The Rise Of Catalonian Separatism Is A Sign Of A Coming War In Europe

By Theodore Shoebat

The Catalonians are pushing for their severing from the rest of Spain, and their movement is getting backing from entities in both the United States (the American lobbyist group SGR Government Relations) which is getting funds through a bank in Russia, Sberbank. The Second World War was preceded by separatist sentiments in Europe. Today we are seeing separatism going though a surge, and this is only a sign of a coming conflict in Europe.

The mascot for the Catalonian separatist movement, Carles Puigdemont, was suppose to share a speaking platform with the nationalist president of the anonymous state of Catalonia, Quim Torra, at the European Parliament building in Brussels. The meeting was suppose to take place on February 18th, 2019, and to be hosted by another European separatist party, the New Flemish Alliance which, like the Catalonian separatist, are working to sever Flanders from Belgium.

But, the meeting was cancelled. “The duty of your institution is to preserve freedom of speech as the most superior value, party politics or supposed security concerns should not be used to silence legitimate ideas,” said Torra and Puigdemont in a joint letter supposedly sent to EP president Antonio Tajani. “The contrary would be a shame for Europe and damages the democratic credibility of the EU.” Although Tanjani said that he did not receive any letter from Torra and Puigdemont and is still awaiting its arrival.

Torra also lamented:

“Instead of defending the rights of all Europeans, Tajani has turned the European Parliament into a puppet of the parties of the Spanish right and of Mr. Borrell, the foreign minister, always opposed to dialogue with Catalonia”

The European Parliament cited “security threats” as the reason for the cancellation of the event and reported that there was a “high risk” that the conference “could pose a threat to the maintenance of public order on the parliament’s premises.” The EU Parliament said in a statement:

“The assessment takes into account several elements, including the recent occupation by protesters of the European Parliament and Commission buildings in Barcelona, the tensions linked to the trial against Catalan pro-independence leaders that started on February 12, the lack of information on the participants at the event and, especially, the possibility of incidents within or around the Parliament premises.”

It appears that the cancellation of the event was done under pressure from three of Spain’s largest political parties opposing Catalan independence (Socialist Party, People’s Pary, and Ciutadans Party), who had sent a letter to the president of the EU Parliament, Antonio Tajani, exhorting him to cancel the event on the grounds that Puigdemont planned to “overthrow Spain’s constitutional order.” They also said: “Allowing Puigdemont’s presence is not compatible with the noble role of the European Parliament as an example of democracy and rule of law in force in the EU”

But this cancellation did not stop Puigdemont and Torra from speaking in Brussels. Instead of carrying out their separatist event in the EU Parliament, they instead did it in the very expensive Steigenberger Hotel in the heart of Brussels. Attending the hotel event was Ralph Packet, MEP of the nationalist New-Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which is the biggest party in Belgium. The New Flemish Alliance wants to sever Flanders from Belgium. By succeeding in getting Catalonia severed from Spain, these separatists could then bolster their own enterprise for a Flemish state. Such a situation would not only fragment Europe, but bring it closer to violent conflict (just like what happened in Yugoslavia, but this time you would have an aggressive Germany using the situation as pretext for military deployment). 

The Catalan separatists are following the way that separatists in Yugoslavia severed their countries and made for independence. Carles Puigdemont just recently went onto Twitter to point to as justification for separatism the breakdown of Yugoslavia:

“Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Estonia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, etc. How many European states are now independent thanks to the principle of self-determination? Does anyone really think that the EU would be the EU we trust if these states had not been by the EU itself?”

Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Estonia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, etc. How many European states are now independent thanks to the principle of self-determination? Does anyone really think that the EU would be the EU we trust if these states had not been by the EU itself?

— Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) February 18, 2019

The breakdown of Yugoslavia began right in the early 1990s. What is fascinating is that it was in 1990 when the United States government released a report predicting that by the year 2020 there would be an increase in regionalism and that there could be an independent Catalonian state. Its as though they were planning this all along. The report, entitled: International Security Environment to the Year 2020: Global Trends Analysis, was prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress of the USA for the intelligence, security and information agencies of the United States. While focusing very little on Catalonia, the document nonetheless mentions the state as part of a rise of regionalism that could tear Europe apart:

“The decline of the traditional nation state in much of Europe is likely to be accompanied a rebirth of regionalism. Within an Europe-wide political body, ancient regions such as Scotland, Bavaria, Slovakia, Sicily, the Provence, and Catalonia are likely to campaign for representation, or the right to function as political entities with their own interests. Some regions may even achieve independence.”

