The so-called “Scotland’s Papers” tell a disturbing story of the Spanish diplomatic service in the aftermath of the Catalan referendum. At the top of the chain was a 71-year-old career politician coaxed out of his scandal-induced retirement by the mission to save Spain and Europe from independentism. At the bottom was the lowly consul that he brought in from the cold. As Josep Borrell moves on to occupy one of the highest positions of his 44-year political career, Miguel Ángel Vecino has been sacked and is taking Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to court for unfair dismissal.

“Scotland’s Papers” is one of the most deplorable stories to come out of Josep Borrell Fontellas‘ eighteen evangelistic months in charge of Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and one of the most revealing about his tenure. Only a few weeks ago, the veteran Socialist was being touted as a possible caretaker prime minister, with Pedro Sánchez‘s head the price demanded by the Popular Party price for supporting a Socialist government. On 1 December, with PSOE still unable to form a government, Mr Borrell finally took over as the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

That someone with a career as chequered as Mr Borrell’s should be rewarded so handsomely – the European Union is reported to have quadrupled his salary – ought to be a source of shame for both Spain and the EU, and a source of worry for European citizens. With his appointment, the EU continues its implicit support of Spanish repression in Catalonia. The EU is concerned neither by Mr Borrell’s scandal-strewn trajectory in politics and business, nor his controversy-ridden tenure as Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, as he toured the globe peddling his government and judiciary’s implausible version of events in Spain.

“Scotland’s Papers”

The so-called “Scotland’s Papers” tell a disturbing story of bullying at all levels of the Spanish diplomatic service in the aftermath of the Catalan referendum. At the top of the food chain is a 71-year-old hawk coaxed out of his scandal-induced retirement by a patriotic mission to save Spain and Europe from independentism. At the bottom is the lowly consul that he brought in from the cold. As Josep Borrell moves on to occupy one of the highest positions of his 44-year political career (he was President of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2007), Miguel Ángel Vecino has been sacked and is taking Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to court for unfair dismissal. On the one hand, we have the ambition, self-interest, hubris, irascibility and insensitivity of a transgressive career politician; on the other, a career diplomat desperate to prove himself and after a long stint behind a desk in Madrid.

“Scotland’s Papers” reveal what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs became under Josep Borrell Fontelles by lifting the lid on one of the most important of Spain’s two hundred embassies and consulates, not including honorary consulates. It is a chance to see just how desperately down and dirty Spanish diplomacy was prepared to get as Mr Borrell turned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs into the Anti-Catalan Propagandaministerium.

18 months of diplomatic incidents

When the Popular Party was removed from government on 1 June, 2018, thanks to the independentist parties’ support of Pedro Sánchez’s no-confidence motion, Mr Borrell was brought out of retirement to run Spain’s failing diplomatic service and restore some lustre to its international image, tarnished as it had been by the footage of Spanish police injuring more than a thousand peaceful voters in Catalonia and the subsequent jailing or exile of the Catalan government and main civil leaders. Mr Borrell implemented a significantly more proactive and coercive style of diplomacy – spying, harrassment, bullying, threats, calling in favours and bribery. It raised hackles all over the continent, and beyond. There were diplomatic incidents in Spain, Kosovo, NATO, Belgium, Germany, the UK, the US, Switzerland, Denmark, Israel, Russia, Scotland and, most recently, the Faroe Islands.

Over the past month, right-wing online newspaper Vozpópuli has published an exclusive series of articles by Antonio Rodríguez (its royal, defence, foreign affairs and Ciudadanos correspondent) based on eighty documents that the paper claims to have obtained from “judicial sources” – “Scotland’s Papers” as they are dubbed in the dodgy translations of the original articles. The leaked emails and reports reveal, in great detail, that the Spanish diplomatic service’s activity in Scotland has been almost exclusively political in nature under Mr Borrell’s aggressively paranoid diplomatic regime, focused mainly on countering the independentist message and blocking the activities of Scottish, Catalan and Basque independentist parties. This unconstitutional activity has not only harmed the three nations’ general interests, but done further damage to the image of Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Although the Vozpópuli exclusive was designed to cause as much embarrassment as possible to Spanish Socialists, the revelations have also upset Scottish, Catalan and Basque governments and parties. Were it not for the fact that Vozpópuli pixellated certain names and published only a quarter of the eighty documents, the embarrassment might have been greater.

“Spain: we won’t veto Scotland joining EU”

The trigger for the leak of the documents was the sacking of Spain’s consul-general in Scotland, Miguel Ángel Vecino Quintana, in June. In April, Spain’s top diplomat in Scotland had sent a letter to the editor of The Herald, and carbon copied it to Scottish Government civil servants, in which he stated that Spain had never intended to veto an independent Scotland’s membership of the European Union. The letter,which ultimately appeared in The National on 6 June, had been intended as a response to the assertion by the leader of the Spanish delegation in the EPP Group in European Union institutions, Esteban González Pons, that “once the UK leaves, and Scotland decides to leave the UK, then you can join the queue to join the EU behind Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Turkey”.



The Spanish consul’s letter to the The Herald (16/04/2019) and the The National front page (06/06/19)

More Catholic than the Pope

Mr Vecino had only been reiterating Spain’s position on the issue as outlined by his boss, Josep Borrell, on 21 November, 2018: “If [Scotland] left the UK in accordance with the internal laws of the country and Westminster [the British parliament] is in favour, we are not going to be more Catholic than the Pope. Why would we object?”. It was a shift in position that caused unease in Westminster and some excitement in Holyrood.

According to Vozpópuli‘s sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr Vecino’s sacking was due to a “loss of confidence” as he had not sought clearance from his superiors to send the letter and “exceeded his authority”. They stressed that it was “not up to a consul-general to make statements of a political nature without their being previously agreed with Spain’s ambassador in London or the General Directorate of Communication and Diplomatic Information of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”.

Mr Vecino was dismissed on 6 June, the same day that the letter had been published by The National, which obtained a copy under Scotland’s freedom of information law. Mr Vecino claimed that the letter had been private and blamed the Scottish Government for acting “in bad faith” by releasing it, despite being legally obliged to do so.

Scotland: “the main haven and support system of Catalan secessionists”

According to the minutes of the meeting held a month later at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Undersecretary Ángeles Moreno and General Director for Europe Aurora Mejía to the sacked consul-general that finding a replacement was urgent because of the “political importance” of Scotland – “the main haven and support system of Catalan secessionists”, as it had been called by Mr Borrell’s Chief of Staff, Camilo Villarino, at Mr Vecino’s induction lunch back in October, 2018. Ms Moreno stressed that the Edinburgh Consulate General was an “unquestionable political component” of monitoring the “Scottish Government’s position before Brexit”. How contradictory then that the reason initially given by Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his dismissal was that a consul-general “does not perform a function of political representation”.

