On Monday, 23 September, more than 500 members of the Civil Guard – Spain’s military force with police duties – carried out ten dawn raids in the counties of Vallès (Sabadell, Mollet, Cerdanyola Sant Fost de Campsentelles and Santa Perpètua de Mogoda) and Osona (Sant Vicenç de Torelló), all in the Province of Barcelona. Nine pro-independence activists were arrested in the obnoxiously named “Operation Judas“. The forced entrances and arrests were ordered by judge Manuel García-Castellón of the Audiencia Nacional (National Court). The detainees were initially charged with terrorism, rebellion and possession of explosives.

Those arrested in the raids were Alexis Codina Barberán (41), Clara Borrero Espejo (33), David Budria Altadill (38), Eduardo Garzón Bravo (49), Ferran Jolis Guardiola (38), Germinal Tomás Aubeso (39), Xavier Duch Palau (50), Jordi Ros Solà (45) and Xavier Buigas Llobet (48). Several of those arrested are under investigation for public order offences during the transfer of Catalan leaders from Lledoners prison to Madrid. Clara Borrero Espejo and David Budria were released on bail the same afternoon, despite still being charged with terrorist offences, having been questioned at Civil Guard headquarters in Travessera de Gràcia in Barcelona.

The seven remaining detainees were transferred to Tres Cantos Civil Guard command headquarters in Madrid, five immediately and two others later, once the police searches of their premises at which they were present had been completed. Tres Cantos is directed by Diego Pérez de los Cobos, the chief of the police operation to repress the Catalan referendum in 2017, but denies ordering the baton charges. The trial of the activists got underway immediately: in the media, in the Spanish general election campaigns and in the Catalan Parliament.

The trial of the activists got underway immediately: in the media, in the Spanish general election campaigns and in the Catalan Parliament.

The Civil Guard used the maximum seventy-two-hour period to question the seven accused before they appeared in front of the investigating judge on Thursday morning. Judge García-Castellón acceded to the request of National Court Public Prosecutor, Miguel Ángel Carballo, and remanded all seven defendants in custody without bail charged with membership of a terrorist organisation, manufacture and possession of explosives, and conspiracy to cause havoc. They spent their first night in Soto del Real prison in Madrid last Thursday.

“According to sources close to the investigation”, the judge believed there were “indications that the seven detainees are part of ERT [Equip de Resposta Tàctica – Tactical Response Team], an organization with a hierarchical structure that aims to establish the Catalan Republic by any means” and preventive imprisonment is justified on the grounds of “the seriousness of the penalties carried by the crimes of which they are accused, their ability to destroy evidence“, and the risks of flight and reoffending for good measure. Defence counsels have reported a large number of procedural irregularities.

Official press releases

The joint Ministry of the Interior and Civil Guard press release was hedged with provisos. It spoke of the “violent actions” that “could be in preparation” and explained that Operation Judas had been mounted “with the aim of clarifying alleged criminal activity” and “locating and seizing evidence that proves the extent of preparation of violent actions“. Seized “for study and analysis” was “copious documentation, computer material” and “copious material and chemical substances” which were “considered precursors for the manufacture of explosives, liable to be used in the manufacture of devices“, but still “pending confirmation by specialists“.

Civil Guard and Ministry of the Interior press release:

As has become clear over the past week, the Civil Guard and Public Prosecutor‘s mission is as simple as it was in Special Case 20907 against the organisers of the 1 October referendum – to find evidence of violence, any violence, that it can link to an independentist, any independentist, and then to independentist leaders, armed only with the new barely legal concepts of “atmospheric violence”, “potential violence” or “precursors to violence”. From the summer of 2017 the Spanish State has projected these concepts onto Catalonia with such insistence that anyone not living in Catalonia might think it to be on the brink of civil war. In reality, the only real violence seen has been meted out by the Spanish and Catalan security services, all of whom have been careful to hurt a lot of people, some seriously, but not kill anyone. Skill or luck you might ask. The redefinition of “violence” is an insult to all those who have been injured or killed in truly violent circumstances in this time.

In the final line of the press release it is stressed that the investigation is sub judice, followed immediately by a link to a video of one of the Sabadell raids, which one supposes will not therefore be used in evidence. An anonymous Civil Guard in a balaclava stirs a suspicious-looking liquid in a pot and opens a sack of suspicious-looking powder.

La Guardia Civil detiene a 9 personas relacionadas con movimientos indepentistas catalanes que podrían estar preparados para llevar a cabo acciones violentas pic.twitter.com/Ov4FjnJyM9 — Guardia Civil 🇪🇸 (@guardiacivil) September 23, 2019 Civil Guard raid in Sabadell – 23/09/2019

The raids

The Civil Guard units executing the no-knock warrants only met with resistance from this door, which rather spoilt the element of surprise.

