Spain's former foreign affairs minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, explains, in a book to be published shortly entitled Memorias heterodoxas de un político de extremo centro [literally, Heterodox memories of a politician of the extreme centre], how he brought down the interest and wave of sympathy of the then prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2013, towards the Catalan independence process. Margallo got directly to the point during a bilateral summit: a move of complicity towards the Catalan independence movement would lead to the immediate recognition of Palestine by Mariano Rajoy's government.
Margallo's threat provided the desired effect, as we've confirmed over time, and Israel has held back a lot from making public comments. So much so that, if Margallo hadn't explained it in his new book, who knows how long we would have had to wait to find out. The ex-minister, who deserves a pre-eminent place in the defusing of the support, backing and simple solidarity of foreign chanceries between 2012 and 2015, had previously explained situation in different European countries and the enormous cost in contracts and trade exchanges, but without leaving the continent.
The ex-minister's revelation places on the table the enormous sham of those who have publicly argued with no credible basis, starting with Margallo himself, that the independence movement was condemned to "wander through space" if it didn't renounce having its own state. Besides all that, this has been a story of threats and blackmail, explicable only based on the fear of not managing to impose a narrative and being left helpless in the face of international indifference and the loss of support for the refusal to accept an independence referendum.
Margallo, and later Alfonso Dastis and Josep Borrell, has followed this path and took out his cheque book and whatever's been necessary. And, even so, we're constantly finding out that their blunt position is held up with ornament that's often papier-mache.