I wasn't going to make a post about this, because it's a very stupid conspiracy theory and I wouldn't expect people who follow this blog to believe it, and what's happening in Ukraine and Russia is more important. However, Spanish media is taking this way far, so I think I should address it at least as a warning.
Spanish politicians and right-wing media has been saying, with zero proof, that Catalans are Putin's infiltrators in Europe. This makes no sense, Catalan people have nothing to do with Russia. We are only normal people carrying on with our lives, like anyone else. Even leaving aside the fact that you can't assume a whole culture to agree with a political leader, people in Catalonia have been protesting against Russia's invasion of Ukraine since the very beginning, many people are taking in refugees in their homes and the society is mobilized to send at first food, first aid and clothes, and now money to humanitarian aid to Ukraine. If someone is in favour of imperialistic states invading their neighbours and not respecting their independence, let me assure you this is NOT the majority of Catalonia.
There is NO reason to point at us more than anyone else in the continent, of course nobody has shown any proof of these words. They're only saying it to feed the rhetoric that Catalan people are enemies of Spain and have to be more controlled. Today, Dolors Montserrat (spokeswoman of the right-wing Spanish nationalist Partido Popular to the European Parliament) has said that the European Commission should "investigate all the interferences of Putin in Europe, as well as the interferences of Catalonia". Spanish nationalist politicians will point at any enemy, left or right, and try to say Catalans are related to them in order to justify even more censorship and political repression in Catalonia. They take advantage of people's fear of the war to make their power and control grow bigger.
But ah, it always comes down to the same, doesn't it? This is the article that El Español (one of the most read newspapers in Spain) has published today:
For those who don't speak Spanish, the title means "Is Abramovich Catalan? The letter that would prove that the Russian descends from Iberian Sephardis." And the subtitle means "The document that El Español | Portfolio has found is dated in 1940. It's in the Jewish archive of Oporto [Portugal]. The oligarch's ancestors would have left Portugal in 1497, maybe having arrived from Girona." (Girona is a city in Catalonia).
Abramovich is a Russian rich man, owner of the English football club Chelsea and close to Putin. Spanish media is spreading this document where his ancestors are supposedly traced back to the year 1497, where they lived in Portugal. And maybe (only maybe) the ancestors of his ancestors could had moved to Portugal from Girona. And what do they chose to highlight? That this oligarch is Catalan, because some his ancestors from the Middle Ages might have been Catalan.
Let me propose an alternative title for this article: "Newspaper so antisemitic and Catalanophobic that it uses documents from over 500 years ago to blame an entire culture for the actions of one person who might or might not have had ancestors from there."
(Here is the link to the article, if you want to read it for yourself.)
By the way, this is not an April Fool's joke. Spain celebrates April Fool's in December and the article has been published today, April 2nd.
It's no surprise, remember that some years ago they said that the Roman soldiers who killed Jesus Christ were Catalan 🤦 (when Catalonia would still take centuries to start to exist after the fall of the Roman Empire).
So all I'm saying is, as with everything, please think twice if you receive this kind of propaganda, and don't blame entire cultures for things that have nothing to do with them because this feeds into hatred and oppression. Catalan people in Spain already face enough censorship, political repression and prejudice, don't let fascists and their friends use this as an excuse to be even more restrictive.