One of the ten Civil Guard raids in Operation Judas – 23/09/2019

According to sources close to the detainees, the officers broke into their homes around four or five in the morning , pointed their automatic weapons and torches at all those they encountered, including children. A Civil Guard officer pushed a pistol into the face of Jordi Ros‘s brother, threatened to hit him and arrest the whole family if he did not cooperate. Then they raided the home of their parents, who are in their seventies. The full-on anti-terrorist raid creates a fear that can be taken advantage of later in questioning and interrogation, legal or otherwise.

The Public Prosecutor of the National Court supplied an almost identical press release as the Ministry of the Interior and Civil Guard, but for a few fanciful flourishes: the “extent of preparation” became the “advanced degree of preparation“, the “violent actions” were now “terrorist projects for secessionist purposes“, and devices “liable to be manufactured” were now “explosive” and had “targets selected by a Group of militants from the CDRs“. The Prosecutor also added an ominous paragraph that spoke of a “certainty” that unknowable future events “could have caused irreparable damage“.

National Court Public Prosecutor’s press release:

Like Spain’s most confident fortune-teller, the Public Prosecutor states that he is not only certain that terrorist attacks would take place but that he was capable of predicticting that the damage these hypothetical attacks would do would have been irreparable. It is very precise, his crystal ball: “Given the certainty that the actions were to be carried out taking advantage of the period between the anniversary of the illegal self-determination referendum on 1 October 2017 and the announcement of the sentence of the trial of ‘process’, it has been decided to proceed to the arrest of those involved to abort the project which could have caused irreparable damage due to its advanced stage of preparation“.

The Public Prosecutor‘s office, in its first communication, reveals the fragility of the narrative underpinning the case requiring as it does these creative touches, the same creativity as displayed by investigating judges and public prosecutors in the myriad cases where the National Court is investigating Basque or Catalan independentist politicians, officials, activists or citizens – or any other left-wing activist anywhere in Spain come to that.

The National Court‘s misuse of terrorism charges in cases involving left-wing activists is systematic. When terrorism charges are ultimately dropped, as they normally are, the lesser sentences, while still excessive, seem more lenient. Terrorism charges, which carry some of the most serious penalties in the Spanish penal code, serve many purposes, not least to strike fear into the accused and their social circles, who will be made to suffer for up to six years until their cases are eventually resolved.

The case of the nine activists arrested on 23 September in Catalonia is reminiscent of the cases of Tamara and Adrià Carrasco – the pro-independence activists charged with terrorism in April 2018. Tamara was confined to her town for more than a year and Adrià fled to Belgium, where he still resides. In the raid on Tamara’s home the Civil Guard seized a yellow whistle, a Jordi Cuixart mask and ballot paper from the 1 October referendum.

Their case is also reminiscent of the eight young people from Alsasua, a small town in Navarre, who were charged with terrorist offences after an altercation with off-duty Civil Guard officers at a bar at five o’clock in the morning in October 2016. They have been jailed for between two and thirteen years for assault causing bodily harm, disobedience and public order offences with aggravating factors – i.e. that it involved Civil Guard officers. And the four members of Errepresioari autodefentsa / Contra la represión autodefensa / Against repression, self-defence who were charged with terrorist offences for the violent incidents in the old quarter of Pamplona in 2017. In the end, they were given suspended sentences.

As an anti-terrorist operation, Operation Judas is very reminiscent of Operations Pandora, Pandora II, Piñata and Ice between 2012 and 2015 against the so-called Grupos Anarquistas Coordinados (Coordinated Anarchist Groups – GAC) which resulted in 69 arrests. The existence of this network was never actually proven. Two people were jailed for more than three years, released and expelled from Spain. In a related case, Juan Manuel Bustamante, “Nahuel“, and five other members of a Straight Edge anarcho-vegan collective were charged with terrorist offences. After spending sixteen months in five prisons in solitary confinement, the public prosecutor reduced the sentence being requested for Nahuel to two years’ imprisonment for the glorification of terrorism, which had been interpreted from messages like “Goku lives; the fight goes on“. In July 2018, all charges were dropped by the National Court.

The common denominators are the National Court and the benemérita – the distinguished, the meritorious Civil Guard. In all these cases terrorism charges were dropped once they had had the desired effect. The National Court is Spain’s special court dealing with crimes against the Crown and terrorism which replaced Franco‘s exceptional political court, the Tribunal de Orden Público (Public Order Court – TOP) in 1977, which in turn had taken over from Tribunal Especial para la Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo (Special Court for the Repression of Masonry and Communism) in 1963.

Sub judice

If the investigating judge, public prosecutor or police are the “sources close to the investigation” responsible for the constant leaks to the press, they will face prison sentences too. Well, if Article 14 of the Spanish Constitution stating that “all Spaniards are equal before the law” was observed with the same religious fervour as Articles 1, 2 and 155, they would.

