UNDER REGISTRATION

Updated Saturday, January 27, 2024-00:09

The Government has lied. As we revealed today, one of the key episodes of the alleged persecution of the independence leaders that ERC, Junts, Sumar and the PSOE itself attribute to the Executive of Mariano Rajoy under the name of

Operation Catalonia

took place under the mandate of Pedro Sánchez.

According to the information that EL MUNDO has accessed, it was in Sánchez's first year in Moncloa, after the motion of censure in June 2018, when the National Intelligence Center (CNI)

tapped the phone.

not of the then Catalan vice president, Pere Aragonès

, with the

software

Israeli Pegasus, considering him a leader of the violent Committees for the Defense of the Republic (CDR).

It is implausible that the Executive now claims that it was unaware of such a sensitive operation:

The CNI depends on the Ministry of Defense and reports to the Government Delegate Commission for Intelligence Affairs.

At the request of the court analyzing today's complaint

president

against the CNI, the Government has declassified three orders with which the magistrate in charge of controlling the secret services in the Supreme Court,

Pablo Lucas,

authorized three extensions of the intervention. It occurred in July and October 2019 and in January 2020 (although there were previous extensions). The Government clings to these dates to ensure that it inherited the operation of the Executive

popular.

The reality is that it had started with Sánchez already in Moncloa.

The scandal is huge:

The dates coincide with the president's failed budget negotiations; with his failed investiture (July 2019) and with the investiture that he did achieve thanks to the support of Podemos and the abstention of ERC (January 2020). In other words, the Government was negotiating with ERC while its secret services had the mobile phone of one of its leaders tapped.

In this episode another fact draws attention: before signing his permit, the judge addressed the CNI to ask him the reason for spying on Aragonès' cell phone, which can be interpreted as a gesture of resistance or doubt.

At the head of the CNI was then

Paz Esteban

, whose head Sánchez handed over to ERC when in 2022 a Canadian report of questionable rigor uncovered the

Pegasus case.

Her successor was part of Minister Robles' team.

Discontent spreads in the CNI

, where they consider that the Government uses the forced silence of the center to try to wash its hands of it by stating that it knew nothing about all this.

The Executive has encouraged the resurrection of the Catalonia operation to corner the PP, point it out in parliamentary committees, present the leaders of 1-O as victims and so on.

legitimize the amnesty of its partners.

The construct now turns against the president, who is forced to give explanations. With its pacts with the independence movement, the PSOE intends to attack the PP, but it is harming the State itself.

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