Three months later, on 6 September, Mr Vecino lodged a complaint against his former employer for unfair dismissal to which he added copious documentation to demonstrate the quality of his work in Edinburgh and support his case that all of his “political” activity in Scotland had been directed by Chief of Staff for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Camilo Villarino, and the Catalan affairs advisor, Jorge Romeu. “I will not have my name dragged through the mud for Mr Borrell’s interests, which have nothing to do with me”, he is quoted as saying by Vozpópuli.

However, the reason given for Mr Vecino’s dismissal in the disciplinary file sent to the High Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 16 October was not that he had “exceeded his authority”, as had been initially stated, but “other reasons”. Instead it contained two complaints about Mr Vecino’s performance as consul-general.

Inappropriate behaviour for a top diplomatic figure

In the first document, Mar Felices, the director of the Ibero-American Documentary Cinema Society in Scotland, expressed her indignation at Mr Vecino’s “inappropriate behaviour for a top diplomatic figure”. In February this year, the Spanish Consulate had agreed to organise a reception for IberoDocs to the value of 500 pounds (580 euros) as an in-kind donation towards the costs of holding the annual documentary showcase. As the food and drink offered by the catering service were “quite scarce and of poor quality”, Ms Felices was certain that the cost of the reception was “nowhere near” the sum pledged. “I managed to have one glass of wine. I even had to ask the waiters if they could serve a beer to a journalist – which never got served”.

Harassment, defamation and professional smears

The other was the resignation letter of Spain’s honorary consul in Aberdeen, Ignacio Chanzá, which criticised Mr Vecino for not respecting the “professional dignity” of his subordinates. A letter had been received by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from several consulate employees only days before Mr Vecino’s reiteration of Spain’s position on Scotland appeared in the Scottish press. The letter from consular staff spoke of “harassment, defamation and professional smears” by the consul. An article published in El Confidencial within twenty-four hours of the sacking, reported that the staff considered their boss to be “manipulative and poisonous”, a “despot” and a “troublemaker” with an “unbearable” character. No proof of the accusations was provided but they were not the first accusations of misconduct to be made against Mr Vecino during his seven months in Edinburgh.

A month before his sacking, at the request of Humza Yousaf, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Mr Vecino had agreed to meet Ian Mallon, the father of a young Scottish man killed in Spain in 2012. Mr Mallon was unhappy at the lack of progress made by Spanish police in solving the case. Mr Vecino failed to show up at the meeting. His office cancelled the meeting an hour after it was supposed to start saying that a prior engagement had overrun.

“The raffle”

Nor was this the first time Miguel Ángel Vecino had been sacked, or subject to disciplinary proceedings, or had cause to file a suit against his employer, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During his thirty-two-year diplomatic career Mr Vecino has filed many complaints, mainly about the Ministry’s annual allocation of diplomatic postings, known in the Spanish diplomatic service as “the raffle”.

In 2004, six months into José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s first term as Spanish prime minister, Mr Vecino was removed from his post at the Spanish Embassy in Ottawa, Canada, after repeatedly complaining about irregularities in the running of diplomatic affairs. He was demoted back to Madrid. After being overlooked for a series of postings which he felt had been awarded to less qualified candidates, he lodged an appeal against “the raffle”, arguing that his non-appointment had been a “veiled sanction”. His appeal was upheld and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs obliged to post the complainant to one of his chosen destinations.

Cronyism, nepotism and harrassment in the workplace

He has lodged complaints about “the raffle” every year since 2014, when José Manuel García-Margallo was Spanish Foreign Minister and Global Spain was known as Brand Spain. On that occasion, Mr Vecino accused the Ministry of passing him over for being the first Spanish diplomat to declare an affiliation to Spanish political party, Ciudadanos. He was the only applicant not to get one of the five foreign postings requested, which went to candidates ranking far below him on the diplomatic scale. He accused the Popular Party of “returning the diplomatic service to Franco’s time” with cronyism and nepotism deciding appointments rather than seniority, qualifications or experience.

In May, 2016, Mr Vecino took his complaint about “the raffle” to the Audiencia Nacional – the National Court. It was rejected on all counts. In March, 2017, Mr Vecino appealed against the ruling, but his appeal was rejected. In July, 2017, he filed a complaint with the National Court against the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, Cristóbal González-Aller, and his predecessor, Rafael Mendívil, for workplace harrassment, having been passed over for no fewer than twenty-one foreign postings.

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alfonso Dastis, responded by dismissing Undersecretary González-Aller and appointing him as a Spanish liaison with organisations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the Red Cross in Geneva. Mr Dastis’s response to Mr Vecino’s complaints was a simple one: never to appoint consuls who complain about the Ministry. “Serving diplomats involved in judicial matters or with pending appeals against the Ministry will not be appointed to senior positions or other positions of trust until their situation is resolved”, said Mr Dastis.

In May, 2018, the last month of the previous administration, he filed another administrative appeal. Angry at being overlooked in “the raffle” for the fifth year in a row, Mr Vecino lodged the familiar complaint that the Ministry’s procedure had been “arbitrary and illegal”, a “veiled sanction or reprisal” against his professional person.

His Government demands respect for the Constitution, except for Minister Dastis who threatens to violate it, and then does so

In his complaint, he again accused the Ministry of appointing diplomats ahead of him whom he considered unfit for consular work due to insufficient experience and inadequate qualifications, principally a lack of legal training, or who were below him on the diplomatic ladder. He went as far as to accuse the Ministry of nepotism in its appointment of the consul-general in Bogotá, Colombia, and urged the Ministry to annul various appointments and suspend others until his complaint was resolved. He showed particular interest in the appointments to consulates in Tetouan, Buenos Aires, Marseille, Beijing, Zurich, Strasbourg and Lyon. Of Borrell’s predecessor, Alfonso Dastis, Mr Vecino said, “this Government demands respect for the Constitution, except for Minister Dastis, who threatens to violate it, and then does so”.

Borrell brought Vecino in from the cold

With a change of government came a change of fortune for the shunned diplomat. On 15 October, Mr Vecino was selected to fill the vacancy of consul-general in Edinburgh by Spain’s new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell. The Diplomat in Spain put Mr Vecino’s appointment down to his being “an expert in nationalisms” having been posted to Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and in charge of Kosovan affairs while at the Spanish Embassy in Belgrade. For Mr Borrell, Scotland was not only an important battleground because of the strong links that had developed between Scottish and Catalan independentists, but also, of course, because of the residency of Catalan exile, Clara Ponsatí Obiols, Education Minister in the 2017 Government of Catalonia dismissed from office following the 1 October referendum.

