The compliance officer's report also attributes responsibility for the effigy bearing the image of Oriol Junqueras, which appeared hanging from a bridge in Sant Vicenç dels Horts, to the party's B structure. Another false flag attack, for which the head of communications at the time, Sergi Sabrià, is directly pointed to. Ingla does not give credibility to the conclusion of the report made by Xavier Mombiela on the campaign. He believes there is no evidence to attribute authorship to the Free Junqueras platform (which was also part of ERC) nor to Maxi Calero, a personal friend of Junqueras and a resident of Sant Vicenç. "The only thing that has been proven is that the hanging of the effigy was a false flag action that, like the action involving the Ernest Maragall posters and within the framework of contrast campaigns, was promoted by the party's communications managers, without it being possible to establish specific authorship".
ERC closes the internal investigation of the posters against the Maragalls asking for forgiveness and blaming Sabrià and Colomer
Mireia Ingla has presented the conclusions before the national council of the party this Saturday
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BarcelonaTwo years after ARA published that the posters about Alzheimer's came from the ranks of ERC, the Esquerra guarantee commission has finally resolved the internal investigation. As this newspaper has learned, the ERC compliance officer, Mireia Ingla, presented the conclusions of her report to the party's national council this Saturday morning, in which she points to the former deputy secretaries of communication, Sergi Sabrià and Marc Colomer, as the top officials responsible for the scandal that shook the party. Conversely, she lowers the responsibility of the former party communication director, Tolo Moya, and also the militant from Anoia who ordered the posters, because she claims they were following orders. The ERC leadership has adopted the conclusions and apologized on behalf of the party before the national council.
None of the four involved in this campaign are party members anymore and, therefore, the guarantee commission has not proposed sanctioning them. Despite being unable to do so, in the report Ingla states that the actions of Sabrià and Colomer would constitute a serious infringement, but asks not to open a disciplinary file because they are not members of Esquerra. In the case of Moya and the now former militant from Anoia, she requests that their precautionary suspension of membership initiated in July 2024 be lifted, because it contains procedural errors: they were not informed at the time that a file was being opened against them nor that their membership was being suspended.
Ingla has compiled her report by gathering the previous reports that had already been drawn up by the previous compliance officers and also the truth commission led by Joan Tardà –he presented the conclusions at the ERC congress last March–. However, she questions the first report made by Xavier Mombiela in July 2024 for its "lack of impartiality" and its "excessive haste". In any case, she accepts as valid the statements of the witnesses who appeared in July 2024, among whom were Sabrià and Colomer, and also Tolo Moya, the former secretary general of the party, Marta Rovira, and the former deputy secretary of communication Oriol Duran.
The arguments
The report concludes that Sabrià and Colomer, as heads of communication between 2015 and 2024 (Sabrià between 2015 and 2021 and Colomer between 2022 and 2024), carried out communication actions that went against the party's code of ethics and conduct: it exemplifies this with false flag campaigns like the one against the Maragall brothers, but also with the contract with Relevance –the company through which ERC channeled the campaigns and payments of the B-structure–, in which there were "serious deficiencies in transparency and oversight," according to the audit commissioned by the party and presented in March 2025. The company invoiced, between 2019 and 2024, 4 million euros for various communication actions, which include these counter-campaigns. The party has not hired Relevance again due to a "loss of trust," sources explain to ARA.
Regarding the one carried out against the Maragall brothers, Ingla concludes that Sabrià and Colomer knew it had come from the ranks of ERC "hours after they were made public" and criticizes that neither of them activated internal control mechanisms. In this sense, he states that their "omissive, permissive, and active" conduct justifies a serious infraction and that as early as July 2024 a disciplinary proceeding should have been opened and their membership suspended. Currently they are not members, but Ingla explains that if they were to re-affiliate, "the possibility of promoting the corresponding actions" should be re-analyzed.
Both in the case of the former member from Anoia and that of Tolo Moya, he considers them "necessary co-operators," but not those who designed the campaign. In both cases, the report concludes that they would also deserve a serious infraction because they "contributed to the public discredit of ERC".
The changes so that the B-structure does not return
The compliance officer also proposes a series of changes to the party so that scandals like those of the posters against the Maragalls are not repeated. To begin with, she asks that the party make a political agreement to support her report, and that the control and prevention mechanisms that have failed be evaluated. She thus proposes reforms in the command structure so that no organic position remains outside "the supervision mechanisms of national bodies such as the executive or the national council". She also requests resources for compliance officers to enforce and update codes of conduct, and to hold training sessions for all bodies and membership to "detect conduct contrary to the law and the party's values".
Beyond the recommendations, the report concludes with a reflection: it argues that false flag campaigns can be useful for political communication, but asks that they be compatible with "the values, ethical principles, and reputation of ERC". To avoid exceeding these ethical limits, Ingla recommends that responsibility for decisions should not rest in few hands. And in this sense, she warns that the ultimate responsibility for the "proper use" of party resources lies with the deputy secretariat of finance.
In the national council, the deputy secretary-general of ERC, Oriol López, has accepted Ingla's report, according to sources consulted, and has apologized on behalf of the party for the "wrongdoing". And he added that, apart from internal explanations, Esquerra also owes a "reparation" to the party and an "explanation and commitment" to society.
