The uncovering of an espionage operation against Catalan independence leaders is the latest reason for the scuffle between the central government of Spain and the local government of Catalonia.
The discovery comes at a time of relative calm in a relationship that has gone through an illegal declaration of independence, the prosecution and imprisonment of several of its promoters, and the recent establishment of a dialogue table.
Now the alliance between the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) and the Socialist Party, which needed their support to reach the presidency, is shaking.
It is, therefore, not only a tension between the independentists and the nationalist leaders, but also between members of the same government, since the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) had the votes of United We Can and ERC to reach the majority it needed to stay in power.
The espionage, discovered by Citizen Lab (a group of cybersecurity experts at the University of Toronto), occurred during the years in which Pedro Sánchez was already in charge, after the motion of censure that removed Mariano Rajoy from the government in June of 2018.
The cell phones of 65 sovereignist leaders were infected between that year and 2020 by Pegasus, a powerful Israeli cyber espionage system, which is only available to governments and official institutions. Among those affected are Pere Aragonés, president of Catalonia, and his predecessors, Quim Torra, Artur Mas and Carles Puigdemont.
“Espionage distorts the relationship between the Catalan parties and the Government, and may have effects on voting, starting next week with the validation of the RDL (Royal Decree Law) of measures for the crisis in Ukraine”, explains José Luis Ayllón , political analyst at the Llorente y Cuenca public affairs consultancy.
It refers to a government initiative to deal with the consequences of the war in Ukraine. “For now I know that the anger is great,” he says, but adds that with the vote in Congress “we will know the magnitude.”
The legislative calendar also provides for the processing of other laws that need the support of the independentistas. The Housing Law, one of the Government’s most important bets, has so far been saved thanks to the reticent votes of ERC, but it could falter in the rest of the process.
The reform to what is known as the Gag Law (of citizen security), which constitutes another of the axes of the Sánchez administration, is also a point where the independentistas can attack, after a long negotiation between the Socialist Party and its partners has taken place. And the Historical Memory Law (related to the Francoist past), for which ERC demands changes that the Government refuses to make, runs the risk of remaining paralyzed.
A new commission of the European Parliament will investigate the accusations. It will study information about the espionage, which could also have occurred in Poland and Hungary, will listen to experts and draw up recommendations for the European Union. The president is the Dutchman Jeroen Lenaers and one of the vice presidents is Diana Riba, an ERC MEP whose phone was spied on.
The president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, offered the more than 700 MEPs the revision of their cell phones, to make sure that they do not have the Pegasus espionage system installed.
Government reaction
The fact that only governments and official institutions have access to Pegasus puts Sánchez and the National Intelligence Center (CNI) in the spotlight as allegedly responsible for espionage.
Isabel Rodríguez, Minister of Territorial Policy, said in an interview on the state television channel that the Government “has nothing to hide.” Faced with Aragonés’s threat to withdraw his support in Parliament, he assured that “there are so many challenges that lie ahead and so much difficulty that we have had to manage, that it is convenient not to frivolize this, which is the stability of our country and the stability of the government”.
Sánchez has tried to go sideways and his environment minimizes the scandal, which has produced greater discomfort among the independentistas. “Until there is an assumption of responsibilities, we cannot normalize the relationship with the State,” said Aragonés. “It is essential to carry out an audited and independent internal investigation to clarify who has spied, on whose orders and with whose knowledge,” he added, emphasizing the need to “repair damaged trust.”
Although without much speed, the government of Sánchez and the pro-independence government had shown signs of rapprochement, in contrast to that of Mariano Rajoy, in whose period the illegal declaration of Catalan independence took place, proclaimed in October 2017, and the judicial rounding up of secessionist leaders.
Sánchez not only had the support of ERC in the formation of the government, but also undertook a dialogue table on which issues that interest the independence movement are exposed.
Regarding the CNI, on the other hand, Rodríguez did not explain whether the intelligence agency works with the Pegasus system, since, as he said, “there are matters that deal with national security, which are protected by law.” That is, they are classified information and must be kept secret.
This is how Pegasus works
Pegasus turns a cell phone into a recorder of all user activity. Remotely activates the microphone, camera, GPS and allows the attacker to access messages, photos or any stored file
This is not the first time it has been used in Spain. Other independentists, such as Roger Torrent and Ernest Maragall, had already been victims of this type of espionage. Nor is it the first country where it is used massively. The Canadian center gave espionage reports on Al Jazeera (36 people) and El Salvador (35). But it is the case that includes the largest number of victims.
JUANITA SAMPER
TIME
Madrid
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