The Spanish authorities were particularly worried about the Scottish Government’s position on Catalonia. In July, 2018, an official complaint had been made by Miguel Ángel Vecino’s predecessor, Ricardo Martínez, to Scotland’s Minister for Europe, Ben Macpherson, about the communiqué concerning President Quim Torra’s visit, which had expressed “respect for the right to self-determination of Catalan people”. Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, asked the consulate in Edinburgh to pass on his “unease” to the Scottish Government.

Operation Catalonia

With Mr Borrell in charge, Spanish diplomats were instructed to force the cancellation of any events involving serving or exiled Catalan politicians. If that were not possible, they should force an invitation and disrupt them with the counterarguments laid out in the Minister’s dossier. They were also expected to monitor and pressurise institutions and associations in countries where support exists for self-determination or there is censure of Spanish repression.

Imposing the Spanish State’s narrative about events in the country, mainly regarding the situation in Catalonia, was to be Mr Vecino’s principal task in the Scottish capital. Mr Borrell decided to take a chance on the diplomat who had become a Madrid-bound pariah under Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party government. After all, he did share Borrell’s facile narrative linking Catalan independentism to all the horrors of twentieth-century Europe, depicting it as a dangerous disease that can be cured – a narrative full of dubious parallels between Yugoslavia, Spain and the UK, between Kosovo, Catalonia and Scotland, in which all nationalists are “racist fanatics” whose “nationalist passion” had caused more havoc in history than any other factor, that “nationalism has filled the history of Europe, the world, and Spain with wars, blood and corpses”, that “borders are the scars that history has left on the skin of the earth, carved in blood and fire”, etc (Mario Vargas Llosa and Josep Borrell, Barcelona, 8 October, 2017). There is no room in this discourse for a distinction between oppressive and emancipatory nationalisms. The omission of Spanish nationalism from this discourse is glaring, especially when one considers that the preservation of the borders of Spain has become the one and only goal of all branches of government, of all the apparatus of the State, to the detriment of democratic quality, separation of powers, human rights, and the rule of law.

Spanish nationalist mindset

Spanish unionism has also always seen left-wing party, Podemos, as a threat to the integrity of the Spanish state, a more minor problem than Catalonia and the Basque Country perhaps, but a problem nonetheless. Mr Vecino’s take on the Spanish left is as mired in questionable historical simile as Mr Borrell’s portrayal of Catalan and Baque nationalism. He views Podemos through the lens of the late 1940s and Soviet consolidation in Eastern Europe. In 2016, with Spain unable to form a government following a general election, Mr Vecino the historian wrote an article in The Diplomat in Spain entitled “From Lenin to Iglesias” drawing “shocking” parallels between the ministries that had been requested by Pablo Iglesias as a condition for supporting a Socialist government and the ministeries requested by Stalin in coalition governments in occupied Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1948.

Three years later, after the April general election, Pedro Sánchez refused to form a coalition government with Unidas Podemos for the same reasons. “95% of Spaniards wouldn’t be able to sleep at night” with Mr Iglesias’ party in the government, he said. Following the repeated general election this month, Mr Sánchez and Mr Iglesias have agreed to form a minority coalition government. It is a government that will probably never be formed.

Unconstitutional orders

In his letter to the board of the diplomatic service regarding his dismissal, Mr Vecino accused Josep Borrell’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of giving the consul-general “unconstitutional orders” during his brief time in the Spanish consulate in Edinburgh. Mr Vecino stated that he was ordered to prevent a visit to Scotland by members of the Catalan Parliament to avoid any Catalan presence in Scotland in the run-up to the general election on 28 April this year and, in doing so, avoid any possible “electoral harm to the government of Pedro Sánchez”, which he described as a “dirty trick at best”.

Mr Vecino felt it was even “more unjustified and damaging” to prevent a visit from the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce to Barcelona and another from a Catalan business delegation to Scotland, achievements with which Mr Borrell’s Chief of Staff, Camillo Villarino, was delighted. “Thank you very much for the information, Miguel Ángel. Good work”, he said. He also mentioned the orders from Madrid to “keep an eye on the PNV”, the Basque Nationalist Party.

Never trust a Scot

In his letter to the board, he said that he believed that he had cultivated an “excellent” relationship with Nicola Sturgeon’s government and the Scottish National Party (SNP) and, moreover, held himself responsible for “the disappearance of Scottish support for Catalan independence” during his short time as Spanish consul-general.

On his appointment to the post in Edinburgh, he said “they entrusted me to do the political job that Ambassador Bastarreche had not done in the more than three years he was in the United Kingdom, having never officially visited Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland because, as he told me himself, it is not necessary, and he only talks to friends”.

Borrell has done great damage to Spain’s relations with the United Kingdom and Scotland, and to the image of the Government

He also used the letter to talk up his achievements, claiming that he had managed to “completely neutralise the influence and propaganda of Catalan separatism” in Scotland but that, since his sacking by Josep Borrell, “the yellow ribbons are back on the lapels of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) and I doubt the government in Edinburgh will ever trust a Spanish representative again”. In his opinion, “Borrell has done great damage to Spain’s relations with the United Kingdom and Scotland, and to the image of the Government.”

As he has throughout his long diplomatic career, Mr Vecino insisted that he be given another position abroad in recognition of the “great work” he did in Edinburgh, “not only political but also consular”.

Rooting out secessionists

According to the suit filed by Mr Vecino, he had met Jorge Romeu, Mr. Borrell’s advisor on Catalonia, when only a few days into the job. Mr Romeu insisted that “curbing and even rooting out Catalan secessionists in Scotland” was one of his main duties as consul-general in Edinburgh after years of negligence during Mariano Rajoy’s time as Spanish prime minister. Mr Vecino quoted Mr Romeu as saying that “Rajoy didn’t care what the international community thought about Spain at all. ‘Let them talk, they’ll eventually get tired of it’, he’d say”. Under Josep Borrell’s regime things were going to be different. “Borrell believes that fighting nationalist movements is a foreign policy priority, and Scotland is a key element in his strategy”, said Mr Romeu.

Only weeks into the job, an act dedicated to the fortieth anniversary of the Spanish Constitution held by the Scottish Government led Mr Vecino to claim that he had detected “a change in direction”. Mr Borrell’s office believed any apparent shift to be “pragmatic” rather than a question of “principles” and advised him to proceed with caution.

The future of Catalonia should be decided through the ballot box

On 12 February, the first day of the trial of twelve Catalan civil and political leaders on charges of rebellion, sedition and embezlement, the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, tweeted her best wishes to the defendants, expressed support for a referendum in Catalonia and hoped that the trial would be “demonstrably fair”. The tweet was not well received at either the Spanish Embassy in London or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid. It was hardly the “change in direction” that Mr Vecino had announced.

Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, tweets her best wishes to the defendants and expresses support for a referendum in Catalonia on the first day of the trial of twelve Catalan civil and political leaders – 12/02/2019

It must have been written by someone brainless

In an exchange of emails with his superiors, Mr Vecino said that the post on the First Minister’s account was “hardly the kind of tweet that any head of government in her right mind would write” and that it “must have been written by someone brainless”, but insisted that he “still believed in a certain change of attitude from the [Scottish] authorities” because there had been no demonstration outside the Consulate, because he had not seen any Scottish flags at the demonstrations in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and because “that First Minister tweet” had not been retweeted by the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop, whom he described as “an extremist who had sent very aggressive tweets against Spain in the past”.

“We do not trust them, at all”, replied Mr Borrell’s Chief of Staff. In his subsequent report, Mr Vecino, continued to insist that “the atmosphere has radically changed”.

“Spain must be reclaimed by Islam”

“Ex-Catalan Minister Ponsatí’s Lawyer wants Spain to be ‘reclaimed by Islam” blared the headline inspired by Mr Vecino’s email the day after Nicola Sturgeon had tweeted about the Catalan referendum trial. He began the message by falsely attributing the organisation of the Glasgow protest against the trial of Catalan leaders to Aamer Anwar, the Rector of the University of Glasgow and lawyer for exiled Catalan Minister, Clara Ponsatí.

In his follow-up report, sent later the same day, he said that the Edinburgh demonstration had attracted “fifteen people at most” and the protest in Glasgow “a mere twenty to twenty-five people on a staircase” despite publicity on social media. “The total number of people interested did not exceed forty-six”, crowed Mr Vecino. The presence of a Glasgow councillor among their number did not dampen his delight. Ever the optimist, Mr Vecino saw more positive signs: “there were no Scottish flags alongside the Catalan independentist flags – it seems as if they want to convey the message that this is an issue exclusive to Catalonia”.

Mr Vecino then launched an ad hominem attack on Mr Anwar, focusing on his origin and his religion, going so far as to put a jihadist’s words into his mouth. According to the libellous email, Mr Anwar is using the rectorship as a “political springboard”. According to Mr Vecino, Mr Anwar’s lack of “political progress” in the Labour Party was the origin of Scottish nationalism. According to The Scotsman, however, “Mr Anwar has been a left-wing political activist for a number of years, but was not affiliated to any party until he joined the SNP following the referendum on Scottish independence”. And according to David Torrance’s biography of Nicola Sturgeon, Mr Anwar had been “aligned with the Socialist Workers’ Party”. No mention of any link between Mr Anwar and the Labour Party could be found, let alone an affiliation.

According to Mr Vecino, Mr Anwar “is not much appreciated by the Pakistani community, which he has clearly taken advantage of for his own political ends, but has done nothing for in real terms”. Any lack of appreciation for Mr Anwar is more likely to be because he “champions mosque reform” and has criticised “the older Pakistani generation’s quasi-feudal system of managing mosques, their demeaning approach to women” and the “absence of women among the committee members and trustees of Glasgow Central Mosque”. He has also “received death threats and abuse for condemning violent extremism and calling for unity within the Muslim community” (Muslims in Scotland: The Making of Community in a Post-9/11 World by Stefano Bonino).

The leader of an Islamist group

Mr Vecino then claimed that Mr Anwar’s strategy had been to “attract Muslims to the SNP, becoming the leader of the Islamist group [sic] and hoping thereby to gain political importance, something he has clearly failed to achieve”. Mr Vecino is also contemptuous of Mr Anwar’s professional ability, asserting that “he portrays himself as one of the best criminal lawyers in Scotland, but is nothing of the kind”. As Greg Russell pointed out in The National, “Aamer Anwar has been named solicitor of the year in 2018-19, lawyer of the year 2017 and solicitor of the year in 2016, and has picked up the award over the last decade more times than any other lawyer”.

To back up his accusation that Mr Anwar is an Islamic fundamentalist at the heart of the SNP and discredit him further, Mr Vecino’s argument became even more far-fetched. He asserted that Mr Anwar “usually takes Muslims to his demonstrations and mixes up everything imaginable, and, in the case of Spain, it is Catalan independence and the nationalist claims of Ceuta and Melilla, defending the argument that Spain must be reclaimed by Islam”.

There is a world of difference between believing Spain’s North African enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, should be part of Morocco, and promoting the reestablishment of Al-Andalus. But, like his former Minister, Mr Vecino would never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Nor would he miss a chance to extol his own virtues in the hope of scoring a few brownie points with his superiors.

“Pernicious racism and bigotry”

A furious Mr Anwar described the leaked documents as “paranoid, racist, anti-Catalan and colonialist ramblings masquerading as ‘diplomacy'” and told The National that Mr Vecino’s comments were “a reflection of alt-right, fascist and racist dogmatism, which should come as no surprise given the autocratic, barbaric response to Catalonia’s legitimate and peaceful fight for independence”. He added that Mr Vecino’s accusation that he was “using the independence struggle as a Trojan horse to spread Islam would be laughable were it not rooted in such dangerous, pernicious racism and bigotry”.

It is abhorrent that such words flow not from the pages of some far-right commentator but from those masquerading as diplomats. The comments, designed to stoke fear and hate, will have no impact on the outcome of Catalonia’s struggle for freedom or indeed the outcome of Clara Ponsati’s extradition, which fortunately lies in the hands of our independent judiciary. Dog whistle politics of this ilk are the last resort of those who know they have already all but lost. Aamer Anwar’s response to Miguel Ángel Vecino’s attack in the Scottish Papers – The National – 20/11/2019

The “indefensible” tweet

Three days after Nicola Sturgeon’s controversial tweet, Mr Vecino met Scotland’s Head of European Affairs, Frank Lang. In an email to Madrid and London, Mr Vecino said that the meeting had been requested by Mr Lang, who had “instantly” admitted that the First Minister’s tweet had been “indefensible”, but claimed that it had come from Nicola Sturgeon’s party account, not her First Minister account. According to Mr Vecino, Mr Lang also pointed out that neither the Scottish Government nor the SNP had wanted to sign the manifesto in support of the imprisoned Catalan leaders.

Mr Vecino then reported how he had impressed upon Mr Lang that the main problem with the tweet was how it would be “manipulated, twisted and used by Catalan independentists, distorting reality until it became an alternative reality, which is what they will then sell”. He said that Mr Lang had proposed a meeting with the Scottish External Affairs Minister to clarify the situation and suggest that she make a statement rectifying the First Minister’s message.

