The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, yesterday came to justify the infiltration of police agents in the youth organizations of the independence movement, although he flatly rejected a "strategy of the State to link independence to terrorism" as he had denounced in the morning the president of Òmnium, Xavier Antich.
And it is that the pro-independence entity had made public a letter that Interior had sent to the National Court to respond to the administrative dispute, presented by Òmnium at the end of July for the police infiltration of the Union of Students of the Catalan Countries (SEPC) and Jovent Republican, the youth branch of ERC.
In the document, the ministry considers it "legitimate, suitable and opportune" to infiltrate agents in the independence youth movements to capture information and alleges "the multitude of situations where serious violence has occurred" in Catalonia. "People who belong to the independentist associative world, encompassing a wide range of associations, contribute to the illegal achievement of the independence of Catalonia, in some cases carrying out radical-violent actions within the framework of the global secessionist strategy," he points out. the text, in which the National Strategy against Terrorism of 2019 and the National Security Strategy, revised in 2021, are used to justify the secret nature of "the means and operational techniques used".
All this led Òmnium to denounce yesterday "a clear violation of fundamental rights framed in the general cause against independence." "There is a State strategy to link independence to terrorism," said Antich, for whom "the State invents a false violence because it is incapable of democratically facing the Catalan political conflict, and applies measures typical of the fight against terrorism against a democratic movement and peaceful as is the independence movement”.
Marlaska, asked about the matter, dismissed these accusations as absolutely false and added that the State security forces and bodies obey the principles set forth in the Constitution and govern their attitude around "strict compliance with the legal system."