Slovenia became independent the year after this document was release. Puigdemont and his fellow separatist are following the examples of how former Yugoslav nations severed themselves from the now non-existent Balkan country. In fact, Puigdemont was present in Slovenia in 1991 shortly after its independence from Yugoslavia, in order to gain inspiration for his own conspiracy of separatism. According to one report from Euro News:

“But what few may realize is that the Catalan leader has been preparing a Slovenia-style independence from the beginning. Puigdemont told the AFP that in 1991 he traveled to Slovenia to observe their independence process.”

In October 17th of 2017 Carles Pugidemont, before a Paris conference, declared that the EU would recognize a Catalonian state, and he sited (not surprisingly) Slovenia as his example. Puigdemont stated:

“I remember when Jacques Delors (former president of the European Commission) said that Slovenia’s independence would never be recognised, then it joined the EU (in 2004)”

It is not surprising that the former Slovenian Foreign Affairs Minister and MEP, Ivo Vajgl, backs the Catalan separatist movement. Not only this, but Vajgl also organized the event in Brussels members of Together for Catalonia. 

Slovenia conducted a referendum in 1990, with over 90% of voters wanting to secede. Slovenia declared independence, but then suspended it almost immediately, and said that it wanted to secede through negotiations. It followed the plan and through this process Slovenia successfully got independence in 1991 as the rest of Yugoslavia was overtaken by further separatism in other regions, and as a consequence, violence. The Catalonian separatists are following the Slovenian model. Catalan had its referendum; 90% of those who voted cast their vote for secession; Puigdemont declared independence and then immediately suspended it and expressed his desire to secede through negotiations. Puigdemont is following what he had observed in Slovenia in the nineties, to the tee.

The Catalan separatist movement is also getting support from an American lobbyist firm which the Catalan government is paying through a bank in Russia. There are reports about how a US pro-Catalan lobbyist group was getting money to lobby for the separatist cause. The money was coming from a major Russian bank, Sberbank, which is the 33rd largest bank on earth. The CEO of the Sberbank is the ethnic German Herman Gref.

The campaign was commenced by the Catalonian government (called the Government of the Generalitat) to garner support from politicians and international media. The move by the Russian bank has been described by El Confidential as a “destabilizing strategy of Russia” that is “now seen in the back of the Catalan crisis.” The American representative for the Catalonian Generalitat at this time was Andrew Davis, and he signed an agreement for a full campaign for the Catalan independence referendum with the lobbyist group, SGR Government Relations and Lobbying, to “support the communication efforts” of the Catalan government and “strengthen relations between governments and business circles in Catalonia and the United States .” A statement released by SGR in October of 2017 stated that two key members of the lobbyist group, Jim Courtovich (founder of SGR) and Graham Miller were to represent the Catalonian separatist cause:

“SGR Government Relations and Lobbying represents Catalonia, the northeast region of Spain that yesterday voted overwhelmingly to declare independence from Spain despite fierce opposition from the central government in Madrid and a brutal crackdown by Spanish police that injured more than 750 people.

The Catalan parliament, which is based in Barcelona, is expected to declare a formal separation from Spain by the end of the week.

SGR Government Relations Lobbying Spain’s prime minister Mariano Rajoy and the European Commission have declared the election illegal.

Catalonia is one of the richest parts of Spain. Its 7.5M people generate 20 percent of Spanish GDP and attract 25 percent of the country’s foreign investment.

SGR, which is sister company of Sphere Consulting, began work in August for the Delegation of the Government of Catalonia to the US under a three-month contract worth $60K. The pact can be extended at the $20K per-month rate until terminated by both parties.

The pact calls for SGR to support ongoing communications efforts between the governments and business communities of Catalonia and the US.

Jim Courtovich, founder of Sphere, and Graham Miller, partner, are among staffers repping Catalonia.”

