The Russian plot in Spain and the outside noise: Will Langley do what Brussels does not do?

@ElentirENG ES 1·31·2024 · 7:01 0

The fact that a judge opens the door to accusing Puigdemont of treason could end up having many more consequences than imagined.

What Sánchez already knew about the Russian plot when he offered amnesty to Puigdemont
Pedro Sánchez offers Putin, via Waterloo, the key to decide the fate of Spain

A government of a NATO country trying to hide a Russian plot

The judicial setback known this Monday against Sánchez's plans, which sought to grant a broad amnesty to his parliamentary allies, leaving unpunished the crimes committed in the separatist coup of October 2017, gave rise yesterday to a vote in which Junts, Puigdemont's party, voted against its own amnesty law as it was not certain that it would cover an accusation of treason.

This accusation is based on the contacts between the Kremlin and the authors of the separatist coup in Catalonia, contacts known for years and which did not prevent Pedro Sánchez from promising impunity to his partners in exchange for their support for his re-election. An impunity that would have gone so far as to prevent judges from continuing to investigate a Russian plot to destabilize one of the largest countries in the European Union.

The attention that this issue is already receiving in other countries

This case has begun to generate more and more noise abroad, attracting the attention of the media in other countries. After hearing about this judicial decision in Spain, the news has attracted the attention of the media from United States, Ukraine, Poland, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France and Netherlands. When news about Russian interference in Spain attracts so much international media attention, inevitably the intelligence services of other countries will already be aware that Russia has tried to destabilize a NATO country as important as Spain and Pedro Sánchez was trying to cover up this Russian plot with an amnesty.

US intelligence indicates a new Russian network in Catalonia

With the great resonance of this case abroad, the inevitable begins to happen. Yesterday, the Spanish newspaper Abc announced that US intelligence has revealed a new Russian interference network with presence in Catalonia. According to an American report, this network would have people in Barcelona and other Spanish cities and would be dedicated to "the proliferation of disinformation and propaganda to promote Russia's foreign influence objectives". We know this only 24 hours after that crucial judicial decision that yesterday put an end to the amnesty law agreed upon by the socialists and the separatists.

Will information about this Russian plot begin to flow from other intelligence services?

Obviously, the allied intelligence services are not going to remain passive in the face of such serious events. It is not only the rule of law in Spain that is in danger, something that is already very serious. Now the national security of Spain and the security of our European allies is also at risk, given the threat of a destabilization attempt as serious as the attempt to break the national unity of a NATO country offering astronomical sums of money and even thousands of Russian soldiers to the Catalan separatists.

In addition to the National Intelligence Center (CNI) of Spain, it is very possible that other allied intelligence services have information about the Russian plot in Catalonia and about its connections abroad. It could soon become an increasingly present issue in the media. Without going any further, this Monday a Latvian MEP allied with Catalan separatism was discovered as a Russian agent, in an investigation published by The Insider magazine, the Estonian newspaper Delfi, the investigative journalism center Re:Baltica (based in Latvia) and the Swedish newspaper Expressen.

A risk that the Atlantic Alliance cannot take

Perhaps, soon, Langley (where the CIA headquarters is located) could end up doing what Brussels has not done: taking seriously the threat posed by the impunity pact between Sánchez and his separatist allies , in turn allies of Putin. Let's think that The US has a military presence in Spain, in the bases of Morón and Rota, and in the latter it has its famous anti-missile shield located. Spain has a strategic position in Europe. The Atlantic Alliance cannot take the risk of having Moscow controlling Spain via Waterloo, as I already warned last summer.

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Photo: CIA.gov. The headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia.