PSOE, Junts and ERC ask to investigate whether Rajoy knew about the dirty police war against the Catalan independence movement

President Pedro Sánchez and the main leaders of Junts and ERC defended this Monday the need to investigate whether former president Mariano Rajoy knew in real time, and supported, the police activities against the Catalan independence movement promoted by former minister Jorge Fernández Díaz between 2012 and 2016 These activities, without judicial protection, consisted of the fabrication of reports that were leaked to certain media outlets where very serious accusations of corruption were made, most of them false, against Catalan independence leaders. Some of these operations were prosecuted by the police themselves or by the Ministry of the Interior, but the majority ended in nothing because the judges decided to archive them since the evidence used was false.

These illegal maneuvers against the Catalan independence movement, proven in numerous summaries opened in the National Court and in other courts, remain unpunished. The judge of the National Court, Manuel García Castellón, instructor of the Tandem case —which investigates the police mafia led by Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo for almost 20 years— still has an open investigation —piece 34— which includes the so-called audios of corruption published by EL PAÍS where numerous evidence of the maneuvers of leaders of the PP and the police leadership of the Ministry of the Interior against the Catalan independence movement. More than a year and a half after this investigation was opened, the judge has only taken testimony from those responsible for the media that published those audios and none of the politicians or police officers involved in them have been charged with those events.

Furthermore, in the dozens of separate pieces of the Tandem case Still open in the National Court, the informative notes that Villarejo wrote and that reached the political heads of the Ministry of the Interior appear scattered.

The vanguard, Eldiario.es and ElNacional.cat They published this Monday that the then President of the Government, Mariano Rajoy, received, according to different sources, reports about these illegal operations of the independence movement in sealed envelopes sent to him by his Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz. “We are not at all surprised that Mariano Rajoy knew the details of the dirty war against the independence movement. The Spanish State, with its sewers, has tried everything and has failed. Today, it is even more evident that independence is the only way,” said the former Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, this Monday.

This Monday, Fernández Díaz's lawyer denied to EL PAÍS on behalf of his client that envelopes with reports on police activity against the Catalan independence movement were sent to Rajoy. Interior leaders between 2012 and 2016 told this newspaper another version: “That Minister Jorge Fernández sent many reports to Rajoy in envelopes is 100% true. What we do not know is if they were Villarejo's informative notes, although we are not surprised, at least in the first years, because there came a time, starting in 2014, when Villarejo's notes lacked credibility. EL PAÍS tried, without success, to know Rajoy's version of these complaints.

Villarejo has assured several interlocutors, according to his own recordings, that he is the author of a report without date or signature but with the seal of the Ministry of the Interior that he leaked to certain media outlets for publication a few days before the Catalan election campaign. November 2012. That report detailed all types of corruption involving the main Catalan independence leaders, judges and prosecutors, and directors or editors of Catalan newspapers. Many of the allegations in those reports were proven false.

Villarejo, whose intense contacts with the general secretary of the PP, Dolores de Cospedal, and with the former chief of staff of the Minister of the Interior and later Secretary of State, Francisco Martínez, have been accredited in multiple recordings, prepared numerous informative notes on police activities against the Catalan independence movement. 18 of these notes appear in the summary being investigated in Andorra regarding the alleged extortion of Spanish police officers to the owners of the BPA to provide documentation on the money laundering of former president Jordi Pujol and his family.

In these briefing notes all kinds of accusations appear—some of them false; others never proven—not only against Pujol but against numerous pro-independence politicians or businessmen. These notes even attributed to Jordi Pujol in Switzerland a fortune of 2,000 million euros, or the payment of six million euros to the Prime Minister of Latvia in exchange for his support for Catalonia's right to self-determination.

The most compromising conversation recorded by Villarejo in relation to these operations against the Catalan independence movement took place on December 16, 2012. The then Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández, met with Villarejo to define strategies against Catalan independence leaders. In that conversation, the minister asks the police for absolute discretion: “This conversation did not exist, is that clear? The minister knows nothing about the subject. I will deny even under torture that this meeting ever existed.”

In that meeting, shortly after the elections in Catalonia were held with a serious setback for CiU, Villarejo explained to the Minister of the Interior how they were going to prosecute certain operations against independence leaders based on “anonymous, informative notes, collected data…”. “I would like you to [la denuncia] will be presented today,” the minister answers, who points out in the conversation that “the second complaint does concern Artur Mas. [expresidente de la Generalitat de Cataluña] through the three front men.”

This recording, revealed by EL PAÍS a year and a half ago, demonstrates the extent to which the Minister of the Interior was informed of all the maneuvers of the police under his command against the Catalan independence movement.

The complaints against Artur Mas never came to anything. It was never proven that he had accounts abroad, not even through front men, despite the fact that the patriotic police leaked reports to that effect.

Despite the numerous evidence existing in numerous summaries opened in the National Court and in other courts, these illegal maneuvers by the Interior police leadership against the Catalan independence movement have not received any criminal reproach so far.

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