Ms Sturgeon is “a very distant and cold person, who rarely shows any feelings and seems to lack empathy”

The 45-minute meeting between the Spanish Consul-General and the First Minister of Scotland took place on 28 February. In his report, Mr Vecino describes how he is repeatedly reminded of the exceptional nature of the meeting by his hosts. Having discussed Brexit, a second Scottish referendum and Northern Ireland, Mr Vecino expressed his wish to explain the Catalan situation to Ms Sturgeon as he felt the parts of the Scottish Government and the SNP were “unclear about what had really happened in Catalonia, and what will happen” [sic]. He reported pointing out that Pedro Sánchez’s government had “always been in favour of dialogue” and that “it was the independentists who refused to talk”. Mr Vecino said that he had spoken about the Catalan situation for ten minutes and that Ms Sturgeon had “listened without interrupting”.

He quoted Ms Sturgeon as thanking him very much for explaining what was happening in Catalonia “because until now no one has taken the trouble to do so”. She added that she was very glad that the Spanish government was prepared to talk and reach an agreement “because it is difficult to understand that there are politicians in jail”. In response to Mr Vecino’s protests that anyone “breaking the Constitution should be tried and, if convicted, sentenced”, Ms Sturgeon replied: “Think about the images of police violence that we all saw. There is no justication for that”. She welcomed any willingness to talk, but reminded Mr Vecino that “unfortunately, people I know are on trial”. According to Mr Vecino, the meeting ended with the First Minister thanking him once again for his explanations, stressing that good relations should not be affected by differences of opinion and insisting that there was no desire on her part to “meddle in Spanish affairs”.

Ms Sturgeon’s lack of awareness of international affairs is shocking

In his evaluation of the meeting he described First Minister Sturgeon as “a very distant and cold person, who rarely shows any feelings and seemed to lack empathy”. Mr Vecino felt her to be “more opportunistic than pragmatic”. He said that her “lack of awareness of international affairs is shocking for someone who hopes to achieve independence for her country” but did not put this down to “ignorance”, rather a “total disinterest”. He doubted that she actually considered the imprisoned Catalan leaders to be “friends”. Mr Vecino predicted that Ms Sturgeon “would drop her aggressive anti-Spanish tone for a more neutral one” and “set aside her support for independentism” as the situation calmed down.

Four months after Mr Vecino was sacked by Mr Borrell, Nicola Sturgeon again tweeted about the Catalan referendum trial. On 14 October, 2019, when nine of the defendants were sentenced to between nine and thirteen years imprisonment for sedition, the First Minister called it a “dreadful outcome” that politicians should be jailed for allowing a vote, described the Spanish political system as being in need of “urgent change” and expressed solidarity “with all of them and their families”.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s tweet on the verdict in the Catalan referendum trial – 14/10/2019

Never trust a Catalan

On 8 February, four days before First Minister Sturgeon’s first controversial tweet, Jorge Romeu, Josep Borrell’s advisor on Catalan affairs, emailed Mr Vecino with “classified information”, possibly provided by the Spanish secret service, that the Deputy Speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Josep Costa, was planning visits to parliaments in Scotland, Germany and Switzerland. Mr Costa had contacted Fergus Cochrane, Scottish Head of International Relations and the trip was due to take place on 28-29 March, only a month before the first of the two general elections held in Spain this year and during the Catalan referendum trial. The aim of the trips was, according to the restricted information, to establish parliamentary groups “fostering friendship with Catalonia”, although the Swiss trip was “complicated” as the “Swiss-Catalan Friendship Group” was “in disarray”.

“Simple-minded Scots”

According to the Vozpópuli account, Mr Romeu told Mr Vecino “to do everything in his power to prevent the visit of the Catalan MPs” and warned him about “simple-minded Scots easily manipulated by Catalan independence supporters”. He also told Mr Vecino to threaten Scottish authorities that the proposed visit could cause a diplomatic incident with Spain as it would be seen as interference in the Spanish general election. How many such threats were made by Spanish ambassadors and consuls during Mr Borrell’s regime?

Mr Vecino claimed that Mr Romeu had stressed the great importance given by Mr Borrell to all things secessionist and was asked to highlight Mr Borrell’s statement in late 2018 that Spain would not veto Scotland’s becoming an EU member state if independence had been achieved legally. Mr Vecino was claiming that his contentious letter was the result of instructions he had received from his superiors. He also urged the consul to warn the Scottish Government about the hardline on Scottish EU membership that they could expect from Spanish right-wing parties, who would seize upon any perceived complacency with Catalan independentists on the part of the Socialist government.

The fascist bogeyman discourse has been a Socialist favourite throughout 2019’s constant electioneering. It seems they felt it would travel. And the more they have said the bogeyman was coming, the more the bogeyman has come, whitewashed by Spanish right-wing parties and the mainstream Spanish media. Pedro Sánchez’s deliberate failure to form a government took Spain into its third year in a state of exception, a third year that has been all the more important to the State for the Catalan referendum trial held in the Supreme Court.

Scottish authorities cave in to Spanish diplomatic pressure

Mr Vecino called Mr Cochrane about the proposed visit of Catalan MPs to the Scottish Parliament right away. Mr Cochrane expressed surprise that Mr Vecino had been made aware of the visit at the same time as him. He told the consul-general that the invitation had been extended to all the parties represented in the Catalan Parliament and, according to Mr Vecino, offered to cancel if “only one tendency or party were coming”. The consul’s superiors in Madrid did not trust Mr Cochrane’s offer and again alerted Mr Vecino to the possible “electoral consequences” of such a trip only a month before the Spanish election.

According to Vozpópuli‘s account, Mr Vecino then warned Mr Borrell’s advisor that impeding a cross-party visit including non-independentist parties “could be considered in violation of the Constitution” as it would be interfering with the “ordinary activity” of MPs. Mr Romeu advised Mr Vecino to suggest that Mr Cochrane postpone the visit until after the April election. Mr Cochrane promised that the Scottish Parliament would “take all steps necessary to avoid an incident liable to offend Spain”, but pointed out that the visit was not illegal. In the end, Scottish authorities caved in to Spanish diplomatic pressure. Only five days before the arrival of Mr Costa’s delegation, Mr Cochrane informed the Spanish Consul that the visit had been postponed, as requested.

In his email to the Spanish Embassy in London and carbon copied to his superiors in Madrid, Mr Vecino was triumphant. He claimed to have been told by Mr Cochrane that the visit by Catalan MPs could only be postponed as a result of a unanimous decision by the parties represented in the Scottish Parliament. From the postponement, Mr Vecino concluded that there had been a “change of attitude” from the SNP, for which he was taking all the credit: “Their perception of the Catalan problem did not fit the facts, but rather an intoxication, a distorsion of reality created by secessionist propaganda”.

Unconstitutional threats, more cancelled visits

Mr Vecino also managed to persuade Alexia Haramis, the Director of International Relations for the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, not to send a business delegation to Barcelona to foster economic ties between Scotland and Spain. He warned her that the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce would have “difficulties” with other Spanish Chambers of Commerce if it started with the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. She postponed the visit indefinitely.

