The deputy of the Popular Party Pablo Hispán has starred this Monday in an incident in Paris with a TV3 team. After a hearing on espionage in a commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Hispán warned the Dutch parliamentarian Pieter Omtzigt that he was going to make statements to "independence television" and "of the Catalan government" that "it is not balanced".
Hispán's conduct has outraged the TV3 team, which has denounced an attempt by the PP deputy to restrict press freedom. Actually, Omtzigt was not going to make statements only to TV3 but to other media, including La Vanguardia.
Finally Omtzigt, who is also the rapporteur in the commission that has met today to listen to the testimonies of victims of the Pegasus espionage program, including the ERC MEP Diana Riba, has been able to speak shortly after the incident with the press. Hispán later made his own statements to the same journalists, including the TV3 correspondent.
During the audition, Hispán drew attention to the contacts of the Government of the Generalitat with Russia in the peak phase of the process. The deputy explained to those present that last Sunday night, a documentary on French public television, channel TV5, entitled "The Lie Factory", included Catalonia among the places where Moscow tried to influence politically for destabilizing purposes. Víctor Terradellas was interviewed on the program, who explained the meeting between Carles Puigdemont and two Russian emissaries at the Casa dels Canonges, on October 26, 2017, one day before the declaration of independence. At the meeting, Moscow's envoys offered economic aid worth 500,000 million dollars to an eventual independent Catalonia and the dispatch of 10,000 Russian soldiers, an offer that Puigdemont rejected.
Riba insisted that "the Government of the Generalitat has never had contact with Russia; I say it categorically, I have confirmed it". The MEP admitted that she had not seen the French television program nor did she know its content. Riba also rejected Hispán's accusation that the Catalan police use spy programs such as Galileo. According to the ERC leader, the companies that market these programs only sell them to state institutions.
