The acting Spanish government is continuing to bring its positions into closer alignment with those of the Catalan pro-independence parties, and, in one instance that has come to light this week, the Spanish interior ministry has taken action in this regard. This Tuesday, officials at the interior ministry formally asked Europol to correct its information associating the Catalan independence movement with terrorism, such as the Report on the Situation and Trends of Terrorism in the European Union (TE-SAT 2023) which Europol published on June 14th, as reported by El Mundo. In the Brussels address by Catalan president-in-exile Carles Puigdemont on September 5th, outlining options for an agreement to allow the Spanish Socialists (PSOE) to form a new government, the withdrawal of this link was one of the preconditions that he marked for negotiations with the Together for Catalonia (Junts) party.
"You cannot negotiate with someone who considers us the second most important threat after jihadist terrorism and asks Europol to treat us like terrorists," warned Puigdemont in the Brussels speech, in which he emphasized the need to treat the Catalan independence movement with the democratic legitimacy that it deserves. Thus, this new request from the interior ministry may be seeking to smooth the path for negotiations with the pro-independence parties.
The document to be amended includes Basque and Catalan independence in its section on "Ethno-nationalist and separatist terrorism". In addition, these political movements are defined as "the most active and violent" in the Spanish state. Europol did not improvise these definitions: the deputy director of the entity, Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, justified them by stating that the agency "verifies the veracity" of the data they receive, while also stressing that the information comes from the governments of the European countries concerned, rather than from the EU's own research. Thus, the same Spanish government is now requesting, through the director of the Centre for Intelligence Against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO), Manuel Navarrete, a rectification "of the headings so that allusions to the Catalan independence movement are "removed from the terrorism section".
Spanish prosecutors have not changed their view on the matter
While the interior ministry is asking Europol for this change, in other institutions of the Spanish state, the independence movement is still categorised under the "terrorism" label. This is the case of the Spanish prosecutor general's office, which after recently making one correction - removing environmental activists from the list of national terrorist threats, it left the Catalan independence movement in the category. The prosecution service report had also included the independence movement in the same category in the report for 2021.
On the one hand, it recognized that the inclusion of some environmental organizations in the list was not "appropriate", so it is agreed that their activism will not be mentioned again in future editions of the report. However, for now, it has not been specified that there needs to be any similar change with regard to the Catalan independence movement, which also appears in this section and has also complained about its inclusion.