There is rage in Spain over the government making a deal with Catalan seditionist leader, Carles Puigdemont, to give amnesty to Catalonian separatist leaders in exchange for votes from the separatist Together for Catalonia Party in order to get Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s part the majority in the Spanish congress. For years we have been warning about the Catalonian powder keg in Europe:
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Russian And American Geopolitical Scheming And The Destabilization Of Europe
The Spanish government investigated the activities of Denis Sergeev, a Russian spy and intelligence agent, and his alleged involvement in the rebellious Catalonian election of 2017 in which Catalans voted to secede from Madrid. They say that Sergeev is a member of “Unit 29155” which consists mainly of veterans of Russia’s bloodiest wars, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Ukraine.
One retired G.R.U. officer with knowledge of Unit 29155 who spoke anonymously said that the unit was efficient in preparing for “diversionary” missions, “in groups or individually — bombings, murders, anything.” “They were serious guys who served there,” explained the retired officer. “They were officers who worked undercover and as international agents.”
Sergeev went by the alias, Sergey Fedotov and according to the Passenger Name Record (PNR) database, which is used by airlines to document all of their travelers, he took two trips to Spain. In the first trip, Sergeev was in Madrid on November 5, 2016 and stayed there for six days before returning to Moscow through Zurich. Sergeev’s second trip was on September 29, 2017, only two days before the Catalan separatist referendum which occurred on October 1st. This time he stayed in Spain until October 9th and then returned to Moscow through Geneva. There is no known documentation about further trips. This information has been discovered in the investigation opened by High Court Judge Manuel García-Castellón and which is currently sealed but has been revealed by El Pais. The inquiry into Sergeev’s activities is being conducted by the National Police force’s General Information Office.
The Spanish investigation cannot emphatically confirm that Russian intelligence collaborated with Catalan separatists. But what can be confirmed is how Russian media outlets published articles that were sympathetic towards the separatist cause. They even compared the Catalonian situation to Crimea where many people preferred Russian over Ukrainian rule, and comparing it to how Catalonia does not want to be ruled by Spain. For example, the Russian newspaper Vzglyad, put out an article on September of 2017 with the headline “Spain forcibly suppresses the Catalan spring,” words that denote that Spain is despotic towards the Catalan suffrage and that there is a “Catalan spring” which reminds one of the Arab Spring, conveying the message that there is a Catalonian revolution. The article even goes so far as to affirm that the cause of Crimea has expanded up to Catalonia: “the Crimean spring has moved to the Pyrenees.” Its as if to say that, in turn, the Russian cause of empire has also expanded to the Western Europe.
Vzglyad has a dark history. It was founded by Russian troll and politician, Konstantin Rykov who also went by his internet pseudonym, “Jason Foris.” His snide, trolling and attention grabbing ways earned him millions as an internet entrepreneur and even got him elected into the Russian Parliament. Rykov spent years on the internet as a troll, and would eventually land himself in a position to help put Russia in the battlefield of the trolling world online. Rykov created accounts on Russian social media sites like Vkontakte (VK), Live Journal, and Odnoklassniki, where he accrued large followings by sharing pictures of scantily clad women, telling crude jokes and spreading a satiric, nihilistic brand of humor. He eventually got a position with Russia’s state-owned Channel 1 as the head of its internet department. 2005 would be the year that Rykov would create the online publication, Vzglyad, which would eventually become a mouthpiece for the Kremlin. In fact, President Vladimir Putin’s former deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov, had direct ties to Vzglyad’s editorial department and determined what they published.
Alexander Shmelev, who served as Vzglyad’s editor-in-chief in 2007 and 2008, recounted the type of control the Russian government had on the paper’s articles:
“There were weekly meetings at the presidential administration … Sometimes, there were situations when we published something, and Surkov’s assistant who was in charge of the media, Alexey Chesnakov, called and said, ‘No, please, replace this article,’ or, ‘Please, publish something about this issue.’”
Shmelev, exasperated over how much control the state had over the publication, left Vzgylad. In 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, the general consensus in online media was that Russia was the aggressor and the antagonist. This pushed Russia to shift its gears from just being focused on television and newspapers to the internet. Russia had to adapt to the world of internet propaganda. Shmelev explained:
“It was discussed that we lost the information war — that on the internet, everyone around the world believes that Russia suddenly attacked Georgia, and the topic of Georgia attacking South Ossetia is never mentioned and that we came to protect it … We need to change this somehow, we need to learn to be proactive, we need to learn to work not only in the Russian segment of the internet but in the internet in general.”