Legal definition

Articles 466, 417 and 418 of the Spanish penal code state that, should “the Judge or a member of the Court of Law, representative of the Public Prosecutor, Court Clerk or any officer in the service of the Judicial Administration” disclose “procedural actions declared secret by the judicial authority” they shall be sentenced to the higher of the following punishments: “a fine from twelve to eighteen months and special barring from public employment and office for a term from one to three years” and “should the disclosure referred to in the preceding Section cause serious damage to the public interest or to a third party, the punishment shall be imprisonment from one to three years, and special barring from public employment and office for a term of three to five years“.

Media reaction

Sub judice in this case has meant the politico-media complex being selectively provided with a blow-by-blow account of each allegedly incriminating utterance during the interrogations, information that has not been made available to their counsel, thereby leaving them defenceless. The “sources close to the investation” responsible for its proceedings’ selective lack of confidentiality, for its leaking like a sieve, have fed the irresponsible politicians and so-called journalists, who, in turn, have embellished the leaks, filling in the gaps in the discourse with their prejudiced politically motivated imaginings, and all the time helping the Public Prosecutor to build his narrative. If Spanish sub judice is a joke, then the principle of the presumption of innocence, Article 48 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights on the presumption of innocence and right of defence, supposedly strengthened by EU Directive 2016/343, have been observed only in the breach and never in the observance.

The media – television, press, online and social – have filled with supposedly secret information from these “sources close to the investigation“. We have video, references to the audio from phone taps, also unavailable to defence counsel, and leaked details of statements allegedly made during interrogations, which cannot be checked without access to the orders of imprisonment or transcriptions of the interrogations. The Spanish media has not hidden the fact that it is benefitting from these selective leaks, an aggravating factor in the criminal offence being committed by the police and judiciary.

The leaks not only contravene the penal code regarding sub judice, they are also being used by Spanish unionist political parties to influence public opinion in their election campaigns, another of the purposes of Operation Judas. For the first time we have the words “Catalonia“, “independentism” and “terrorism” in the same headline, despite no incident having occurred and no person having been hurt.

Spanish press

The front pages of the top five Spanish national papers have veered between hysterical conjecture and libel:

Judge detains 9 CDR members for terrorism

Torra complains about the “repression” of Catalan terrorism

The CDR were putting the final touches to a terrorist attack on “D-Day”

The Public Prosecutor accuses 9 independentists of preparing attacks

Torra’s CDR turn up the heat: they were planning an attack on [Civil Guard] barracks with explosives

Torra rails against Spanish democracy

Marlaska reprimands the Civil Guard after they detain CDR members

JxCat and ERC request the withdrawal of the Civil Guard from Catalonia

Independentism returns to the path of disobedience in Parliament

The CDRs impose their law in Parliament

Insurrection returns to Parliament in support of the CDR terrorists

Parliament approves disobedience in confrontational session

The CDRs were preparing a wave of explosions on 1 October

The Moncloa warns Torra: no more attacks on the Statute and the Constitution

Torra planned for the CDRs to take Parliament after 1 October sentences

Torra mocks justice once again

Civil Guard in Catalonia: “It’s already worse than the Basque Country”

Independentism radicalises before the sentences

The detention of the CDRs uncovers the Catalan Batasuna

The seven CDR from the Thermite explosive commando

Parties ask Torra to clarify if the detained CDRs told him of their plans through an intermediary

Torra plan: independence after the verdict

“Sources close to the investigation”: the judicial sieve

Throughout the week the constant leaks have been convenient, vague, contradictory, fanciful, as well as illegal. There has been no rigour from either the Spanish judiciary or media.

This story, published the day after the raids, like most others in the Spanish mainstream media, revolves around the “sources close to the investigation“. The “CDRs were putting the final touches to a terrorist attack on D-Day” goes the headline, followed by the strapline: “Products for the manufacture of explosives were stored and a ‘D-Day’ designated for an attack in the stated Community [sic]”. “Sources of the investigation consulted by El Mundo” say that claim that the phrase “D-Day” came from phone taps. Will they be admissible in evidence?

The article goes on to claim that the explosive being made was that most Spanish of explosives, favoured by the Spanish mining industry and Eta, Goma-2. “Sources close to the investigation” in other publications had already said the Civil Guard had “discarded the possibility that the detainees were making homemade Goma-2, ammonal or amosal” the day before. El Mundo also stated that the explosives precursors that were confiscated, pending “study and analysis” – ammonium nitrate, ferric oxide and acetone – could be used to make thermite, a mixture of metal powder used as a pyrotechnic initiator in fireworks and incendiary weapons. Other newspapers reported that the purpose of the materials was the former as the premises from which they were confiscated are used as a storeroom for pyrotechnic materials used in the maufacture of fireworks for local festivals.

