By Theodore Shoebat
The European Union is supporting the nationalist Catalan separatist movement. This is evinced by the fact that the EU finances a major pro-Catalan separatist think-tank called, the Maurits Coppieters Center, and that it was Germany (the leading country of the European Union) who twisted Spain’s arm not to charge the leading figure of the Catalan separatist movement with sedition and to drop the warrant for his arrest. The splitting of Europe is desired the powers that be within Brussels. In fact, the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varouvakis, said that the rise of nationalism in Catalonia is exactly what the elites within the EU want.
The European Union funds a think-tank that is pushing for nationalism and secessionism in Europe, called the Maurits Coppieters Center. This year the think-tank will receive 297,500 euros from the European Parliament, according to a report published by Cronica. The objective of the Maurits Coppieters Center is “the secession of states and self-determination”.
The Center has organized an event for March the subject of which will be “self-determination” in European countries, specifically Catalonia. The keynote speaker for this event is scheduled to be Nicolas Levrat who is a vocal backer for the Catalonian separatist movement and a strong protester against the Spanish government, stating for example that “Spain has violated its commitments of human rights”.
In the early part of 2018, Nicolas Levrat joined a debate on “self-determination” (rebellion) in Geneva with the leading face of the Catalan separatist movement Carles Puigdemont during the International Film Festival on Human Rights. Levrat is also the director of the Institute of Global Studies at the University of Geneva.
Nicolas Levrat
Levrat is the director of the Department of Public Law of the University of Geneva and has also collaborated with a famous figure of the Catalonian rebellion, Anna Gabriel. Levrat in fact presented a paper called “The Right to National Self Determination in the EU: A Legal Investigation” back in October of 2018. The paper was part of a project called: “Borders, sovereignty and self-determination”, which was coordinated by the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies (University of Leuven) and the Centre on Constitutional Change (CCC, Edinburgh).
Anna Gabriel
The Coppieters Center sees Europe with its states in which each has a dominate language and culture and in which some have different ethnic groups submitting to these established cultures, and deems this condition as something negative, as something that must change. For example, in one report made by the Center, entitled, Is There A Future For Stateless Nations?, it reads:
“These old nation-states – a denomination frequently used by historians and political scientists – were, and are, a form of political architecture based on the hegemony of a certain ethnic group over all others on the territory of a given state.
This hegemony has reproduced itself by subordinating other ethnic groups to the hegemonic language, culture, and customs of the hegemonic group.
But what has changed for stateless nations since then? The answer to this question could be negative, especially after the European Union closed its eyes to the situation in Catalonia and political elites attempted to contain grassroots challenges to the old political order. A European community of peoples, as the fore-bearers of these movements had imagined it, has not yet been born. Today’s Europe is quite far from this vision.”
The Coppieters Center is lobbying for a Europe of regions, hence why they hosted the Catalan nationalist Carme Forcadell and interviewed her during which she called for a “Europe of the peoples … in the defense of the right to self-determination.”
The Coppieters Center collaborates with and is the think-tank for the European Free Alliance, a coalition within the EU parliament that consists of regionalist parties from Flemish separatists (the New Flemish Alliance), to Scottish politicians who want Scotland to sever itself from Great Britain (Scottish National Party), Valencian separatists (Valencian Nationalist Bloc), Galacian separatists (Galician Nationalist Bloc), Basque separatists (Basque Solidarity), ethnic Hungarians who want to carve out a state within Romania (Hungarian People’s Party of Transylvania) and Slovakia (Hungarian Christian Democratic Association), Sardinian separatists (Sardinian Action Party), Venetian separatists (Venetian Republic League), South Tyrolean separatists (South Tyrolean Freedom), Bavarian regionalists (Bavarian Party) and a plethora of other regionalist parties. These organizations like the European Free Alliance and the Coppieters Center present themselves as harmless and only caring about the “self-determination” (a term they love to use) of various peoples in Europe. But what would happen if they get what they want, and Europe swiftly fragments? One thing we can learn from the past is how when major states breakdown, violence is the result.
