A Russian Plot?

World Law Foundation hosted the presentation of the book “La trama rusa” (The Russian Plot), written by David Alandete, deputy director of Spanish newspaper El País during the development of the illegal referendum for the independence of Catalonia in 2017, better known as el procés. The book describes an investigation into Russia’s influence on the pro-independence process.

The presentation was introduced by Antonio Caño, former director of El País, who worked with the author during the years covered by the book and whose journalistic quality he highlighted, emphasizing that it is the culmination of a thorough investigation on the subject, with all the information inside perfectly contrasted.

They have recounted that it all started in 2017, when both professionals noticed a couple of curious facts in relation to el procés. On the one hand, they detected a massive increase in the presence of Russian bots on social networks making comments on the Spanish political situation and, on the other, they were able to verify that Carles Puigdemont’s entourage had met with Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks team. After these events, they were able to verify that, apparently, the Australian activist was acting as a link between the independence movement and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. After having done the relevant checks, Caño tells how he decided to publish the information and recalls how he even received a call from the government, who accused them of being “crazy” for having opened that day’s edition with such a severe statement.

For them, the turning point in the negotiations came when an emissary met with Puigdemont at the official residence of the President of the Generalitat, and offered him 10,000 Russian soldiers in exchange for turning Catalonia into a ‘crypto-tax haven’ managed by Russia in the shadows. According to Alandete, there were payments and purchases made with cryptocurrencies, dedicated to keeping Puigdemont’s plan going, which he details among the pages of his work.

Alandete sees in this rise of populism the greatest future problem for democratic systems. Wanting to distance himself from the traditional labels of “left” and “right”, he stressed the importance of investigating the influences that may be behind all those speeches that seek to mobilize by appealing to emotions instead of reason.

For his part, Javier Cremades, president of the World Jurist Association & World Law Foundation, closed the event highlighting the enormous value of this and other books referred to on the back cover of The Russian Plot: Facing Power, by Martin Baron, former director of the Washington Post. He especially highlighted one of Baron’s theses, which states that traditional journalism has changed forever, and that the only bulwark left for that kind of journalism committed to the control of power is investigative journalism.