The El Mundo piece also says that “various sketches and plans of government buildings, including a Civil Guard barracks” were found. Speculation about the potential “targets” has been rife all week, all of it idle: the Catalan Parliament (again), telecommunications towers, motorways, etc. It is designed to add some flesh to the bones of the narrative being built with some “plausible detail”:

“The CDRs were putting the final touches to a terrorist attack on D-Day. Products for the manufacture of explosives were stored and a ‘D-Day’ designated for an attack in the stated Community [sic].

As for the explosives precursors allegedly confiscated, this El País report published a different list, including sulphuric acid, paraffin, aluminum powder, rust remover and gasoline – some of which are also useful in car bodywork repair. It also claims that their “sources close to the investigation” report that there are “indications” that some of those detained had tested “homemade bombs in an abandoned quarry“. It neither specifies what those “indications” are nor the nature of the “homemade bombs”.

Pots and pans, and a ballot box used in the 1 October referendum were also confiscated in the raids.

As yet we have not had the de rigeur Civil Guard photo of the seized items spread out on a table, its insignia in the background, perhaps with a reminder that the military force is currently celebrating “175 years at your side”. Such a photo is a fixture of all major operations where something substantive has been found. This time there has been no table laden with missile launchers, grenades, firearms, explosive materials, knives, or stunning amounts of cash, drug packages, firearms, ammunition, and mobile phones.

30 assault rifles, 18 submachine guns, 47 guns, 12 rifles, 3 revolvers and 10 silencers, 5 kilos of gunpowder, more than 130,000 cartridges seized in Civil Guard raid on the property of a 50-year-old Spanish soldier and arms dealer – MIGUEL ANGEL SALAS

When the materials seized are as “copious” as the Ministry of the Interior, Public Prosecutor and Civil Guard claim them to be in Operation Judas, they are taken into the courtyard to be photographed.

Violent far-right groups have also always avoided the treatment meted out to Basque, and now Catalan independentists, it makes no difference whether they are violent or not. It is worth comparing the Civil Guard‘s reluctant Operation Panzer in Valencia in 2005 which resulted in the Provincial Court of Valencia, not the National Court in Madrid, acquitting all eighteen neonazi members of the Frente Antisistema (Antisystem Front – AF) on a technicality nine years later, in 2014.

Among the weapons seized in the raids were a bazooka, pistols, ammunition, crossbows and knuckle-dusters, some from the Spanish army; among the victims was independentist activist, Guillem Agulló, murdered by one of the groups’ members. His neonazi killer served only four years of the fourteen-year sentence.

VALENCIA, 20/09/05 – The Civil Guard displays items seized during “Operation Panzer”, in which 20 people were detained and a bazooka, pistols, ammunition, crossbows and knuckle-dusters seized – EFE/Juan Carlos Cárdenas

It is not as if these far-right groups do not challenge the constitutional order with their arms and unconstitutional and antidemocratic ideological extremism. Their saving grace is always their Spanish nationalism.

Anticonstitutional and antidemocratic ideological extremism is what the neonazi hooligans of Valencia share with Diego Pérez de los Cobos, the Civil Guard chief who directed operations Copernicus and Anubis to stop the Catalan referendum in 2017, and director of Tres Cantos Civil Guard headquarters in Madrid, where the seven defendants were remanded in custody for interrogation. Diego Pérez de los Cobos is the only actor in this story to have actually taken part in a coup d’état. On 23 February, 1981, he marched to his local Civil Guard barracks in Yecla in his blue Falange shirt to volunteer to overthrow the Spanish government in Tejero’s coup d’état, miraculously defused by King Juan Carlos I. In 1978 he campaigned against the Spanish Constitution for Falangist party, Fuerza Nueva (New Force – FN). He is not, however, the only Civil Guard involved in the operation to have been processed for torture. They are many. Their saving grace, all of them, is their Spanish nationalism. All talk of the Spanish Constitution is smoke and mirrors.

The fanciful pieces fed by “sources close to the investigation” – designed to demonstrate that these alleged terror cells are controlled by the Catalan government and that they are acting together to subvert the constitutional order – became a deluge at the weekend with the timely “confirmation” of the narrative so beloved of the Spanish unionist politico-media complex: that the President of Catalonia, Quim Torra, literally, “has his finger on the CDRs‘ trigger”, or “detonator”, that he is “petrol for the CDRs“. It has been a favourite propaganda item ever since the Catalan leader asked the looseknit groups of activists to “put the pressure on” on the first anniversary of the 1 October referendum. Yesterday was the second.

