Catalan coalition under strain due to Russian contact revelations

Revelations about contacts between Russians believed to have links to the Kremlin and leading figures in Catalonia’s independence movement have put renewed strain on the Spanish region’s coalition government.

Spanish media have published a string of reports in recent days stating that Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont and people close to him attempted to gain Vladimir Putin's support for the independence cause as recently as February 2020.

Mr Puigdemont has been living in Belgium since 2017, to avoid facing the Spanish justice system, from where he has continued to campaign in favour of Catalan independence as an MEP.

According to El Confidencial and El Periódico news sites, his right-hand man Josep Lluís Alay met on several occasions in Barcelona and Moscow with Russians including Sergei Sumin, a colonel in Putin's security apparatus. Alexander Dmitrenko, a Spain-based businessman who the country's intelligence services have identified as a security threat, was identified as the intermediary.

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Mr Puigdemont himself is named as having taken part in one meeting, with Mr Dmitrenko and another Russian businessman, Yuri Emilin, in Geneva in 2019. Roc Fernández, who was head of digital activity in the Catalan government until last year, was also named as having taken part in some of the meetings.

These reports follow similar claims made by the New York Times in September 2021, in which the newspaper suggested that contacts made with Russians close to the Kremlin had helped spawn Tsunami Democràtic, a Catalan activist movement which brought Barcelona airport to a standstill as part of a protest in 2019.

With the invasion of Ukraine putting the international spotlight on Western politicians' relations with Russia, Mr Puigdemont and Mr Alay have acknowledged contacts with people in the country but deny seeking the support of the Putin regime. In an op-ed published in Spanish media last week, he wrote that "none of these gatherings and meetings was with any official, ex-official or person representing the Russian Federation

He added that claims to the contrary merely seek “to discredit or attack the reputation of the independence movement”.

However, some of the fiercest criticism of Mr Puigdemont’s actions has come from within the independence movement itself.

"I think they are rich kids who go around Europe meeting with the wrong people because they thought they were James Bond, " said Gabriel Rufián, of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), the leading party in the region's pro-independence coalition government.

Something illegal

He added: “Meeting with despots has never been our international policy.”

Mr Rufián’s comments angered his party’s junior partner, Together for Catalonia (JxCat), whose leader is Mr Puigdemont.

“Is it possible to be more ignorant?” said JxCat spokesman Jordi Sànchez, of Rufián. He accused the ERC politician of being a “spokesman for the [Spanish] state sewers and the right-wing media bubble”.

Earlier this month, before the latest media reports about contacts between the independence movement and Russia, the European Parliament voted in favour of investigating the alleged links unveiled by the New York Times.

“The question people are asking is was this simply a case of stupidity or was there something illegal going on?” said Francesc-Marc Álvaro, a political commentator and columnist for La Vanguardia newspaper.

Although Mr Rufián subsequently issued a partial apology for his choice of words, this dispute adds to longstanding tensions between the two parties governing Catalonia.

Their overall approach to the secession question has been a major cause of discord. ERC hopes to gain concessions from the Spanish government via negotiations in which Madrid has agreed to participate. But JxCat has suggested the slow-moving talks are leading nowhere and that the Spanish government is not committed to the process.

There has also been disagreement between the coalition partners over a possible Catalan candidacy to host the 2030 Winter Olympics.

Mr Álvaro does not expect the allegations of contacts with Russia to break up the region’s government, although they are likely to reinforce broader divisions over the Catalan sovereignty issue.

“For those who don’t support independence, they [the revelations] are important,” he said. “But for those who want independence it’s much less significant, because the contacts made are not seen as official ones.”

The spat in Catalonia echoes acrimony in Madrid between the partners in the Spanish government over the Russian invasion. Podemos, the junior partner in the left-wing coalition, has criticised the decision by Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez to provide lethal aid to Ukraine.