In Spain, at least one other member of the government has apparently been spied on.

According to information from the newspaper "El País", in May 2021 there was an attack by the then Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya.

However, the CNI secret service did not find out which program was involved and who the author was, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed government sources.

Hans Christian Roessler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb based in Madrid.

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On Monday, the Spanish government announced that in May and June 2021 Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles had had their devices infected with the “Pegasus” software and 2.6 gigabytes of data had been stolen from the head of government.

In Spain, the phones of all members of the government are now being examined.

The attack on the service equipment of the then foreign minister once again draws attention to Morocco.

Prime Minister Sánchez had dismissed González Laya in July 2021 to defuse the serious diplomatic crisis with Morocco.

Rabat was outraged that the minister had previously allowed Brahim Ghali to enter Spain in the utmost secrecy.

The head of the Western Sahara Liberation Front Polisario was treated there for a serious Covid disease without Morocco being informed.

A little later, Moroccan security forces had more than 10,000 Moroccans storm into the Spanish North African exclave of Ceuta.

As it turned out, the first attack on Sánchez's phone took place almost simultaneously.

Sánchez should soon answer questions

At the time, the smartphone of the Spanish journalist and Morocco expert Ignacio Cembrero was also spied on in Spain using the Pegasus software.

Details of confidential Whatsapp conversations later surfaced in the Moroccan press.

In France, an alleged Moroccan eavesdropping on President Emmanuel Macron and more than a dozen ministers was investigated.

Should the suspicion against Morocco be confirmed, this could call into question the recent détente: In April, the Spanish government gave up its neutrality in the Western Sahara conflict and moved closer to Morocco.

The Minister of State in the Office of the Head of Government, Félix Bolaños, did not want to confirm the attack on the former Foreign Minister's phone in a radio interview on Tuesday.

He was not aware of any such report from the CCN center responsible for cybersecurity, he said.

Bolaños ruled out that the CNI secret service could be behind the cyber attacks, as Catalan and Basque separatists in particular suspect.

According to research by the research group "Citizen Lab", more than 60 of their phones had been infected with the Pegasus program.

In May 2021, the Catalonia conflict reached another political peak with the pardon of leading separatists by the Sánchez government.

With the help of the right-wing opposition, the left-wing minority government rejected a proposal to set up a committee of inquiry in parliament on Tuesday.

However, Sánchez will soon be answering questions in front of the plenum.