“To avoid surprises, just put a stop to this and any other visit”

Another trip to Edinburgh by Catalan business people was proposed by Montserrat Vilalta, the Director-General of Commerce for the Generalitat of Catalonia. Mr Villarino, Mr Borrell’s Chief of Staff, asked the Spanish consul to find out if the members of the delegation were independentists or not. Mr Vecino replied that he did not know who was coming, to which Mr Villarino said: “to avoid surprises, just put a stop to this visit, and any other”.

On 21 April, a week before the first of the two Spanish general elections held this year, consul-general Vecino sent an email to London and Madrid about a “sudden increase in tension and political activity” surrounding the Brexit issue and the Scottish Government’s plan to reactivate the European Engagement Team and combine the Edinburgh/Leith and Glasgow consular associations in a single consular body for the whole of Scotland, a plan which the Scottish Government had proposed to all accredited consuls in February. When Ms Sturgeon found out that the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) had been persuaded by Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ban the new association, yet another diplomatic incident ensued.

Consuls sacked and under surveillance

In reply to the email, Mr Borrell’s Chief of Staff in Madrid, Camilo Villarino, warned their Edinburgh consul to “tread very carefully indeed” believing that “the setting-up of a similar consular association in Barcelona has been one of the Catalan Government’s key ways of winning foreign and honorary consuls over to their cause”. Mr Villarino added that Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had had to “urge the dismissal of half a dozen consuls”, all of them honorary, and already had “a few career consuls under surveillance”.

He reaffirmed the Ministry’s “commitment to the UK and not Scotland, no matter how hard a time the British Government might be having” and told Mr Vecino to do nothing without first clearing it with the Spanish ambassador in London, Carlos Bastarreche. This instruction came only a week after the Spanish consul had sent a letter to the editor of The Herald and Scottish civil servants stating that Spain had no intention of vetoing an independent Scotland’s membership of the European Union, the same letter that was eventually published in The National on 6 June, the same day that Mr Vecino was sacked by Mr Borrell.

Spanish and British foreign offices gang up on the Scottish

On 24 April, the Deputy Head of the Spanish Embassy in London, José María Fernández López de Turiso, emailed the Spanish consul in Edinburgh on behalf of Ambassador Bastarreche to explain his telephone conversation with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. British diplomats had been “very surprised” and “enormously interested” to learn of the Scottish Government’s plan to create a single consular body for Scotland. In the light of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ issues with foreign consuls in Barcelona, Mr Fernández had asked for a meeting to discuss the matter. “Given the situation in Scotland”, he continued, in reference to First Minister Sturgeon’s statement that she was planning a second referendum on Scottish independence before the 2021 elections, “it is obvious that we should be careful and do nothing without first knowing the FCO’s opinion”, said the ambassador’s deputy.

A fortnight later, the Spanish consul held a meeting with Frank Strang, the Deputy Director of External Affairs with the Scottish Government, and Ben Macpherson, the Scottish Minister for Europe, Migration and International Development. In an email to London and Madrid, Mr Vecino explained that the Scottish officials had been contacted by the FCO to pass on the Spanish Embassy’s “concerns” at the creation of a new consular association. Spain had asked if “the FCO were going to ban it”. Mr Strang expressed the Scottish Government’s surprise at the action taken by Spanish diplomats. Mr Vecino replied that it had been “a mere query” and that he did not believe the Spanish Embassy “to be really worried”, certainly not worried enough to demand the “banning of the consular association”. Nothing could have been further from the truth and, what is more, Mr Vecino was worried that everyone knew it.

The telegram sent to the Ministry in Madrid by the Spanish Embassy in London set out the diplomatic steps it had taken on the issue, stating that the UK Foreign Office “found the parallelism between Catalonia and Scotland regarding the creation of a foreign consular body for domestic political reasons very revealing” and was keen to find out if the Scottish Government “was behind the initiative or participating in an official capacity” with ministerial involvement. Mr Fernández did not believe the Scottish Government to be formally involved in setting up or running the association, but understood that it was a welcome initiative.

Never trust a Basque

It was not only Catalan diplomatic and commercial delegations that caused nervousness in Madrid. From the outset, Mr Borrell’s Chief of Staff, Camilo Villarino, had made it clear to the new Spanish Consul in Edinburgh that he should also “keep an eye on” the activities of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) in Scotland. “We have grown to be very wary of them”, Mr Vecino had been told.

One reason for the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affair’s distrust in the Basque Government was its perceived refusal to share information with Spanish authorities about its foreign policy and activities. In February, the Spanish Consul only learned of a visit to Edinburgh by a group of Basque MPs from the Scottish authorities. In an email to London and Madrid after the event, Mr Vecino said that he had been assured by Scottish officials that “the visit had centred exclusively on the agreed topics, that is cultural topics”, with the Basque delegation presenting books in Basque, Spanish and English about the Basque people, and delegates engaging in “small talk and conversations about cultural exchanges”.

The visit of the Basque Minister of Employment and Social Policies, Beatriz Artolazabal on 19 and 20 June this year turned out to be a much bigger headache for the Spanish diplomatic service. Basque authorities were again accused of not informing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the trip. The detailed itinerary arrived instead from Scotland’s Fair Work, Employability and Skills Directorate a month before the visit. Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, John Swinney, and Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work, Derek Mackay, invited the Spanish consul to meet Minister Artolazabal during the visit and advised him of the Basque and Scottish governments’ intention to establish an MoU – a Memorandum of Understanding. Full details of the visit are then provided by the Scottish authorities:

The visit was a result of correspondence between First Minister Sturgeon and Lehendekari Urkullu and their wish to establish an MoU, as the Basque Government had with the Welsh Government. It had been set up by Jamie Hepburn, Scotland’s Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills on a visit to the Basque Country in late 2018 and at a meeting in the Scottish Parliament with Javier Font, the “Basque government’s Intelligence and Public Affairs Advisor”.

Minister Artolazabal was to be accompanied by Marcos Muro (Vice-Minister for Employment and Youth, Basque Government), Lide Amilibia (Vice-Minister for Social Policies, Basque Government), Borja Belandia (Director General, Basque Public Employment Service), Sergio Juanena (Chief of Staff, Ministry for Employment and Social Policies, Basque Government) and Javier Font (Executive Vice President, Intelligence & Public Affairs).

Areas of interest given were “employability and skills policies and services, fair work policy and action plan, and social policies such as social inclusion, eradicating poverty and child poverty”. All existing arrangements between the two delegations are then detailed and possible meetings including the Spanish Consul discussed.

Diplomacy “from another time, another regime”

Mr Borrell’s Chief of Staff thanked the Spanish Consul for the information and expressed his displeasure that he had not been informed by Basque authorities of either the visit or its purpose. According to Vozpópuli, no MoU was eventually established and another foreign authority had given in Spanish diplomatic pressure. A fortnight before the Basque-Scottish summit took place, Miguel Ángel Vecino had been sacked as Spanish consul-general in Edinburgh.

The PNV reacted angrily to the published documents, denying that Lehendakari Íñigo Urkullu had negotiated anything behind the Spanish Government’s back and indicating that all contacts between the Basque and Scottish governments were public knowledge.

Spain: the “denier of nations”

In a speech in Gipuzkoa on 6 November, PNV president, Andoni Ortúzar, referred to Miguel Ángel Vecino’s letter to fellow diplomats denouncing “harrassment” and “unconstitutional orders” from Mr Borrell’s office. He saw Mr Borrell’s surveillance, interference and obstruction of Catalan and Basque affairs in Scotland as being from “another time, another regime”.

He then compared Mr Borrell to Spanish far-right leader, Santiago Abascal. “There’s a large political distance and comparisons are always odious”, but they both share “the idea of Spain as a single nation and denier of other nations, such as the Basque or the Catalan”, he said. For Mr Ortúzar, the Catalans and the Basques “annoy them because, democratically and legally, but not submissively”, both claim the right to self-determination and “every day build our nations to be less and less dependent, to govern ourselves as a people, and to seek our place in Europe”.

British authorities cave in to Spanish diplomatic pressure

Last month the Spanish authorities issued a third European arrest warrant (EAW) for the former Education Minister of Catalonia now exiled in Scotland, Clara Ponsatí. The EAW was rejected by lawyers acting for the Britain’s National Crime Agency, who considered it to be “disproportionate under UK Law”. As a result, the EAW was not “certified by the UK SIRENE Bureau and no further action will be taken by the UK regarding this matter at this time”:



SIRENE UK Bureau rejects Spain’s European arrest warrant for Clara Ponsatí, Catalan Minister in exile in Scotland

Within the hour, SIRENE UK rectified after receiving pressure from Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Having pointed out the deficiencies in the EAW, the Bureau requested that “more information be provided as a matter of urgency” for the EAW to progress, and described its use of the word “disproportionate” as a “miscommunication”.

SIRENE UK Bureau gives in to pressure on European arrest warrant for Clara Ponsatí and changes response

“Fortunately, they have corrected it this time”, Mr Borrell said later. But, being Mr Borrell, he could not resist the temptation to gloat over his victory. In the latest in a long line of examples of a foreign government or authority giving in to bullying from his Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr Borrell immediately took to social media to share the rectification, something he is expressly prohibited from doing under European Commission regulations governing access to and use of its Schengen Information System (SIS). Tellingly, Mr Borrell then wiped the tweet.

The British police has corrected its use of the term ‘disproportionate’ to describe the extradition request for Ponsatí. In its new communiqué they make it clear that it is simply a request for more information.

Foreign Minister Borrell shared the SIRENE UK rectification, to which he should not have had access and is prohibited from using – 08/11/2019

Mr Borrell always gets away with it

In response to questions about Mr Borrell’s sharing of classified information, a spokesperson for the European Commission said that the rules regarding information from the SIS were clear and expressed the hope that EU member states would “respect the letter and the spirit of these rules”, in particular regarding their confidentiality. In a letter to former and current presidents of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker and Ursula von der Leyen, ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) MEP, Diana Riba, called for an investigation into Mr Borrell’s “access to restricted information, misuse of data and violation of Ms Clara Ponsatí’s presumption of innocence” and, if proven, urged the Commission to dismiss its new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.



ERC MEP, Diana Riba, calls for an investigation into Josep Borrell’s “access to restricted information, misuse of data and violation of Ms Clara Ponsatí’s presumption of innocence”

Three weeks later, with Mr Borrell and the new executive only forty-eight hours into their new jobs, the Commission repeated Europe’s eternal mantra for Spain: anything involving Spaniards “is an internal matter for Spain”, even when it involves things as European as ill-conceived European arrest warrants and breaches of the European Commission’s confidentiality rules on Europe’s Schengen Information System. The Commission’s spokesperson for Rule of Law, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, Employment and Social Affairs, Christian Wigand said:

Our position is well known and has not changed, it is an internal matter for Spain that must be resolved in accordance with its constitutional order.

Minister Borrell’s secret dossier

Subsequent to the Spanish general election in April, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs produced yet another dossier entitled “Democracy and modernity. Coordination with Embassies. Communication strategy for the Supreme Court Special Case. Outline of arguments updated after the general elections 2019”. Its author was the general director of the Global Spain Office, Joaquín María de Arístegui Laborde, and its purpose was supposedly to put in place a common communication strategy for Spanish ambassadors. For reasons of public interest, a request for the dossier to be released was made to Mr Borrell’s office by Spain’s Transparency Council, the organisation responsible for ensuring citizen access to public information under freedom of information law.

When the Foreign Affairs Ministry received the request through the portal, it refused to comply, claiming that the instructions contained in the document were internal orders. As the document had been distributed to diplomats, Transparency reissued its request, urging Mr Borrell to release the document for public scrutiny. Unlike the propagandistic documents produced by Global Spain, Mr Borrell’s Foreign Affairs Secretariat, he decided to withhold the dossier. The Spanish right believe Mr Borrell is covering up the dossier because it contains instructions to take a softer line on independentists. The sane believe the document would prove Mr Vecino’s accusation that Mr Borrell’s diplomats were given increasingly unconstitutional orders to block all Catalan, Basque and Scottish diplomatic initiatives throughout 2019, the year of the double election and the Catalan trial. Mr Vecino’s charge that independentists were “distorting reality until it became an alternative reality” is a perfect description of Mr Borrell’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructions and Global Spain dossiers.

The glimpse that the Scottish Papers have given into the inner workings of Josep Borrell’s regime at the Spanish Foreign Affairs Office was not enough to put his new EU job at risk. Nor were any of the myriad conflicts his office generated in his time. Instead, Mr Borrell was able to celebrate one last victory as the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia accepted the argument that three new Generalitat delegations abroad – in Mexico, Argentina and Tunisia – would be used to “denigrate the Spanish State” and provisionally blocked their opening. Mr Borrell argued that “there are quite enough already”.

Borrell, the laughing stock, politically dead

If Mr Borrell’s controversial eighteen months heading Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not enough to preclude him from a top European posting, his previous record should have been. In 1999, he was forced to renounce his candidacy for the leadership of PSOE, and with it the chance to be prime minister, for his closeness to fraudsters. He claimed that he had nothing to reproach himself for, but was sacrificing himself for the good of the party. “I have not committed an offence, just a few mistakes, maybe”, he said.

In 2012, he was forced to resign from the rectorship of the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence for not declaring a conflict of interest – the trifling matter of his €300,000-a-year salary for moonlighting as a board member of Spanish sustainable energy company, Abengoa. Mr Borrell called it a “procedural error”.

However, his involvement in Abengoa became a source of even greater embarrassment for Mr Borrell, from his unwise initial choice of revolving door in 2009 to his sacking along with the rest of the board in 2016 charged with false accounting, and his signing off on the CEO’s 11.5 million-euro redundancy package only weeks before the company went into receivership. And then there were the simultaneous revelations of his ruinous online investments using a risky online sharedealing platform, ConsortFX. The supposed economic guru – the man of many degrees, the “prodigious intellect” who knew better than both his bankers and IBEX put together – became a figure of fun in the economic world. Right-wing Spanish daily El Mundo gleefully reported that “the once-feared José Borrell” was now “a laughing stock in the world of high finance”, a man “scammed, indicted and fired”.

According to the paper, IBEX CEOs were wondering “who would invest 150,000 euros in an unknown online platform?” in reference to Mr Borrell’s use of ConsortFX. Tired of taking heavy losses on his investments in IBEX35 companies, Mr Borrell greedily decided to gamble outside the Spanish Stock Exchange, sucked in by the promise of low commissions and without a manager being involved, the Doctor of Economics lost a small fortune.

Instead of giving up the money, he goes and denounces it, so we all find out what the idiot has done.

According to El Mundo, the champions of industry pointed to Mr Borrell’s legendary smugness – “wasn’t he supposed to be the smartest kid in the class, always lecturing everyone?”. They were perplexed that, “instead of giving up the money, he goes and denounces it, so we all find out what the idiot has done”, and that, “of all the boards he could choose, he chooses Abengoa’s, which needed the greatest global restructuring of monetary debt at the time”. The paper cited sources close to Mr Borrell as saying that he had gone from considering running for the PSOE leadership again to knowing he was “politically dead”. On Pedro Sánchez, Mr Borrell was ambivalent: “[Borrell] thinks highly of [Sánchez] but he’s not an unconditional fan”.

Lazarus taxa

Within a year Catalonia had held its unauthorised referendum and Mr Borrell was back, full of rancour, angrier than ever and his native Catalonia was going to pay for all that frustrated ambition, that reputation he feared was terminally damaged. Giving his Catalan independentists hell was going to put him back on the political map, this time as a self-styled crusader for the oneness of Spain and Europe, and for Josep Borrell himself, of course. On 8 October, 2017, only a week after Spanish police beat thousands of peaceful Catalan voters live on global media, he headlined for Spanish nationalist platform, the so-called Societat Civil Catalana (SCC), and spewed hatred and resentment at his fellow Catalans. In June, 2018, Pedro Sánchez brought him back to head the global propaganda war. It was the same route back into politics that was offered to former French prime minister, Manuel Valls, who first campaigned for SCC and was then hired by former Ciudadanos leader, Albert Rivera, for an assault on Barcelona City Council. Messrs Borrell, Valls and Rivera have much in common.

Then, only six months into Mr Borrell’s time as Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Abengoa debacle provided one more embarrassing scandal when he was fined €30,000 by Spanish National Stock Market Commission (CNMV) for insider trading. Though the use of privileged information is considered a “very serious infraction”, Mr Borrell once again played dumb. Because the amount involved was so trifling and not for his personal benefit he would have to be an idiot to commit such an offence, especially having already lost such a large sum when the Abengoa bubble burst, he argued.

Four little Indians

The truth is that, for all his degrees and “prodigious intelligence”, Josep Borrell is arrogant and careless in equal measure. He has never had any respect for the regulations. They do not apply to him. Time and again he has returned from a career-ending scandal to take up a high-ranking position in Spain or Europe. And, like his brainchild, Global Spain, and the consul he chose for Scotland, Mr Vecino, nor does he have any respect for history, or indigenous cultures. To describe the European genocide of Native Americans by European colonisers as “just killing a handful of Indians” shows of a level of historical ignorance and cultural insensitivity that also should have seen him resign. It should certainly have disqualified him from holding any future foreign affairs post, especially one as important as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the European Union. It was far worse than standard historical relativism.

Why does the USA have a higher level of political integration? Firstly, because they all speak the same language and, secondly, because they have very little history. They were born independent with practically no history. The only thing they’d done was kill a handful of Indians, but apart from that, pff, it was very easy.

However, it is for his native Catalonia that Mr Borrell has reserved his darkest side. At a campaign rally for the Catalan Socialists in the run-up to the 2017 election which had been imposed on Catalonia by the Spanish government, Mr Borrell was at his most vicious and bigoted. He called Catalonia a “sick society” in need of “disinfection” and mocked the body and faith of jailed political adversary, former vice president, Oriol Junqueras.

At another rally in the same campaign a few days later, he said that “to continue electing a government that pigheadedly insists that ‘we are a republic and we will make a republic’ is banging your head against the wall: the economy will end up broken and the day will come when we will come to blows”. The threat that the pursuit of Catalan independence “will end in violence” has been a constant in the discourse of Spain’s unionist grandees on both the left and on the right for years. With such a high level of institutional violence already seen, this can only mean a greater level of violence.

In the spirit of odious comparisons and dubious analogies so beloved of Mr Borrell, Mr Vecino, Mr Ortúzar and most Spanish journalists, here are two quotes from twentieth-century Germans to illustrate how Europe’s new foreign minister sounds when he is on the subject of his birthplace:

For us, this is not a problem that you can turn a blind eye to – one to be solved by small concessions. For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether [this] spirit can ever really be eradicated. Don’t be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. Don’t think you can fight [it] without taking care to rid the nation of [its] carrier. This […] contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself […] has been banished from our midst. Adolf Hitler, 1920

He was the strongest representative of anti-…ism. He saw his big chance to become powerful by using the press for anti-… reasons. Personally, I think he was using anti-…ism merely as a means of achieving personal power. For years he had been trying in vain to become a big power. At last he saw his chance. He had whipped up anti-… feelings to such a point by his vicious propaganda that he now thought he could do anything. He probably didn’t think about the consequences himself. He was a fanatic of an abnormal calibre: unscrupulous, clever and dangerous. You couldn’t discuss anything with him. He was so dishonest that it didn’t pay to discuss anything with him.” Hermann Goering speaking to Leon Goldensohn about Joseph Goebbels, 1946

How much damage can these fanatics still do?

* * *

José Borrell’s Mission Impossible, September 23, 2018

The Ministry of Truth, January 31, 2019

Spain’s Ministry of Truth II: Borrell’s Reputational Rapid Reaction Unit, February 19, 2019

Barbarously, Borrell will go on and on and on, February 25, 2019

Spain’s hooligan diplomacy strikes again, on D-Day, June 6, 2019