The Pegasus scandal claimed its first political victim in Madrid.
On Tuesday, the Spanish government fired the Director of the Secret Service (CNI), Paz Esteban.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is trying to end one of the worst government crises in the past four years.
The spying out of at least 18 Catalan separatists with the Israeli spy software had severely strained the relationship with his political partners and two weeks ago his minority government almost lost when it approved the emergency aid package intended to alleviate the consequences of the Ukraine war.
There were also cyber attacks on his own government.
Hans Christian Roessler
Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb based in Madrid.
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But the relief maneuver threatened to fail to have the effect Sánchez had hoped for on Tuesday: the head of government wants to take Defense Minister Margarita Robles out of the political line of fire.
She is responsible for the CNI, is one of his closest confidants and is currently preparing the NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June.
Both Sánchez's coalition partners from the Podemos party and the Catalan separatists are calling for her resignation.
The ERC party of the Catalan regional president Pere Aragonès, who was among those spied on in early 2020, does not consider the dismissal to be sufficient.
ERC parliamentary group spokesman Gabriel Rufián said Robles could no longer be held either.
Conservative opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo accused Sánchez of “handing over the head of the CNI director to the separatists in order to survive”.
The right-liberal Ciudadanos party spoke of a "shameful" exchange for support from supporters of Catalan independence, who dictated important personal details to the government.
Response to Security Vulnerabilities
Ultimately, there was little to blame for Paz Esteban, since the CNI is not responsible for the security of members of the government's phones.
Secretary of Defense Robles said the outgoing CNI director had to "endure allegations that do not reflect reality".
She will not be fired either, only replaced by another similarly experienced CNI employee who will focus on increasing cyber security.
Paz Esteban, 64, was Spain's first female intelligence chief and has had a career at the CNI spanning nearly 40 years, which she headed for just two years.
With the change at the top of the secret service, the government is reacting to the security gaps revealed by the Pegasus attacks on the Spanish government.
They were only discovered after a delay of a year.
According to a government spokeswoman, the examination of the phones of all members of the government revealed that the devices of Sánchez, Robles and Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska had been spied on with the Pegasus software in May and June 2021.
An attack on the Minister of Agriculture had not been successful.
Robles gave no information about who was behind it.
In Spanish media, Morocco is mentioned in this context.
By then, the diplomatic crisis with the North African country had reached its peak.
Right from the start, the right-wing opposition and Catalan politicians have accused the government of wanting to distract attention from a major wiretapping operation aimed at separatists by announcing the cyber attacks on the prime minister and cabinet members.
More than 60 iPhones were affected, according to the Citizen Lab research group.
Among them were several officials and MPs, as well as two Basque separatists.
Before the intelligence committee, Paz Esteban announced last Thursday that 18 devices had been confiscated with the court's approval, including the phone of Pere Aragonès, who was Catalonia's deputy prime minister at the time.
After the conviction of leading separatists, violent riots broke out in Catalonia in autumn 2019.
Allegedly, Esteban could not explain to the committee why Aragonès was apparently still being bugged in early 2020 when he was negotiating with Pedro Sánchez, who his ERC party in parliament then helped to get re-elected.