Notice the focus of the statement: the money of Catalonia. The region is extremely wealthy and industrious. Behind the popularity of separatism in Europe, there are always the elites looking to use it, promote it and exploit it for profit. An example of this was the Rhineland separatist movement in the first half of the twentieth century, headed by bankers Baron Kurt von Schroeder and Heinrich von Stein. Schroeder was born in 1889 to a prestigious German banking family. In 1804, Johann Heinrich Schröder (John Henry) became a partner in the London-based firm of his brother, Johann Friedrich (John Frederick), and in 1818 J. Henry Schröder & Co. was established in London (what is fascinating is that during the Civil War the bank would issue £3m bonds in 1863 for the Confederacy). The Schroeders would also establish the J. Henry Schroeder Banking Corporation in New York.

While being within this powerful banking empire, Baron Kurt von Schroeder partnered with the Cologne Bankhaus, J.H. Stein & Company, or the Stein Bank, which was founded in the late eighteenth century by the Mannheim merchant, Johan Heinrich Stein. This bank was made as a result of Jews and Protestants being allowed to open banks during the occupation of Cologne by anti-Catholic France, as historian Sheldon Dick writes:

“Cologne was an important financial centre, especially for the early industry of the Rhineland and Westfalen. It belonged to Revolutionary and Napoleonic France from 1794 to 1815, when it became Prussian. French legislation abolished the business restrictions by the Catholic Reichsstadt, and enabled Protestants and Jews to enter into the carrier business and the commission trade. This formed the basis for expansion of the great private banking houses I.D. Herstatt, Abraham Schaaffhausen, J.H. Stein…” (Dick, Banking, Trade and Industry, p. 43, ellipses mine)

In 1919, Kurt von Schroeder partnered with the current owner of the Stein Bank, Heinrich von Stein, and together they would conspire, alongside French financiers and Rhineland industrialists, behind a movement to have the Rhineland region severed from the rest of Germany. On January 7th, 1919, Rhineland industrialists met at the house of J.H. Stein for their conspiracy. Some months later, they would organize another meeting, with Mr. Stein as the chairman, where they thought of how they were going to garner support for their movement. But the movement failed. In 1923, they tried another attempt at a coup, with the aims of placing the Rhineland under the protection of France. But this, too, failed.

Eventually, both Heinrich Stein (ironically, a Jewish last name) and Kurt von Schroeder, would go on backing and supporting the Nazis. After the failed 1923 coup attempt, Schroeder partnered with the Nazis. After the Nazis took power over Germany in 1933, Schroeder became a representative for the Germans at the Bank for International Settlements. He also represented the Nazis as head of a private German bankers group consulting the German Reichsbank. Heinrich Himmler promoted Schroeder to SS Senior Group Leader. The thing that got the Nazis so enthusiastic about Schroeder was his connections with powerful industrialists. Schroeder became the bridge between Nazi Germany and American industry. He acted as a medium between the Nazis and I.T.T., and was well connected with the founder of I.T.T., Sosthenes Behn.

On account of his close involvement with the Nazis, Sosthenes Behn (who also backed Hitler) appointed Schroeder to all of the Boards of Directors of I.T.T.’s German subsidiary companies: Standard Electrizitatswerke A.G. in Berlin, C. Lorenz A.G. of Berlin, and Mix & Genest A.G. The evils of the Nazis did not stop more American elitist collaboration with the SS leader, Kurt von Schroeder. In 1936, the Rockefeller family merged with the securities business led by J. Schroeder Banking Corporation in New York, and a new investment bank, Schroeder, Rockefeller & Company, Inc. — located at 48 Wall Street — was born. The president of the new investment bank was Carlton P. Fuller of the Schroeder Banking Corporation, while Avery Rockefeller, son of Percy Rockefeller (son of John Rockefeller), was its vice president and director.

As for Schroeder’s Jewish co-conspirator, Heinrich Stein, he too ended up working with the Nazis, helping to lead the Nazi controlled and directed industries in the Third Reich. Schroeder’s and Stein’s enterprise for separatism for the advancement of industrialists (and their own profit), did not end at the failing of the Rhineland coup. Rather, the separatist movement simply got interwoven with the Nazi cause; for in the end, the objective was the same: industrial domination in Europe, much like how the Catalan separatist movement is about industrial power without any control from Madrid. On July of 1945, the Subcommittee of the Committee on Military Affairs of the United States Senate issued detailed information on Heinrich Stein’s Nazi activities, his work with Schroeder and his German militarist and industrialist motives behind the Rhineland separatist movement:   

