Far-right union Manos Limpias admits to having moles inside ANC, Catalan parties

The massive demonstration in Barcelona on 11 September 2012 was an alarming eye-opener within social and political anti-independence circles. Catalan separatism, regarded as a fringe movement up until then, made its presence felt in the streets with unprecedented strength. "September 11 took us all by surprise, including Spain's intelligence community", as General Manuel Fernández-Monzón de Altolaguirre admitted a month after the march, when he complained about Spain's Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI, or National Intelligence Centre) allegedly neglecting the territorial conflict that arose from the Constitutional Court's ruling on the Catalan Statute.

Besides any subterranean moves by the State, these days another actor is fast becoming the rising star and the spearhead against the Catalan independence movement. Created in 1995, it's an alleged far-right trade union called Manos Limpias ("Clean Hands"). Manos Limpias is involved as a private prosecutor in important court cases such as Noos, Gürtel, Blesa and now also in the Pujol affair. At the end of March, Manos Limpias pressed for the Assemblea Nacional Catalana (1) (ANC, or Catalan National Assembly) to be declared illegal, as they believe the ANC is guilty of inciting to rebellion and misusing public funds. Miguel Bernad, Secretary-General of Manos Limpias, claims that they can monitor the ANC's every move because, as he admitted to this newspaper, his union has informers placed inside the main parties and Catalan NGOs involved in the independence process. "We have moles inside every political party, as well as the ANC, Òmnium Cultural, the Nous Catalans foundation and political groups such as Reagrupament", he confessed.

Active infiltrators

The Secretary-General of Manos Limpias explained that their informers are "volunteers" that go unnoticed because they are members of the public who participate actively in their organisations and parties, like everybody else. They are tasked with "informing the union of their organisation's every move" and its decisions. He claims that these members are close or have access to the decision-makers in their organisation.

For instance, Bernad claims to have "three or four people" inside the ANC who inform Manos Limpias about the internal decisions that are taken and the actions that the ANC intends to carry out. These individuals are among the 30,000 members of the ANC and are not necessarily affiliated with any particular political party. According to Bernad, they have moles inside the ANC, but also in "other organisations" behind the independence process.

With the referendum of November 9 only three months away, Bernad thinks that the ballot boxes will finally be in the streets of Catalonia that day as a challenge the Spanish authorities' prohibition, even if the vote is banned by the Constitutional Court at the request of Rajoy's government.

The rhetoric that Bernad used when speaking to this newspaper was far from ambiguous: his goal is to bring down the independence process. The Secretary-General of Manos Limpias warns that he will give no quarter until all the parties and organisations that support a process he regards as "illegal" are "disbanded or ejected from the constitutional system". He also warned that there are "former members of Terra Lliure (2)" in the ANC and he has warned President Rajoy that action must be taken "before the process leads to street violence", which he claims could happen on November 9. Therefore, the union will take action against the organisations that are causing "huge damage to Spain's image and that promote a sectarian divide". He also intends to appeal against the Catalan Law of Consultations once it's passed in Parliament next September and will take legal action against Catalan President Artur Mas for neglect of duty and misuse of public funds.

In the short term, though, next Tuesday Manos Limpias will file a lawsuit against Pujol and his wife, Marta Ferrusola, and they aren't ruling out the possibility of suing other family members if, after their statements, they see evidence of a link with the mesh of companies in which some of the Pujol children might be involved. "We have a lot of information that we believe to be accurate and it is currently being processed", he warned.

The CNI (3) makes a move

Bernad insists that he won't just sit and watch and expects the Spanish government to follow suit because "the Spanish intelligence service has detailed information" about it all. So the CNI must have made some progress in the last two years. Back in 2012, once ETA had announced a permanent ceasefire, sources in Catalan nationalist circles claimed to know that a good deal of agents that had been deployed in the Basque Country were being sent to Catalonia in order to watch over the Catalan process. That's why the Catalan Police force has seen its counterintelligence unit boosted in order to protect President Mas, as reported by Cadena Ser this week. It's just another example of the invisible pressure that the actors of the process are under.

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1 N.T. The ANC is the main grassroots, non-partisan, pro-independence organisation behind the September 11 events in Catalonia

2 N.T. Terra Lliure was a short-lived armed Catalan fringe group that fought for independence in the 1980s.

3 N.T. Spain’s CNI (Centro Nacional de Inteligencia) is the main intelligence agency in the country.