In 2014, in the wake of the Scottish referendum for independence, the European Free Alliance and the Coppieters Center organized a conference with virulent Catalonian separatists leaders Ernst Maragall and Josep–Maria Terricabras, to discuss secessionist movements. Both of these politicians are aligned with the pioneer separatist party, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), with Maragall formerly serving as minister for the ERC, and Terricabras being once a member of the European Parliament for the same party.
Ernst Maragall
Josep–Maria Terricabras
The Republican Left of Catalonia was founded by the mass murderer and nationalist leader, Luis Companys, in the Spanish Civil War during which Catalonia was ruled by several Communist, Anarchist and socialist factions. The Spanish Civil War is a very good example of what occurs when a country is not divided and fragments.
LUIS COMPANYS, THE REPUBLICAN LEFT AND CATALAN SEPARATISM
In the early part of the 20th century, ideologies of anarchism and socialism became very widespread and popular in Catalonia. Catalan nationalism became very popular after wage cuts were done (like how Catalan separatism sparked in popularity after the 2010 financial crises) and a draft to fight in Morocco was imposed.
Violent demonstrations commenced in July of 1909 and workers revolted only to be suppressed by the army. From 1917 to 1919, violent confrontations between the people and the police took place. A military coup took place in 1923 in which Miguel Primo de Rivera took over and established a military dictatorship. Popularity for Rivera declined and eventually he resigned in January of 1930.
Enthusiasm for the monarchy of Spain, under King Alfonso XIII, also faded and the king abdicated the throne, resulting in the formation of the Second Spanish Republic. This new government was headed by Niceto Alcalá-Zamora who served as president and Head of State. In December of 1930 Spain got a new constitution which secularized the government. The rise of two ideological factions was also beheld. On one side there was fascism and on the other a hard Left and violent anticlericalism.
Violence against the clergy became a reality that was to the ire of Catholics who began to have a negative view of the secular government. Enforced secularization was becoming more severe. In 1933 the new republic passed a law forbidding all nuns and monks from teaching in education. The republic went so far as to regulate the Church’s use of property and investments and set controls on property that the Church had obtained during the regimes of past dictatorship. The Spanish government further manifested its desire for persecution when it outright banned the Society of Jesus. This despotism was justified through articles 26 and 27 of the new Spanish constitution which gave power to the state to control Church property and forbid the clergy from taking part in education.
This excessive control provoked protest from the Church and Catholic laymen. In 1931, the Spanish politician Gil Robles called upon Catholics to defy the republic. The leftist forces controlling Spain were so resistant to any idea of moderationthat they believed any softening of the anticlerical decrees to be intolerable. By the end of 1931, King Alfonso XIII, now living as an exile, gave up on preventing revolutions against the republic by monarchists, and he was tried and condemned to life imprisonment in absentia. In January of 1932, laws against Catholic icons in hospitals and schools were imposed.
1932, a military general bent on destroying the Spanish republic, José Sanjurjo, led a revolt that ended up being a failure. The Fascist Falange Española enjoyed popularity, which was not surprising given how the factions within Spain, be they Anarchist, nationalist, Communist or socialist, were rising in a tension that was on the verge of serious civil unrest. The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party got deep into rivalry with the Fascists and started its own socialist committee and even began training youth in secret. Violence broke out in the streets of Spanish cities and civil war was nigh.
With Catholic protest against the government, monarchist and other conservative forces grew in popularity. This was seen in the 1933 election, in which the main Right-wing party, the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (Spanish: Confederatión Espanola de Derechas Autónomas, CEDA) and other similar parties, won 219 seats. Following this election was the “two black years” (bienio negro), in which both the Right and Left intensified their aggressions. Right-wing forces turned to paramilitary groups in a preparation for bloodshed. It was documented that during those two dark years 330 people were assassinated; there were also 213 failed assassination, and 1,511 people were wounded in politically driven violence; 160 religious buildings were also destroyed, mainly by arson.
Also during this time, Catalonian nationalism boomed with a very violent scheme. The Catalonians in 1934, like their posterity today, wanted to revolt for independence. Catalonian separatists, members of Left-wing paramilitary groups, took to the streets armed with rifles and set up barricades. In Barcelona violence erupted and Catalan separatists opened fire on officers, killing one and injuring several others. A ten hour coup would ensue in which 107 people would die. The revolution was a failure and its leader, Lluis Companys, was put into prison and sentenced to 30 years for rebellion. Meanwhile, an electoral struggle between Left and Right wing parties was ongoing.