Dr. Heinrich von Stein is the owner of the private banking house of J.M. Stein, Cologne, in which Kurt von Schroder, a prominent member of the Nazi Party, is a partner. That Stein, as well as his partner Schroeder, was an active Nazi is indicated by the fact that Stein was a director of Preussengrube A.G., an affiliate of Reichwerke A.G. fur Berg- und Huttenbetriebe “Herman Goring.” In 1938, Stein was also on the executive council of the board of directors of Vereinigte Stahlwerke A.G., Dusseldorf, the giant steel cartel, as well as a director of numerous other companies in the industrial, utility, and banking fields. During the First World War, as evidence of his support of the German cause, he received a number of honors, included among which were the Iron Cross II and the Service Cross. He figured prominently in the Rhenish separatist movement. This movement proposed to establish a separate State which could evade Allied control and the required dismantlement of these factories concentrating on war manufactures. Stein and other leading industrialists hoped thus to acquire a free hand to do as they wanted with their plants. Stein, in furtherance of this objective, publicly addressed one of the first separatist mass meetings. When the successful accomplishment of this plan appeared hopeless the bankers and industrialists abandoned it and instead gave their support more completely to Hitler and the Nazi movement.

They then began to operate their war factories, first secretly and intensively, and later for the rearmament of Germany. Among the active participants who worked intimately with Hitler to support him in his rise to power, Baron Kurt von Schroeder, the other major partner in the Stein Bank, and Stein’s associate, representing the industrialists and their financiers; Count von Alvensloben, who represented the Junkers, and was closely tied with the heavy industrialists of the Ruhr; and Franz von Papen, standing for various militaristic groups. From 1933 on, the interest of the Rhineland industrialists and those of the Nazi regime were inextricably interwoven. (Elimination of German resources for war, p. 873)

There was an effort to investigate the Nazi activities of the Stein bank before the end of the Second World War, in March of 1945. James Stewart Martin was chosen by the Finance Division of the Control Commission to investigate Nazi finances. He recounted about how Captain Norbert A. Bogdan, with whom he was assigned to work in the investigations, was viciously against inquiring into the Stein Bank. Martin related about how “Captain Bogdan had argued vigorously against investigation of the Stein Bank on the grounds that it was ‘small potatoes.’” It turned out that Bogdan was vice president of the J. Henry Schroeder Banking Corporation of New York. Not too long after the investigation was impeded, two members of Bogdan’s staff requested to investigate the Stein Bank. But, as Martin recounts, “The Intelligence Division blocked that one”. (See Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, ch. 5, pp. 79—85)

What we see here is the very evil that led Judas to betray Christ — the love of money, the root of all evil — and this is what is behind the Catalan separatist movement. What seems to also be taking place in Catalonia is some kind of an American Russian conspiracy, as is indicated by the fact that you have a major American lobbyist firm — SGR Government Relations Lobbying — getting paid through a Russian bank, Sberbank.

The Second World War was preceded by a rise of separatist sentiment. Could this surge in Catalan nationalism be a presaging event to an even darker situation?

If Catalonia succeeds to sever itself from the rest of Spain, it will not become an “independent” state as the zombies on the streets of Barcelona think. Rather, it will be a mere satrap for whoever is backing the movement, for the Flemish elites in Brussels, for the powers that be that wish to see Europe destabilized, as they wanted to see Yugoslavia and the Middle East brought to chaos. 

If Catalonia severs itself from Spain, it will have a ripple effect that will spread across Europe eventually leading to violence, just as separatism in Yugoslavia escalated to the bloody Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.

Even if the Catalans do not get their own state, the situation in Spain is a sign of high tensions and a Europe moving to the verge of violence.

Lets also remember that the Second World War began when Germany used its military to enter Spain on the pretext of the Spanish Civil War. According to the Jewish historian, Lawrence H. Feldman, in 1940 Franco showed his brother-in-law, Ramon Serrano Suñer, “German documents from 1938 that showed Hitler attempting to prolong the Civil War”, evincing that Germany did not care about destroying the anti-Christian forces in Spain but rather wanted the fighting to continue since it was to his advantage (See Feldman, Franco’s Refugees, p. 11).

Lets not forget, that it was today’s German government that forbade Spain not to try Carles Puigdemont for treason. The Germans want destabilization because it would widen the space for their use of pretext for increasing their power.