Through Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s administration began signaling to Konstantin Rykov that they were interested in his skills as a troll. As we read from Molly Schwartz:
“In 2007, Surkov organized private fundraisers for Rykov’s ventures. Rykov was elected to the Russian Parliament in 2008 as a member of the United Russia party, the same party as Putin. Rykov was only 28-years-old.
In return, Rykov developed tactics to help the Kremlin boost support for its image online. Shmelev says that he attracted a new community of supporters for the government by advertising pro-Kremlin articles on sites like Mail.ru, porn websites and humor websites. Rykov showed the Kremlin how to spread competing narratives on social media to deflect attention away from reporting that was critical of their activities.”
Rykov’s Vzglyad site became, and still is a, a means to spreading propaganda and information that Russia wants inculcated online, nationalist and anti-European Union sentiment.
On September 8th of 2017, Vzglyad published another article stating: “Catalan politicians are already discussing what they’ll do after proclaiming independence. One of them told Vzglyad that Catalonia will seek recognition for Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” two regions that Russia recognized as autonomous and independent from Georgia in 2008. This one politician was J. Enric Folch Vila of the obscure Catalan separatist party, Solidaritat Catalana. In September of 2016, Folch attended a conference in Moscow funded by the Russian government and organized by the Russian Anti-Globalization Movement (MAR). “We were invited by the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, because the reason for the meeting was to meet other nations without a State or that seek to achieve independence. Basically, the objective was to contact other nations or countries that are in these processes, and make a change of impressions,” explained Folch. According to the president of the Anti-Globalization Movement, Alexander Ivanov, about 30% of the group’s general budget come from the Russian government. They have also received separatists from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Catalonia, and the Basque country. One thing that is fascinating about this group is how its name “anti-globalism” echoes the rhetoric of those on the Alt-Right, that is, that they are against “globalism,” which simply means, amongst other things, that they are against immigration and want to create a fixation on national pride and tribalism.
This tribalism can be seen in Folch who has called for open rebellion against Madrid and says that the days of reasoning with Spain are over, exlaiming : “We will follow our own law, our own institutions, our own Catalan Republic”.
In 2017, Pravda, the official newspaper for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, put out an article that said: “if Catalans hold the referendum and unilaterally declare independence, there will be a precedent for the EU similar to Crimea.” This article was shared by two Twitter accounts owned by Pravda, @pravda.ru and @pravdaonline, both of which have over a quarter of a million followers. Another Twitter account that advances the pro-Russian view, while at the same time disseminating propaganda for European nationalist parties (like the AfD), is Voice of Europe , which has over a quarter of a million followers. This page has retweeted posts sympathetic to the Catalan cause and with sensational titles like: “Spain BOILS: EU REFUSES to act for Catalonia despite Spain ‘violating basic human rights,’” or “Spain in CRISIS: Troops sent in as 40,000 protest over ‘WAR’ on Catalan independence vote.”
The Spanish Twitter account for RT (the most popular media voice for the Russian government), RT en Espanol which has over three million followers, and its Facebook page (currently over seven million followers) has posted stories with titles like “Catalonia: the dictator Francisco Franco has returned victoriously.” This last line on Franco implies that Spain, because she has suppressed the Catalan separatist movement, is like her past “dictator,” Francisco Franco.
The agenda of these media publications is to rile up the separatist side to vote in favor for their cause. Spain’s Defence Minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal, said back in 2017:
“What we know today is that much of this came from Russian territory … These are groups that, public and private, are trying to influence the situation and create instability in Europe”
When Spain’s Foreign Minister, Alfonso Dastis, was asked if he is emphatically sure of Russian meddling, he responded: “Yes, we have proof.” According to Dastis, a Spanish investigation confirmed a plethora of fake accounts on social media expressing support for Catalan separatism. These accounts were traced back to Russia and another 30% of them to Venezuela.
It makes sense as to why Russia would have an interest in Catalan nationalism, just like it makes sense that they would have an interest in nationalist parties like the AfD in Germany. By splitting up Spain, several things happen: firstly, it would destroy the European Union as we know it today, and secondly it would give the pretext to Germany to reinstate herself as the military ruler of Europe.