Lluis Companys’ mugshot
In the elections of 1936, Left-wing parties under the umbrella of the Popular Front won a narrow victory. Monarchists loyal to Alfonso XIII and Carlists (people who believed that the true royal line was that of the Bourbon dynasty) were preparing for an uprising.
One of the things that the Leftist Republican government did was decree that all political prisoners of the Catalan coup be released. Companys was given amnesty. Right when he was allowed to leave prison, he got back into the scheme of political violence and power.
In the Canary Islands, a very influential and tenacious general named Francisco Franco broadcasted a message calling for all army officers to revolt against the Leftist Republican government. Within days a revolt was sparked and military officers took over Spanish Morocco, northern Spain and numerous key cities in the south. The Leftist Republican government managed to squash the revolt in Madrid and other areas. The Spanish Civil War had now begun. Franco took his troops in Morocco and stormed Spain. With months of fighting, Franco and his troops took control of much of northern and central Spain where they overran the Republican government.
Companys, now the president of Catalonia, led a despotic regime over which the Spanish military had no authority to stop, since the republic decreed that the military could not control anything. This left Catalonia totally under the control of Companys and his regime. This neutralizing of military power showed when Companys had 199 Spanish soldiers executed for being a part of the Franco led revolution. A group of military officers hid inside of a monastery of capuchins. A mob stormed the monastery, seized the soldiers, beheaded them and stuck their heads onto pikes. They then took their bodies, brought them to a zoo and fed them to the lions.
The Catalonian separatists unleashed a reign of terror in the region, with violence being done to Right-wingers, Catholics and any other political dissidents. Even Left-wingers were not immune from Companys’ bloodlust, as he had 90 members of his own party — the Republican Left of Catalonia — executed. Under express orders or with the consent of Companys, in just three years more than 8,000 people were murdered for their political beliefs or religious beliefs, many of them without prior trial (only 400 were put on trial under the authority of Companys). 4 bishops, 1,536 priests (30% of the Catalan clergy) and thousands of lay people were martyred for the mere fact of being Catholics. A nun was taken and cut into four pieces which were used as pig food. They took priests, cut off their testicles and shoved them into their mouths.
7,000 religious buildings were destroyed by a government controlled by the spirit that possessed the conspirators of the French Revolution. Companys would boast: “all churches have been destroyed”. With such antichrist violence, one cannot help but see that Companys and his ilk were taken by the same abysmal spirits of the wicked who the Psalms describe:
With axes and hammers.
They have set fire to Your sanctuary;
They have defiled the dwelling place of Your name to the ground.
They said in their hearts,
“Let us destroy them altogether.”
They have burned up all the meeting places of God in the land. (Psalm 74:7-8)
Companys’ regime sent people to concentration camps where those who were too weak to work were executed, a very common type of thing done by those who see people only for their utility and expediency. People were forced to march without water; the feeble were shot to their deaths. Under the Antifascist Militia Committees, torture and detention centers were set up. There were six concentration camps in Catalonia.
These are some of the horrors brought about the Catalan forces of “self-determination.” This violence and tyranny was done under the party, the Republican Left of Catalonia, the very party that the European Free Alliance and the Coppieters Center, bankrolled by the European Union, is collaborating with. The Coppieters Center even created a book on Companys, praising him as a hero. The creation of the book was, in the words of the Center’s website, “financially supported by the European Parliament.” It appears that very dark forces within the European Union want such propaganda to be released to promote regionalist tensions in Spain. The book was made in collaboration between the Center and the Fundació Josep Irla (Josep Irla Foundation), a Catalonian nationalist organization that is linked with the Republican Left of Catalonia. It has a magazine called Tools for the National Left which began in 2007 (interestingly the same year that the Coppieters Center was created).
The Coppieters Center is essentially lobbying for an ideology of regionalism, which is really nationalism for regions of countries under a government that is not their regional government. So, for example, Catalonia is a region of Spain the capital of which is Madrid, and the Catalans want to no longer be under the government of Madrid but Barcelona (the capital of the region of Catalonia). This is the type of revolution that the Coppiters Center is conspiring for.
