Hearing by the Parliament, the director of the Spanish services Paz Esteban admitted the espionage, thanks to the Pegasus software, of about twenty Catalan leaders. Tension is growing between the Socialist Prime Minister and his allies in the government.
The appearance of the director of the Spanish intelligence services was intended to calm the spirits, heated since the beginning of the Pegasus scandal, this Israeli technology making it possible to infect and appropriate the information contained in mobile phones. However, on the contrary, the declarations of Paz Esteban before the Official Secrets Committee of the Parliament revived the controversy in the country, increased the discredit weighing on the CNI (the Spanish intelligence services) and tightened the noose on the head of government Pedro Sánchez.
At the origin of the case, the Canadian platform The Citizen Lab – specialized in cybersecurity – had revealed that around sixty Catalan separatist personalities had been spied on via the Pegasus software which, officially, can only be acquired by States. Paz Esteban admitted that 18 of them were indeed « followed » by the services it directs.
“Spain, a rotten state from within”
Among them, four presidents of the executive of Catalonia, including the current one, Pere Aragonès. Or ex-president Carles Puigdemont, who took refuge in Belgium to avoid the sanctions of Spanish justice for his role in the organization, in 2017, of the referendum on the independence of Catalonia. The latter reacted on Twitter, believing that this confession was proof that “Spain is a rotten state from within”. In general, the secessionist camp is offended by the confession. “We are not a terrorist threat […]this espionage is unjustifiable”roared the spokeswoman for the independence coalition Junts, Míriam Nogueras.
The pressure on the head of the socialist government does not stop there. Its government ally Unidas Podemos (Spanish equivalent of insubordinate France) and the Basque and Catalan nationalists are demanding the resignation of the president of the CNI, the « declassification » secret documents relating to this issue and the holding of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the « Pegasus Scandal », eventuality to which the socialists and popular (right), the two main Spanish parliamentary formations.
According to authorities, the espionage against the 18 separatist leaders took place in May 2021, when Pedro Sánchez decided to grant pardons to nine secessionist leaders convicted of having organized a self-determination referendum in October 2017. “That would say a lot about the confidence the government had in them!”quipped a columnist on Onda Cero radio.
The general climate of discord and mistrust is deepened by the other side of the spy scandal: earlier this week, the socialist government revealed that this same Pegasus technology has also infected the mobile phones of the head of the government Pedro Sánchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles. From the same source, this espionage would have occurred during the same period, in May and June 2021, and the author would be one. « foreign agent ».
A deeply divided government
Since then, the feeling of confusion has grown, which the deputy of Esquerra Gabriel Rufián (a moderate Catalan separatist) summed up as follows on Twitter: the person responsible would therefore be “either a foreign nation, or state agencies”, or both. In all three cases it would be “terrible from a democratic point of view” and that would reveal « neglect ».
Less than two months before the crucial NATO summit, which will be held in Madrid at the end of June, the interlacing of the Pegasus affair has already taken its toll. Not only is right-wing opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo rising in the polls, but deep divisions are emerging within the government. The Minister of Defense openly attacks the entourage of the head of government, accusing him of implicating her. « Everyone is shooting each other in the leg, and it’s pretty pitifulunderlines the analyst Daniel Gascón. In my view, the executive is trying to appease the Catalan separatists, so useful for its continuity, at the risk of exposing and discrediting its own intelligence services. The country thus reveals a real weakness.
The other concern of Pedro Sánchez is the Moroccan track. Even if no one has provided proof, many clues indicate that the Cherifian kingdom could well be behind the espionage of the head of government and his Minister of Defense. The infections of their cellphones coincide with a major crisis between Madrid and Rabat, in May 2021, when Morocco had let some 8,000 African nationals into Ceuta, in retaliation for the hospitable reception, in Spain, of the leader of the Polisario Front Brahim. Ghali. A few months later, the journalistic consortium Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International denounced the use of Pegasus by the Moroccan secret services to spy on thousands of mobile phones. Including that of Emmanuel Macron.
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