The data covers the work of organisations HazteOir and CitizenGO, comprising documents which date from 2001 to 2017 like spreadsheets of donors and members, strategy and planning documents, letters, financial charts and legal and training documents. HazteOir was first founded in 2001 in Spain to campaign for right wing values, in 2013 it founded CitizenGO to spread its work beyond Spanish speaking countries.
I'm not confident it is a Russian op, but Russia has always fueled both sides of the political spectrum. They don't necessarily want one side to prevail, they just want their opponents to be divided.
Maybe they don't target anybody and just publish what gets into their hands and they see as worthy of publication. They are not the leakers they are the publishers.
They are also the editors. These documents have been redacted to comply with privacy laws. As publishers, they also decide the date of publication... which in this case is quite "curious" (see my other comment).
There has been a recent documentary on Spanish TV about HazteOir, and how they are actually related to a clandestine illegal organization/sect called "El Yunque", which has even been denounced in documents from the Vatican, as intended to gain underage members under the pretense of a Christian Holy War, but with activities like attacking abortion clinics, sabotaging abortions (inviting would be patients "just for a coffee" when they are required to go in fasting), funding first HazteOir, then CitizenGo as a facade to make it look like an international movement (which it isn't), until the establishment of the political party Vox, which in recent local elections has won a lot of local governments along the right wing party PP.
Their ties with other right and far right governments across Europe are not a secret, a year or two ago Vox organized, in Madrid, a "European forum" where they invited all the far right parties from every country.
Right now, the political situation in Spain is that the acting government called in early statewide elections, and right now the results are a practical stalemate. The right wing majority party PP, needs the support of Vox (ex-HazteOir, ex-Yunque), while the left wing majority party PSOE, which has the support of the left and far left, along with almost every local minority party, whom Vox pretty much has sworn to eradicate, needs to convince some of the minoritary local independentist parties to support them.
During this month of August, there is going to be an initial formation of the Congress, and the initial rounds of attempts by candidates to gain enough votes to form a government.
This information from WikiLeaks comes at quite an interesting timing: right after the elections (too late to influence voters), but right before the voting by elected representatives to decide who's going to rule the country.
As for Russia's possible interest in this... I don't see it. The political situation in Spain is so split right through the middle, that any tiny advantage to either side could tip the balance. The right wing PP+Vox have even proposed that "maybe if a couple elected officials from PSOE were to abstain from voting..." then they could already form a full right wing government.
Oh, nice, totally missed that. So that TV documentary was probably based on this leak, and the timing is just for this submission.
Well played @0x815@feddit.de. On the other hand, I also missed it when it came out, so that's something.