A. FERNANDEZ. BARCELONAJ. M. ELM 30/10/2020
Aerial view of the concentration of Tsunami Democratic in the surroundings of Camp Nou on the day the classic was played. (EFE)
“At your service, Indivo”: this is the Tsunami structure that sowed violence and chaos
For weeks, the downtown of the Catalan capital burned down. It was all the work of Tsunami Democratic, a newly formed organization that had in Xavier Vendrell his brain in the shadows
The days of violence experienced by Catalonia during the months of October, November and December 2019 were perfectly planned by independence leaders who wanted to take advantage of the issue internationally. The excuse of the sentence of the 1-O, for which several members of the Govern were convicted, starting with its vice president, Oriol Junqueras, in addition to the president of the Parlament, Carme Forcadell, and the presidents of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and of Omnium Cultural, Jordi Sonchez and Jordi Cuixart respectively, gave wings to the violent clashes between radicals and the police.
For weeks, the center of the Catalan capital burned and urban furniture was consciously destroyed. It was all the work of Tsunami Democratic, a newly formed organization that had in Xavier Vendrell his brain in the shadows and one of its main leaders. Vendrell’s code name within the organization was Indivo. His right-hand man for communication issues was Oriol Soler, also arrested in Wednesday’s Civil Guard operation, in which there were a total of 21 arrests.
Below Soler were the ‘captains’ of the organization, who controlled their respective groups of violent people in a strong paramilitary and clandestine structure. In the face of public opinion, Tsunami was defined as pacifist and flag bearer of the “no violence” movements. But telephone interventions reflect a different reality.
A person close to Vendrell explains to The Confidential that his way of acting is “exactly the same as in his time of hiding, when he belonged to Terra Lliure terrorist organization. He’s a guy who knows how to move very well in the shadows.” His training was of little use to him, because the Civil Guard had him permanently guarded and they had even inserted a microphone into his car under judicial authorization.
Arrested two ‘captains’
Along with Vendrell and Soler were also arrested two of their ‘captains’: Josep Campmajó, alias ‘Canalla’, and Marta Molina, alias ‘Mandela’. Both were people of total confidence of Vendrell, with which they collaborated in the implementation of the activities of the complex of Villa Bugatti, a farm dedicated to the organization of events that the entrepreneur has in Cabrera de Mar (Barcelona) and that was also registered because it is at the center of a urban plot that has surfaced with the inquiries.
Of the whole group, only one of the ‘captains’ whose code name is Poeta Foix, must be detained. Another of the characters that have not yet been arrested is a hacker resident in a town near Barcelona whose code name is Joana Sala and who was the one who devised the mobile application of the Tsunami platform and took care of its security so that it could not be intervened. Through this application, orders were given to keep the night disturbances in Barcelona.
The only grit in the structure were some groups of the CUP controlled by radicals. Vendrell complained to his people about the indiscipline “of the fucking ‘cupaires’, who had been formed by Rintxos and whose security measures were extreme, to the point that they operated with closed groups and the phones of their members did not leave those groups, so it was impossible to coordinate with Tsunami.
A preparatory meal
Vendrell hoped that tsunami’s big coup would be during the classic Barca-Madrid on December 18th of 2019: he had devised a spectacular action that was going to stop the match and would be a propaganda image that would see half the world. To prepare the strategy, he ate with Mandela and Canalla at Senyor Parellada restaurant on November 20th the last year.
On December 17th of 2019, Vendrell coordinated the boycott device for the classic. On the afternoon of that day, he informed Soler: “We have Mandela’s team, which has already completed 120 people, all of them trained… Mandela is in contact with Poeta Foix. Poeta Foix has caught a guy who identifies as Bou who is on the subject of bands and he has put him to find people to kick.” The Civil Guard interprets them as referring to the throwing of plastic balls to the pitch, one of the protest measures organized by Tsunami.
They had also anticipated that several drones would land on the pitch, in the middle of the match, carrying a banner with the slogan ‘Spain, sit and talk’, but the Mossos’ anti-drones systems thwarted the attempt. Around Camp Nou, Tsunami commandos, without the support of CUP radicals, they were only able to burn some containers.
Internal tensions
At that time, there was tension inside Tsunami. Mandela informed Indivo that the people of Poeta Foix were putting the operation at risk, “because they are people who are not trained, who are not put in the situation.” When Vendrell informed Oriol Soler, He replied, “Well, go away.” And then he stressed, “Let them go for work, concrete orders. Me, at your service.”
And chief Vendrell then comments, “The most practical thing and what you would do, but I’m not sure either, is to take Poeta Foix and say, ‘All yours guys don’t shoot and fuck off.’ But it creates a schism between Poet Foix and Mandela. So, if we disallow Poeta Foix in front of his people, we generate that. And Poeta Foix has a team, a very powerful network of people. We can’t burn it. I don’t want to burn anyone.”
His efforts, then, were to avoid internal problems. “Let us not generate a crisis because of this, but let us also try to make everyone understand that things have to be done right and that nothing happens. That the Poeta has done his job and looked for people, but if he has found it late, how late it cannot be.”
That day, Poeta Foix received a call from Indivo for some of his people to ‘shoot’ around the Barca countryside, but they had to identify themselves to Mandela’s with a code name and they would be trained. Poeta sent eight people for that task, as the rest of that commando reportedly had to drop the inflatable balls into the stadium.
In fact, Tsunami already warned in mid-September, when its definitive structure was trained: “Be prepared, because it will be long, tiring. We’ll suffer and we may bleed. They’ll chase us, stop us, hit us again, try to criminalize us. But we’ll hold on.”
At the same time, Vendrell organized Picnic per la República (PxR), a group responsible for occupying streets and squares through “affinity teams”. This platform, however, had a similar operation: at night, it could become the spearhead of the riots because it was smaller and more versatile than the Democratic Tsunami itself. The third leg of the organization was Anonymous Catalonia, the platform used to distribute slogans and orders and was a bridge with other organizations and platforms.
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