A bitter exchange between the two major Catalan pro-independence parties, ERC and Junts, as a result of the powerful invective that the ERC deputy Gabriel Rufián launched this morning against the president in exile, Carles Puigdemont. The reason was the information published by two media about Puigdemont's contacts with an alleged Russian spy in June 2019. Rufián accepted the veracity of the news stories and labelled Puigdemont and his circle as "well-to-do types pretending to be James Bond", who do not represent his party. Junts general secretary Jordi Sànchez's response came via Twitter, with a warning to Rufián that "it is impossible to be more small-minded". The Catalan vice-president, Jordi Puigneró, conveyed to the president, Pere Aragonès, his anger at Rufián's words, which he considers "intolerable", also asking the Catalan leader if this is the position of ERC, according to sources in the vice-presidency.
Information about Puigdemont's contacts with an alleged spy or Kremlin liaison person was published today in Spanish newspapers El Periódico and El Confidencial and reportedly took place in the context of the Crans-Montana International Forum, held in Geneva in June 2019, when the Catalan president was already in exile. Following the line used in the highly-criticised Civil Guard report on an alleged Russian plot, the two Spanish media talk of meetings with a Russian citizen living in Barcelona, Alexander Dmitrenco, who also appears in the Volhov case, and a financier living in Switzerland, Yuri Emelin.
Asked about the matter during a press conference at the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, Rufián began by assuring that he usually did not talk much about what he described as "the space of the old CDC" - the old centre-right Catalan nationalist party - but then he did speak his mind on the subject: "I think they are well-to-do types who wandered around Europe meeting the wrong people because for a while they thought they were James Bond. They don't represent us," he said. Rufián insisted that he was being restrained in his description but he called these movements a "terrible frivolity", which he contrasted with ERC's international political line, which has never been to meet with "despots", although they could have done so.
The response of the general secretary of Junts came through his Twitter account, letting Rufián know that "anyone who speaks like that becomes de facto an official spokesman for the state sewers and the right-wing media bubble", since he had bought the Spanish nationalist line on these alleged contacts and was nourishing it. "Is it possible to be more ignorant? In any case, it is impossible to be more small-minded," Sanchez said.