Carles Puigdemont has only had an MEP email address for a few hours, having formally been announced in the Parliament earlier this week, but his inbox is already filling with what he describes on Twitter as "threats, insults and hate messages".

This is one of the many examples of threats, insults and hate messages that I have received in the past few hours in my MEP inbox. Shameful. @Europarl_EN pic.twitter.com/TKrFO6mSjk — Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) January 16, 2020

In the tweet, he includes a screenshot of part of an email in Spanish which reads: "I want to pass on to you, the 130th president of Catalonia, my solidarity with all the people of Catalonia for the awful events in Tarragona. It's indescribable the pain I feel that you weren't on the reactor."

The email is apparently referring to an explosion at a chemical plant near Tarragona, in the south of Catalonia, earlier this week. Three people have died as a result of the incident.