It appears that Brussels wants the polarization. For one, the mascot of the Catalonian separatist movement, Carles Puigdemont, was arrested in Germany since he was wanted by the Spanish government. The German court in Schleswig Holstein obstinately refused to include the charge of rebellion in the process of extradition back to Spain for Puigdemont, thus protecting the separatist from a serious prison sentence by Spanish justice. After Germany refused to extradite Puigdemont for charges of rebellion, the Spanish government then dropped the arrest warrant, not only for Puigdemont but for five other separatist leaders living abroad. This demonstrated how difficult it has been for Spain to control the booming separatist movement, and how much Germany (truly the dominant country within the EU) has impeded Spain from keeping the rebels in check. This has only empowered people like Puigdemont who said, “Withdrawing the European arrest warrants demonstrates the immense weakness of this case”. While the rescinding of the arrest warrant did not remove the charges against Puigdemont, even if he gets arrested while in Spain he will only be tried for the misuse of public funds and not sedition (a much more serious charge punished by up to 30 years in prison). As one Catalan publication reported:
“The higher regional court of Schleswig-Holstein has revoked the extradition warrant against Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, following Spain dropping its request. German prosecutors this morning received the official confirmation from Spanish judge Pablo Llarena that he had revoked the European Arrest Warrant against Puigdemont. The German court has since withdrawn all the bail measures it had set, including the requirements that he regularly sign in with German police and that he not leave the country. From this afternoon, Puigdemont is free to travel around Europe like any other citizen. Free to travel, that is, apart from to Spain, where a national arrest warrant is still in force against him.”
The German government has shielded Puigdemont from arrest for sedition, has forbidden and prevented Spain from extraditing him, and has thus enabled Puigdemont to continue his separatist activities and inculcate his dangerously nationalistic ideas from outside of Spain. In addition to this, the European Union (which is ruled by Germany), is funding a major think-tank that lobbies regionalist nationalism, especially Catalan separatism, through its bankrolling of the Coppieters Center.
It is very interesting that the Coppieters Center was founded in 2007, the very year the Counterjihad — a network of bloggers, talkers and authors who speak against Islam — solidified itself as an international movement in the Brussels Summit in the European Union Parliament which was financed by the Center for Vigilant Freedom (ran by Christine Brim, vice-president for the CIA linked Center for Security Policy) and organized by neo-Nazi and Flemish separatist Filip DeWinter. The Counterjihad movement will point to things about Islam that are indeed factual, but they do so for nefarious purposes, such as to spark nationalism, racism and eugenics. What is fascinating is that the 2007 Counterjihad Summit was organized by a Flemish separatist (DeWinter) who has been vocal in his support for Catalonian separatism. Recently he declared his support for the Catalan sedition movement:
Flemish separatists have been strongly supporting the Catalonian separatist movement because they know that if the Catalans sever from Spain, then the Flemish have a precedent by which to justify their cause to split Flanders from Belgium. It is part of a conspiracy to split Europe apart, which will lead to violence and bloodshed. But let us go back for a moment to the Counterjihad. A Flemish nationalist and separatist organized a Summit in 2007 to advance the Counterjihad, which has used the existence of terrorism as propaganda fodder for nationalism and tribalism which today has polarized Europe (an example of this is Brexit which was accelerated by the migrant situation of 2015 and the rhetoric that surrounded it). This same Flemish separatist also lobbies for Catalonian separatism which is further splitting Europe. It was also in 2007 that the think-tank (the Coppieters Center) was founded, and this same organization is financed by the EU, the parliament building of which held the Counterjihad Summit in 2007. It appears that within Brussels there is a strong faction that wants Europe to be polarized.
But the splitting of a giant government conglomerate like the EU will eventually erupt with bloodshed. When a major government entity fragments, the prospect of war is heightened. When Bohemia revolted against the Hapsburg Empire, it led to a conflict between the two which quickly escalated to the Thirty Years War. After Slovenia rebelled against Yugoslavia and declared independence, there was a two week conflict between the two which eventually rippled into an all out war in the Balkans. Splintering leads to an infection, and the disease spreads, decaying the body. The splintering of a supranational state like the EU could actually lead Europe to be engulfed in yet another war.