections”.
On the mobile of the head of the Puigdemont Office, Josep Lluís Alay, were found appointments, comments, photos and an excessive interest in some mafia leaders, such as the top czar of the Russian mafia, Zakhar Kalashov, with Aslan Usoyan, with Vasily Kristoforov or with the also capo Koba Shermazashvili. Alay also met in Moscow with two former Russian spies, the couple formed by Elena Vavilova and Andrei Bezrukov, detained in the United States and later exchanged for Western spies..
Meeting in Barcelona
Nor should we forget that Carles Puigdemont himself came to receive obscure characters who officially worked for the Kremlin's secret services in his official office at the Palau de la Generalitat, with the aim of obtaining international recognition for a hypothetical independent Catalonia.. But the EU report reports that Russia's true objective “was not an independent Catalonia, but deep and prolonged internal instability in Spain and in the EU. To this end, Russia used as tools the support of political actors, the polarization of society and the exploitation of social divisions, the promotion of contradictory narratives, the financing of cultural groups and think tanks, the discrediting of [Spain's] leadership ], cyber operations and foreign direct investment”.
The report notes that although Russia did not create the problem, it “exploited it for its own benefit” through massive fake news and disinformation campaigns.. In several diagrams reproduced with infographics, the EU warns that “Russian political actors supported the separatist policy [of Catalonia]” through “dubious or illegal” sources. The Kremlin took advantage of the economic uncertainty to “exploit the economic difficulties in Catalonia and support the separatists” and reports that “disinformation campaigns and Russian propaganda were aimed at continuing to promote the Catalan separatist movement and polarize society.”. It also assumes that the Eastern power “provided financial and logistical support for the illegal referendum carried out by the separatists” and that it carried out “cybernetic operations to destabilize the situation in Catalonia”..
This report also makes reference to a work by the Warsaw Institute dated October 5, 2017, that is, four days after the referendum.. In this letter it is already stated that “the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, announced that the referendum in Catalonia was an internal matter of Spain. Unofficially, Russia seems to support the Catalans (…) Therefore, Russia seeks to share and undermine Western democratic institutions (…) The fact is that some separatist circles in Catalonia are somehow connected with Russia and Russian hackers and trolls support Catalan independence on the Internet. The Russian media have published a quote from Enrich (sic) Folch, from Solidaridad Catalana, who said that an independent Catalonia would support Moscow in the international arena and, furthermore, would officially recognize the self-determination of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Additionally, the Russians and their allies (including Julian Assange and Edward Snowden) have been very active on Twitter and Facebook.. The referendum was commented on by no less than 600 pro-Kremlin accounts, both real and fake..
The continuous opening of websites and portals of the illegal referendum was the work of Russian pirates, but the Canadian laboratory Citizen Lab also intervened, which later produced the report known as the Catalangate, whose main premise was that Spain had indiscriminately spied on pro-independence leaders or activists. Parallel to the presentation of this work, there was a disinformation campaign linking false data with true until creating a moderately credible account of Catalan nationalism, although based on falsified data..
The Europol report
Another of the reports reviled by sovereignism comes from Europol and reports that “in Spain, the Catalan and Basque independence movements are currently the most active and violent within the Spanish separatist scene. His stories combine separatism with far-left views, focusing on messages against the Spanish state and its institutions, also focusing on broader issues such as capitalism”.
Faced with this statement, the MEPs Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín, Clara Ponsatí, Diana Riba and Jordi Solé filed a battery of questions this July to be answered in writing. The Junts and ERC MEPs point out that “questions are raised about the accuracy and objectivity of these assessments”.
MEPs err in their assertions: Europol reports that in 2022 there was a terrorist attack in Spain, but there were 48 terrorism-related arrests. Oblivious to this paramount question, political representatives ask: “Could the Commission detail the specific criteria used by Europol when assessing the levels of activity and violence of the Catalan and Basque independence movements in its recent report on terrorism?”. They also want to know “what measures the Commission has taken to ensure the accuracy, objectivity and reliability of the data and information that Member States provide to Europol for the preparation of these annual reports on terrorism”. Finally, they demand: “Has the Commission checked the facts and data presented in the Europol report with the definition of terrorism that appears in directive (EU) 2017/541?”.
Last April, Puigdemont, Comín and Ponsatí already tried to discredit the State Attorney General for his work in 2021, in which he “classifies the Catalan independence movement as national terrorism”. The prosecutor lists “the arrests for damages and those made in connection with an 'illegal' demonstration and details the 'violent and sabotage actions' including causing public disorder, blocking roads, putting up banners, the burning of flags and even damage to Francoist symbols”. Thus, based on the aforementioned directive, they ask the Commission if it considers that “the classification of the aforementioned acts as terrorist activities by the authorities of the Member States is in accordance with the definition of 'terrorist crimes' established in directive 2017/541”.
ANC protest
To complete the offensive, the president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), Dolors Feliu, sent a letter on Thursday to Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol, in which she demands the withdrawal of “criminalizing content about the Catalan independence movement “appealing that they are false data provided by Spain against the Catalan “national minority”. Feliu underlines on several occasions that sovereignty is a movement of a non-violent nature and that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved a resolution in 2921 in which it said that “none of the political representatives incited violence”. The president of the ANC takes the opportunity to attack Spain and includes the statement that “the tendency of the Spanish State to use terrorism to delegitimize, silence and persecute democratic political dissent is very worrying”. He cites Amnesty International, Fair Trials and EuroMed Rights to support his accusations.
Feliu also demands that the deputy director of Europol, Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, explain “what mechanisms and processes have been used to corroborate these accusations, taking as good the information provided by the Spanish authorities, which describes the Catalan independence movement as violent”, since that the inclusion of these claims in the 2023 report “may have harmful criminalizing effects. This poses a serious threat to democracy and jeopardizes rights such as freedom of expression, assembly and peaceful association, and undermines Article 21 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which prohibits discrimination based on reason for belonging to a national minority and political opinion”.