What we know and what we don’t know and what we should know at Catalangate


In the political debate on the Pegasus case, the use of this software to spy on leaders of the Generalitat, there are high doses of hypocrisy. As the former director of the CNI, Jorge Dezcallar, has recalled in these pages, when it has suited him (during the 11-M attacks), the PP has not cared to open up the entrails of the espionage center to save the faces of the politicians, exactly as the PSOE has done now. On the side of the independentists, those who really were should not make the fuss they do because it would be logical that if they want to have a State it is to have spies to watch over those who want to dismantle it. The underlying issue is that the immature Spanish public opinion tends to make a skein of any issue, from espionage to the rule, and launch it from one trench or another as a throwing weapon. And the principle of reality is dispensed with, of the sacrosanct facts that here are anything but sacred.

The dismissed director – who has not been replaced, dear Minister Robles – of the CNI, Paz Esteban explained to the official secrets commission that the center had wiretapped 18 people, including the current president Pere Aragonès, with a court order based on his participation in the protests against the procés sentence. Last Friday the newspaper The world He gave more details of the matter than those revealed by the deputies when leaving Congress and published a quotation mark of that authorization: “Telephone intervention is the only formula to avoid secession & rdquor;. Ready. It is about wiretapping against anti-Spain and there is no more talk. We also know, because Juanjo Fernández explained it, that the CNI, unlike the police, usually adds to the wiretaps to as many phones that cross its path without expanding the judge’s order. Hence, from the 18 recognized in Congress we go on to the 66 identified by the Citizen Lab. But, at the same time, we know, Tono Calleja and Jesús Albalat have explained it, that Villarejo’s entourage and the patriotic police made several attempts to acquire technology like that of Pegasus for their outrages, although in the end on that occasion they bought conventional proximity listening antennas, not infiltration devices. If wiretapping does not affect the sacred unity of the country, shouldn’t it be investigated as a case of violation of fundamental rights on suspicion that the limits of judicial authorization have been exceeded or that members of the corrupt security forces were able to wiretap illegal then covered by that judge who has been dealing with CNI affairs for 13 years, as Ernesto Ekáizer recalls? More when we know in the way of the spies the phone of a lawyer who participated in a trial in the same court that authorized the wiretapping crossed.

What we don’t know and won’t know

Spain is not the papier-mâché democracy that the independentistas try to draw to discredit it. But every democratic state must be vigilant. Not so long ago, Germany investigated the possible infiltration of the extreme right in its espionage services. Wouldn’t it be time to clarify some doubts raised by what happened with Pegasus? Everything indicates that there are loopholes in the institutions of the State of officials who consider that their work is above politicians, that is, of the citizens whom they treat as minors. The childishness of some should not be confused with the common sense of almost everyone. And in that common sense it is possible that it is listened to to avoid dangers against democracy but it is not possible that it is the same judge that controls it for years or that the prosecutor does not participate in that control.

In any case, Pegasus already has a political legacy. As some claimed in the labor reform, there is a majority in Parliament without Esquerra as has been shown in the votes on the measures against the war or the National Security law. Dialogue runs a serious risk of passing to a better life. And in Catalonia it has not even started seriously, but the first attempt on the linguistic issue has skidded. Those who consider that listening is the only way to avoid secession win. Who has voted for them?


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