ABC first said that its “sources close to the investigation” had said that one CDR member in custody had said that an unknown third party had said that President Torra had said that he “knew” about the CDR member’s “activities” and he approved of the plan to “take the Parliament” and would “help”. El País then said that separate “sources close to the investigation” had confirmed the hypothesis:





It is a carbon copy of the narrative presented by ex-leader of the Partido Popular (Popular Party – PP) in Catalonia, failed original founder of Vox and mad far-right soothsayer, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, in the run-up to the anniversary of the Autonomous election in Catalonia – enforced on 21 December 2017 after the sacking of the entire Catalan government in the imposition of direct rule in Catalonia from Madrid. Pedro Sánchez‘s decision to hold the Spanish government’s first cabinet meeting in Catalonia for decades on this anniversary was seen as provocative by supporters of independence and large protests were organised. Vidal-Quadras claimed to be privy to plans by independentist “assault troops” divided into three “units” with around one thousand “auxiliaries” who were going to “take the Parliament” while another thousand “auxiliary troops” would “take the Palace of the Generalitat“. A third similarly-sized group were supposedly going to “set fire to the centre of Barcelona“. He claimed that a “special commando” would attack the building where the Spanish government were meeting to stop the cabinet meeting:

Needless to say, none of the groups to which Vidal-Quadras referred have ever actually existed and none of the events he predicted actually came to pass. They only happen in the fictional Catalan dystopia created by the Spanish unionist politico-media complex. Operation Judas is a product of this vision which, until 2017, was reserved for the Basque Country.

The last straw in the week-long flood of leaks came from the SER radio channel, part of the … group, published its latest “revelations” and boasted that it “has accessed all of the orders of imprisonment of the 7 members…“, the clearest admission yet that a wholesale breach of the sub judice laws is underway. “The detained CDRs acted as the link between Puigdemont and Torra to exchange ‘secret and sensitive information’. According to the documents, they held a ‘secret’ meeting with Puigdemont’s sister to hand over ‘sensitive’ documentation and ‘establish secure communications’ between the fugitive ex-president and current president of the Generalitat, Joaquim Torra“.

The facts that the case is sub judice, or that Puigdemont’s sister was in hospital on the day in question, or that Puigdemont and Torra hold regular face-to-face meetings matter little. It lays bare the complete absence of a separation of powers in the Kingdom of Spain this latest leak is the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle of Operation Judas. In one vertiginous week the Spanish State, with the complicity of government, police, judiciary and media, has attempted to prove the existence of pro-independence terrorist cells, tenuously connected them to President Torra and then to former President Puigdemont as a precursor to the issuing of a European arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont. These events are also designed to give an electoral advantage to PSOE, the acting government in the 10 November elections. The rule of law has nothing to do with it. Everything that has happened since 23 September is politically motivated.

“The SER Channel has accessed all of the orders of imprisonment of the 7 members…”

Presidents of Catalonia, Joaquim Torra and Carles Puigdemont

The law

When the seven activists were ordered into preventive detention, the charge of rebellion had been dropped. Terrorism, membership of a terrorist organisation, manufacture and possession of explosives, and conspiracy to cause havoc remain. Their relevant legal definitions can be found below:

Havoc, arson, disobedience and terrorism: relevant articles of the Spanish Criminal Code

Havoc, arson, disobedience and terrorism: relevant articles of the Spanish Criminal Code Articles 346, 351, 550-556, 571-580 of the Spanish penal code covering the offences of havoc, arson, disobedience and terrorism

The defence

Had the charges not included terrorist offences the operation would not have fallen within the National Court‘s jurisdiction. With the terrorism charges still in place and “further detentions not being ruled out”, the special court may deploy Civil Guard anti-terrorism units in Catalonia, something it summarily failed to do in the period leading up to the jihadist terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in August, 2017, despite the cell being under surveillance and its ringleader a Spanish secret service informants.

The list of procedural irregularities reported is already long. David Ros, the uncle of Jordi Ros, one of the seven in preventive detention, has claimed that his nephew has suffered coercion from Civil Guard officers during his transportation to Tres Cantos headquarters in Madrid and that other detainees have complained of attempts at interrogation in transit. The family was also unable to secure a meeting between its chosen counsel from Alerta Solidària and Jordi Ros until Thursday, three days after his detention. He is one of two detainees who were assigned court-appointed lawyers, neither of whom have had contact with the families. The Bar Association of Sabadell has confirmed that the Civil Guard failed to inform them of the arrest, as is required.

Lawyers for the accused have also denounced the serious vulnerations of the detainees’ right of defence by the Civil Guard, the Public Prosecutor and the National Court. As previously mentioned, “leaks have occurred to the media of both its own operations and of alleged statements, supposed elements found in the searches, etc”, information to which the lawyers have not had access due the case’s supposed sub judice. They complain that they have not been informed of the whereabouts of their clients or provided with “contradictory information“, that they were obstructed from seeing their clients for 36 hours, that they “were prevented from doing their job in that they were denied access to two of the detainees” and not informed of “the charges faced by them“.

Alerta Solidaria regard Judas “as a political and electoral operation with a twin purpose: on the one hand it feeds the election campaigns only weeks from new general elections and on the other hand it is attempting to curb the mobilisations in response to the 1 October anniversary and the sentences in the trial against the Process“.

