Russia's hybrid attack against Spain and the attempts to ignore and forget what happened

For some time now, I've been reading messages claiming that Russia doesn't pose a threat to Spain and that our country should remain neutral.

Russia's support for separatism in Spain and the support of Spanish separatists for Russia
Russia paid to assassinate NATO soldiers with a unit that also operated in Spain

Russian interference in Catalonia and the dispatch of a sabotage unit

These claims seem to overlook the fact that Russia supported the 2017 separatist coup in Catalonia by offering economic and military aid to the coup plotters, an issue I already addressed here three years ago. Let us also remember that the Kremlin sent members of GRU Unit 29155 to Spain at the same time that the separatist coup was being organized. Let us remember that Unit 29155 is in charge of carrying out sabotage and paid terrorists in Afghanistan to assassinate NATO soldiers when Spain was participating in the international intervention in that country in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 against the United States.

This Sunday, José Ignacio Torreblanca addresses this issue in El Mundo recalling that Russian interference in Spain and indicating what Russia Today and Sputnik, Kremlin propaganda media, did to support this separatist coup in Spain:

Between September 11 and 27, 2017 alone, both media outlets published 305 pieces about Catalonia with the intention of fueling the crisis, polarizing opinion, distorting information, undermining Spanish institutions, and generating instability and tension.

The government's attempt to prevent this interference from being investigated

It's no secret that in Spain there are politicians and parties that are not interested in having this interference investigated. The first are the parties of Pedro Sánchez's own government, since their Catalan separatist allies were implicated in contacts with Russian agents at that time.

In fact, the amnesty approved by Sánchez for the 2017 coup included the erasure of Russian interference in Catalonia, an erasure that was clearly reflected in a statement by Minister Félix Bolaños in November 2024, stating that "there has been no Russian plot in support of Catalan independence", simply because its government has decided to prevent further investigation.

Separatists and the far left don't want to talk about it either

Obviously, among those interested in burying this Russian interference are also the government's separatist and communist allies. The separatists for obvious reasons, at least in the case of the Catalan separatists, since they were the ones who contacted Russia, a fact that should lead to a treason trial that we surely won't see because Sánchez also included this accusation in his amnesty to avoid Carles Puigdemont, whose party, Junts, is an ally of the government, being convicted for it.

As for the far left, the Spanish communists have been acting as Moscow's useful idiots since the Cold War. Before, they did so because of a clear ideological connection with the Soviet communist dictatorship, and now they continue to do so because, after all, Russia is an ally of communist dictatorships like Cuba, China, and North Korea and is also the great supporter of the socialist dictatorship in Venezuela.

The inexplicable attitude of a section of the right

More inexplicable is the attitude of a section of the right that has decided to look the other way when it comes to the Russian threat, in some cases out of clear sympathy for the dictator Vladimir Putin (whom he sees as a defender of Christian values ​​while his army is busy razing churches in Ukraine), and in other cases because the Ukrainian cause and the denunciation of the Russian invasion are no longer of interest because Trump is trying to divide that country with Putin.

This paradoxical attitude makes us see "patriots" who have decided to forget that Putin's dictatorship tried to break the unity of Spain to weaken our country, offering money and soldiers to the separatists for their 2017 coup in Catalonia, and sending a GRU sabotage unit to Spain precisely when that coup took place. What kind of defense of Spain are those who want us to ignore and forget all this?

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Photo: Mikhail Svetlov.