Germany is currently the economic controller of her continent, but she is still under American eyes when it comes to military defense. If Catalonia splits from Spain, it would trigger a continental emergency that Germany would then use to justify a return to militarism in the name of ‘European unity.’ Lets remember that Nazi Germany’s warpath did not begin in Poland nor Czechoslovakia, but in Spain, when the Spanish Civil War broke out after Franco and soldiers loyal to him overthrew the Left-wing government of Manuel Azana. Hitler used the conflict as an excuse to send in the German military to fight off the Left-wing forces that were combating the nationalists who would be on the side of Franco.
Hitler and Mussolini sent over 90,000 troops into Spain to back the Spanish nationalists (Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies, ch. 8, p. 104) During the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union supplied the Spanish Left-wing fighters with weapons and training. It was a proxy war between Germany and Russia for power and influence over Europe. Hitler helped Franco’s regime, not because he really sympathized with Catholics who were being butchered by the anarchists and Republicans (Hitler butchered millions of Catholic Poles), rather he did so because he wanted to expand Germany’s geopolitical leverage, hence why Franco sent the Spanish military’s Blue Division to the Russian front to fight alongside the Wehrmacht (Ibid). Stalin backed the Popular Front government which was a coalition of Left-wing parties such as the Spanish Communist Party and the PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español or the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party). What is very interesting is that the PSOE, through Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, is the very party that today authorized the removal of Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum, an action which has angered the Right-wing but has pleased the Left. As we read from Time Magazine:
“While few defend the human rights abuses under Franco’s regime, many have argued that moving his remains serves little purpose and that his family should decide where he rests. “Sanchez has spent a year playing with [Franco’s bones] to try to divide us into reds and blues, but at this point this no longer matters to many Spaniards,” Alberto Rivera, leader of the centre-right Citizens, tweeted after the ruling.
Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s far-right party Vox, which in 2018 became the first far-right political force to win seats in national elections since Franco’s death, attacked the exhumation as “profaning tombs and digging up hatreds”.”
While the Left in Spain is becoming more aggressive, with Catalonian Leftists working for separatism and the Socialists removing Franco’s remains, the Right-wing in Spain is also rising, and this is indicated in the fact that Vox — a nationalist and Right-wing party — went from being an obscure party to one that has 52 seats in the parliament (out of 350 seats), the first time a Ring-wing party won more than one seat since Spain returned to democracy in the 1970s. With the intensification of the Right-Left rift in Spain, its as if a strategy of tension is being done to cause all of this.
Vox in fact received a substantial amount of cash from the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (the MEK) which, until recently, was classified as a terrorist organization but nonetheless has been getting American backing thanks to people like Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton and Newt Gingrich. With such high level Republicans backing the MEK, it is fitting to quote Dina Esfandiary who wrote that the Trump administration “provides a platform to groups like the Mujahideen-e Khalq, an exiled Iranian resistance group once listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government”. In April of 2019, documents leaked to El Pais revealed that between its founding in December 2013 and the European Parliament elections in May 2014, Vox received almost a million euros from the MEK’s front group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). It was not as though the financial relationship between Vox and the NCRI began gradually, but right when Vox was founded. Joaquín Gil, a journalist with El Pais, explained: “From the day it was founded in December 2013—the same day that it registered as a political party with the Spanish Ministry of Interior—Vox started to receive Iranian funds”. These funds came from different countries including the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Italy in amounts ranging from 60 to 35,000 euros, totaling almost 972,000 euros, from December 2013 to April 2014, right before the 2014 elections. According to Gill, Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca, who was a leading member of Vox, “asked his friends at NCRI … to instruct its followers to make a series of money transfers.”
Vidal-Quadras has confirmed that the NCRI organized the international fundraising campaign for Vox and the group was willing to discuss the matter with Spanish journalists. “We knew that it was a new party, but not a far-right one,” a spokesperson for the NCRI told El País. In fact, Vidal-Quadras admitted that the NCRI organized the international fundraising campaign for Vox. “We knew that it was a new party, but not a far-right one,” a spokesperson for the NCRI told El País. Its difficult to believe the NCRI when it was obvious from the beginning that Vox had nationalist beliefs. The main question is: what interest does an Iranian lobbyist group have with Spanish nationalists? The NCRI is backed by influential American political agents like Giuliani and Bolton. Thus it would not be shocking if it is indeed the US government backing Vox through a third party, and that the support for Vox and Catalonian nationalists by international players like Russia and the US is simply a strategy of tension to get the whole of Europe to implode.
Is it possible that the removal of Franco’s remains is really part of a strategy of tension to get the Right and Left to eventually implode in violent war within Spain? It would not be surprising, given the fact that the Soviet Union backed the Left during the Spanish Civil War. It would not be to our shock if the US is also backing the Catalan cause, since even back in 1947, the OSS (the CIA’s precursor) armed Catalonian nationalists to overthrow Franco in what is known as Operation Banana.
It was a failed operation nonetheless, since not everyone in Washington or London agreed to topple Franco and some saw him as an asset. So the militants were arrested and the coup failed. Franco solidified his relationship with the US in 1953 after he made a deal with the Americans to allow missiles, soldiers and airplanes and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) antennas in Spain. The United States backed the Spanish nationalists since the Franco regime was a true bulwark against Communism.
US intelligence collaborated with Spanish intelligence to combat Soviet influence; this was part of NATO’s Gladio operation. Andre Moyan, a leading Belgian counter-intelligence agent during the Cold War, said in an interview with the Communist newspaper, Drapeau Rouge, that Spain had played “a key role in the recruitment of Gladio agents” and that his first contacts with the Spanish Gladio network occurred in October of 1948 when “a cell of the network operated in Las Palmas” on the Spanish Canary Islands. Spain had become a center for Italian Right-wing radicals bent on overthrowing Italy’s government. For example, the Right-wing extremist, Marco Pozzan, a member of the terrorist organization, Ordine Nuovo, which was behind the massacre in the Piazza Fontana (in which 17 people were murdered) in 1969, revealed to judge Felice Casson in 1984 that there was a plethora of Italian fascists operating in Spain during the final years of Franco’s rule.
After Prince Valerio Borghese organized a failed neo-fascist coup against the Italian government on December 7th of 1970, 100 of the plotters fled to Spain. Borghese, as well as Carlo Ciuttini and Mario Ricce, regrouped in Spain under the command of the known neo-fascist terrorist, Stefano Della Chiaie. While in Spain, Chiaie was hired by the former Nazi, Otto Skorzeny (who was hired by the Spanish government as a security consultant) to target any enemies of Franco, especially anti-fascists. (Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies, ch. 8, pp. 105-108)
If the United States was backing nationalists during the Cold War, and since the Cold War has never really ended, it would not be shocking that the US is still backing nationalists in Spain. NATO supported stay-behinds or Right-wing paramilitaries in Europe during the Gladio operation, and we know for a fact that the vice-president of Vox, Victor Gonzalez, has been involved in paramilitary training. In fact, we know this from our own personal conversion that we had with Gonzalez back in 2015.
We were in Madrid for a conference and Mr. Gonzalez, impressed by the subjects we delved in, sat by us to have a conversation on politics and religion. In the middle of the conversation, Gonzalez told us that he was a part of a secretive Catholic order that was involved in paramilitary training. He even said that he was jumping off of planes as part of the training. As he explained, this training was being done to prepare for a war with Muslims since, as he told us, “If we don’t fight them outside of Europe, then we will fight them in the streets.” He did not tell me the name of the order and when I requested an interview with him to discuss the paramilitary group he explained that he would first need permission from his superior. Weeks later we contacted Mr. Gonzalez and requested an interview to discuss his political ideology and paramilitary activity, but he declined. The fact that the vice-president of the biggest nationalist party in Spain has been, admittedly, involved in paramilitary training, should at least make us suspicious. Vox has been financed by the US-backed Iranian lobby, and its vice-president has been involved in paramilitary training. We wrote Gonzalez for this article but he declined to write us back. The apparatus has the trappings of a Gladio operation.
Russian outlets have been advancing the propaganda for Catalonian nationalism while backing other nationalisms like that of the German AfD, while at the same time the US government under the Trump administration has been pushing Germany to stop being independent on the US for its defense. Both of these actions are extremely dangerous. Russia wants to split the European Union, and if this occurs it will accelerate Germany to pursue militarist aims, since the a fragmented EU will be a national security disaster and will give Germany the opportunity to claim that allies no longer care about Europe and that European countries should follow Germany as the continent’s defender. In addition, with the US pushing for Germany to not be dependent on the US for defense spending, the Germans are taking this as a green light for German military independence. A Germany bent on military independence, alongside a fragmented Europe, will only spell disaster, and that is a revival of German military power. Russian trolling for anti-EU sentiment, and the US’ pushing for Germany to pay for her own defense, are ingredients for the recipe of Europe’s implosion.