In its press release, the Observatori del Sistema Penal i els Drets Humans (Observatory on the Penal System and Human Rights – OSPDH) “deep concern” about the arrests and the detainees’ right of defence, describing several situations as “alarming”: that all but two raids and searches were conducted without presence of lawyers, that the lawyers appointed spent more than 48 hours without specific knowledge of the charges faced by the detainees, that two of the detainees were irregularly assigned court-appointed lawyers and these are the same detainees who have given statements, one having been interrogated for over seven hours in a row and the other for eight hours in the early hours of Wednesday without sufficient rest. The other five have exercised their right to silence.

Fair treatment and fair trials are impossible for independentists in Spain, and there are hundreds of those to come. Literally hundreds.

Political reaction

The reaction of Spanish unionist politicians to Operation Judas has been predictably self-serving, a unanimous presumption of guilt. Not one voice raised in the defence of the law or the presumption of innocence. Not one voice in defence of reason, proportion, perspective, or circumspection. No, all Spanish unionist politicians are betting the success of their campaigns on convincing the Spanish public that they will subject Catalonia to a greater level of control and repression than their rivals if elected, all based on the seriousness of the charges faced by the seven CDR activists arrested last Monday for incidents that have not occurred.

The tweet deleted by the Alejandro Fernández, the leader of the Popular Party (PP) in Catalonia, most clearly displays this disregard. “They had bombs prepared”, he shouted. “I repeat: they had bombs”.

“They had bombs prepared. When I warned of the ‘batasunisation’ of the separatist movement through the cdr, I was called all the names under the sun. Either this is nipped in the bud or we have a serious problem. I repeat: they had bombs” – Alejandro Fernández, Partido Popular

The most offensive and incendiary attempt to take political advantage of course came from Ciudadanos. Lorena Roldán, the party’s debutante spokesperson in Catalonia, had more to prove than most and was relentless in her insults and slander. She wondered whether President Torra‘s request that the CDRs “press” a year ago had not meant “press the detonator”. In the Catalan Parliament she called him a “commando leader” and a “danger to the public”, compared the CDRs to Eta and held up a picture of a young girl being carried from the rubble of the Eta bombing of the Civil Guard barracks in Vic in 1991 having just lost her leg in the explosion. This was Ciudadanos’ response to the demonstration outside the new Civil Guard barracks in the town after the arrests on Monday. National party leaders, Albert Rivera and Inés Arrimadas, had intended to follow Roldán’s cynical use of the photo with a visit to the Civil Guard barracks to show support, but the Civil Guard refused the offer and they were forced to set up in the main square surrounded by bodyguards, entourage, journalists and police, ignored by the locals:

No he trobat millor manera per explicar-vos el pas d’ @Albert_Rivera + @InesArrimadas per Vic que tirar de Paint. pic.twitter.com/Td3hzujCCU — Carla Dinarès #josócCDR🎗 (@carladinares) September 25, 2019 “I can’t think of a better way to explain @Albert_Rivera and @InesArrimadas

trip to Vic than a Paint session” – Carla Dinarès

Vic, Errenteria, Alsasua and the Autonomous University of Barcelona are Ciudadanos’ favourite destinations in Spain, and all of them are located in Catalona and the Basque Country. They do not visit these places so often in the hope of gleaning support, but to provoke a reaction, as they are also the people who they have most insulted.

The Catalan Parliament passed motions to request an amnesty for Catalan political prisoners, the withdrawal of the Civil Guard from Catalonia considering the security force to be a political body, and endorsed civil disobedience as an “instrument in defence of civil rights” before Ciudadanos once again wrought havoc and the session descended into chaos. These stagemanaged hysterical performances of Ciudadanos, their firehose of falsehood, their disrespect for Parliament, their crusade to discredit all Catalan institutions and fracture Catalan society no longer resonate with many Catalan unionists. They will haemorrhage votes in the upcoming election.

Also with complete disregard for the presumption of innocence, acting Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez insisted that the Catalan President condemn “any violence that comes from an independentist group”. President Torra replied that he “would not condemn what does not exist”. Sánchez has adopted the hardest line possible on the Catalan question since forcing the people of Spain back to the polls on 10 November. There are still no talks planned with the Catalan government, Sánchez has said that an amnesty and a referendum are out of the question, that “independentism has failed” and “support for it is falling”, and repeated that any perceived breach of the Statute of Catalonia or the Spanish Constitution would bring a reimposition of direct rule from Madrid. He offered his unreserved support to Spanish democracy, security forces and judiciary. Sánchez is promising to do what the PP summarily failed to do, which is destroy independentism. The acting Spanish government is, however, laying the foundations for future action regarding Catalonia in the coming months on some very shaky ground.

