The Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (Citco) has written to Europol to correct an annual report on terrorism trends in the European Union, in which it is inferred that the Catalan independence movements and Basques are considered terrorist organizations.
Through a letter sent to the European agency on the first day of the investiture debate of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the body, which depends on the Ministry of the Interior, requests that “the al· illusions” that link Catalan separatism to terrorism.
The controversial document is the Report on the Situation and Trends of Terrorism in the EU (Tesat 2023), published in June. In the report, “an overview of the European situation” is offered in this area based on the qualitative and quantitative data provided by the member states on terrorist attacks, arrests and judicial resolutions adopted for terrorist crimes. In the case of Spain, Citco is responsible for sending the information to Europol. He did so, according to ministerial sources, on March 17, 2023, in a fifty-page document with the letterhead of Citco’s anti-terrorist division.
In the aforementioned document, a distinction is made between “non-jihadist terrorism” (heading 3) and “violent extremism” (heading 4). In the first, reference is made exclusively to the terrorist organizations ETA and Galician Resistance, whose current threat level, according to the report, is described as “residual”. On the other hand, in the other heading, under the title of “Violent extremisms. Extreme left/anarchist, Extreme right, Independentisms”, is where Citco mentions the radical activity of separatist groups.
The activity that is alluded to is mockery of politicians or the burning of Spanish flags during October 12, “acts that have become common as a means of showing rejection of the Spanish State , from which they intend to become independent”. At no time, as can be seen from the report, does the body dependent on the Interior link these actions with terrorism.
Nevertheless, the Europol report includes the pro-independence movements under the heading “Terrorism and ethno-nationalist separatism”, due to “a bad interpretation”, according to the sources consulted, of the contributions it made interior In the European document, it is stated that, “in Spain, the Catalan and Basque independence movements are currently the most active and violent within the Spanish separatist panorama”.
The department headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska verbally asked Europol to correct it after the report was published in June, when the general election, the result of which gave the key to pro-independence parties, had not yet been held to form a government. Despite the verbal communication, Europol’s annual report was not modified.
At the beginning of September, a senior Europol official visited Madrid on the occasion of some police decorations. He was reminded of the request to amend the error, but the ministry was urged to formulate the request in writing. That is why the director of Citco, Civil Guard general Manuel Navarrete, sent the letter to the executive director of Europol, Catherine De Bolle, on Monday.
From the Spanish Government, they disassociate the request from the demands of the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont to invest Pedro Sánchez as president of the Government. “You can’t negotiate with someone who, in the directive that sets the intelligence goals for police forces, considers us the second biggest threat after jihadist terrorism, and asks Europol to treat us as terrorists ”, assured Puigdemont recently.
This “directive” referred to by the former president is nothing more than the aforementioned report sent to Europol in which no pro-independence movement was classified as a terrorist group. Violent extremism is indeed included in the National Security Strategy, which follows the trend of the international community.