Sánchez is right when he says that Catalan independentist parties misled the Catalan people in 2017, but not when he implies that this has led to a fall in support for self-determination. It has, though, led to widespread disenchantment with the independentist parties and their internecine disputes. A unitary response from those parties to the election, to the sentencing of their colleagues and to the intensification of repression in Catalonia looks impossible. Not all independentist politicians understand that there is nothing they can do in Madrid except obey, that any support they offer in Congress is now unwelcome and may only be offered pro bono, that the “outstretched hand” will never be taken and the “long vision” is a euphemism for undeclared surrender. Negotiations will not be forthcoming. The Kingdom of Spain has won. Accept defeat. There is nothing to discuss.

Independentism is politically and socially extremely fragmented at a time when precisely the opposite is required if it is to be able to withstand the next phase as Catalonia gets ulsterised and the Catalan version of Plan Z.E.N. (Plan Zona Especial Norte – Special Northern Zone Plan) is applied: Z.E.C. it was to be called by the PSOE of the 1980s: Zona Especial Cataluña.

One Spanish newspaper this week blared from its front page that Civil Guard in Catalonia say “it’s already worse than the Basque Country”.

Civil Guard in Catalonia: “It’s already worse than the Basque Country”

The similarities between the strategy of the apparatus of the Spanish State in Catalonia since the summer of 2017, when 12,000 Spanish police were sent to stop the referendum in Operations Copernicus and Anubis, and its implementation of the Plan Z.E.N. to fight Eta in the Basque Country in the 1980s are striking. The detention of seven Catalan activists a week ago highlights those similarities yet again.

Plan Z.E.N. for Catalonia

The Plan Z.E.N. had an accompanying 348-page manual prepared in 1983 by the State Security Directorate and ordered by the then Minister of the Interior, José Barrionuevo, who was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in July 1998 for his role in financing anti-Eta death squads, the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (Antiterrorist Liberation Groups – GAL). In the end, he spent only three and a half months behind bars.

Below are quotes from the document as curated by Catalan journalist, Quico Sallès, in his article: The State is using the “Barrionuevo manual” against independentism (L’Estat utilitza el “manual de Barrionuevo” contra l’independentisme).

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“Bearing in mind the means at the disposal of a modern state, the triumph must be for the power of the State. The State, in order to establish the power that is being called into question by the terrorist organisation cannot skimp on human and material resources“. The plan included a budget provision of 14.6 billion euros to be invested in “Basque provinces”.

The plan had four areas: political, social (through the media), legal and the police. The document warned that it was necessary to avoid “errors committed in the past such as lack of penetration in the social fabric“.

It also called for “psychological action aimed at positioning citizens against the ideas and activities of terrorism“. This involved legal changes, new judicial doctrines on “parole“, interrogation techniques, new “systems to increase knowledge of the population” as well as “maximising electronic surveillance” or “using a certain semantics” in statements, information or communications.

The section entitled “Psychological Action” also establishes guidelines for communication such as “actions in the social media through the dissemination of fake news” or to “familiarise the population with the continuous police presence“. It also orders “carrying out all actions on individuals or groups in a selective and justified way, to avoid an increase in the numbers of people critical of police operations”. According to the plan, it was necessary to take “psychological action” against “groups of young people, relatives of prisoners, enemies of democracy and recalcitrant pro-independentists”.

It demanded that officials “always emphasize the anti-traditional and cowardly sides” to their leaders’ actions. “Provide periodic information through third parties, or cause it to appear, which disseminates clashes between terrorists, their strange ideologies, their dirty businesses, their reprehensible habits, and the information needs only to be credible for it to be exploited“. As mentioned before: “Carry out actions in social media through the dissemination of fake news“.

At the same time, it urges officials “to promote or reward the periodic publication of news articles in the Basque-Navarrese newspapers that demonstrate the economic and energy benefits that they receive from other people of Spain and the historical and cultural facts they have in common.”

State security forces stationed in the Basque Country and Navarre are encouraged to “observe and monitor the environments of Basque independentist organisations so that they feel controlled and insecure” or “send warnings, threats, etc. and call them at untimely hours to keep them in a constant state of insecurity and worry“.

Regarding the media, a working code is established that includes “filtering news” or “preparing messages appropriate to the various situations of conflict that are usually present”. The instructions include: “To constantly repeat the basic idea that the police suffer acts of violence for opposing those who intend to impose by force a system which is contrary to Basque cultural tradition and respect for the freedom and rights of others“.

After all, the ultimate goal of the plan is to “neutralise, reduce them and break their morale” in order to “eradicate the terrorist group in the long-term“.

These recommendations, instructions and orders are already in place in Catalonia.

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Spain’s Ministry of the Interior, Civil Guard and judiciary still live in an Eta bubble, where “everything is Eta” and “everything around Eta is also Eta“. For Spain, Catalonia is the new Basque Country. For the narrative to work, first the public had to be convinced of the existence of violence in Catalonia during the timid push for independence in 2017 and then that violence had to be linked to the Catalan leadership via Special Case 20907, the referendum trial. Now the public has to be convinced of the existence of a terrorist organisation and network and that also has to be linked to the Catalan leadership. This is what Operation Judas and its accompanying mediastorm are designed to achieve. It will set the basis of future action by the Spanish State in Catalonia.

It is no coincidence that PSOE‘s General Secretary for the Budget and Public Spending in 1983, when José Barrionuevo’s Plan Z.E.N proposed to invest 14.6 billion euros in the Basque Country in its war on Basque terrorism and secessionism, was current acting Foreign Affairs Minister, Josep Borrell. Borrell was a staunch supporter of the plan and defender of the ministers jailed for financing the State terrorist organisation, José Barrionuevo and Rafael Vera. Here he is in the crowd in PSOE’s shameful seven-thousand-strong send-off for the ministers on their way to jail:

Borrell behind Vera in the crowd at the send-off for the PSOE ministers convicted of funding State terrorism – @igormeltxor

Borrell defends Barrionuevo and Vera – @EHmeroteka

Borrell admits discussing the prescription of the statute of limitations in the Marey case – @EHmeroteka

Borrell was brought out of retirement by PSOE in June 2018 to lead the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs‘ international propaganda war on Catalan independentism and act as Pedro Sánchez’s right-hand man.

The Spanish State needs something to replace Eta to justify the coming intensification of its Operation Catalonia, begun under the previous PP government, and PSOE wishes to show that it can succeed where the PP failed in crushing the Catalan independentist movement. The further criminalisation of Catalan independentism through constant comparison to Eta and Kale Borroka will justify largescale redeployment of Spanish security forces in Catalonia and mass surveillance will be extended. Operation Judas and its accompanying mediastorm are merely the next step in this direction. The crackdown on the basic freedoms of expression, association, assembly and protest will continue. There will be more anti-terrorism raids and arrests in this operation, or others as yet unknown. It will underpin a reissuing of a European arrest warrant for former president, Carles Puigdemont, currently residing in Belgium, and form the basis for future attempts to illegalise Catalan independentist political parties or organisations, shut down media outlets, and reimpose direct rule.

It is no coincidence that the sentences in the Catalan referendum trial will be announced in a little over a week or that the repeat general election will be held in little over a month. The acting Spanish government and unionist parties have no plan for Catalonia other than the above-mentioned. There are no proposals for Catalan voters, independentist or otherwise; there is only the threat of further loss of autonomy if any independentist puts so much as as a foot wrong. The lack of evidence of violence from anyone but the security forces throughout the crisis has not stopped the Spanish State insisting on the agreed upon narrative and Catalan independentism seems to be damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t.

The election campaigns again revolve around the non-events Catalonia. A little perspective and proportion would not go amiss. There are 7.5 million inhabitants of Catalonia, more than two million of whom are independentists who have neither killed nor hurt anyone in the cause. The violence debate is a trap only set in Spain when Basque and Catalan politics are involved. It is important to remember that very small numbers of people can cause complete havoc, death and destruction, as recent jihadist terrorist attacks have shown us. According to the manual of the new jihadism prepared by Islamist ideologist, Abu Musab al-Suri, also known as “the Syrian”, a Spanish citizen since the late 1980s, every vehicle in existence is potentially an instrument with which to carry out random, small-scale attacks, to spread fear, as we saw yet again in the very real jihadist terrorist attacks in Catalonia in 2017, attacks which the same Spanish security forces failed to prevent despite the ringleader’s being a Spanish secret service informant.

The Catalans are basically restrained, law-abiding, reserved and peaceloving people. Catalan independentism is perfectly conscious that, were the path of violence to be taken, it would ultimately be crushed by the infinitely superior resources of the State. This is why the movement chose the path of non-violence. The problem, as most Catalan independentists have realised, is that the path of non-violent direct action meets with the same narrative, resources and “necessary force” from all the apparatus of the Spanish State, and will be crushed in the same way. In Spain, the government, judiciary, security forces and media are all geared to preserve the oneness of Spain and the constitutional monarchy, whatever the cost.

When the Catalans went to the polls to vote on self-determination on 1 October the Spanish State claimed it to be a coup d’état tantamount to a declaration of war. Until that moment the non-violent nature of pro-independentist mobilisations had kept the Spanish authorities in check, but on 1 October they unleashed the violence on unarmed voters and protesters and more than a thousand Catalans were injured. From this point onwards, the full force of the law has been brought to bear on Catalan independentist politicians, officials, civil leaders and activists alike, and more than a thousand Catalans have been indicted. The threat of an escalation of violence from the Spanish State were Catalan independentism to choose the unilateral path has been a constant since well before the referendum was held. Spain is once again at war with its own citizens whose only option is to surrender, or suffer the consequences. This one-sided conflict has been going on since the War of the Spanish Succession, redeclared by the Bourbon Head of State, King Felipe VI of Spain on 3 October, 2017.