Ears, little ears and ear muffs

"If what you say doesn't scare me anymore
is that I have overcome my fears"
Anna Andreu

Last Friday, a week ago, I woke up with the strange and fleeting confusion of feeling, for a brief moment, like a second-rate Al Capone. Or Ivà's Makinavaja. Or Ovidi's fierce beast. Or a migrant minor. Or Attila, who knows. A sentimental chronicle of Spain, Benet Salellas, who fortunately for us collectively is handling the legal case that Carles Riera and Albert Botran and I are jointly pursuing, sent me the official declassification document from the Council of Ministers regarding the massive espionage perpetrated by the CNI against the three of us. However, to call it "declassification resolution would be saying too much. Because they don't declassify much: they only acknowledge it very concisely, belatedly and six years later, and only confirm the time period in which all our communications were intercepted and monitored. For "activities contrary to national security". To Carles Riera during the two-year madness, and to me six months; while they deny the majority of the mobile phone infestation of Albert Botran, which the Mossos' expert report has certified and which I foresee, I bet six peas, they will end up acknowledging someday.It should go without saying that none of the three of us have ever had any criminal charges for that indecent intrusion into all of our privacy. The issue is that they do not declassify or clarify anything else – neither devices nor means nor capacity nor scope. Pure opacity and state secret with a terrifying martial language, typical of the dire national security doctrines, those that say the enemy is internal and is among us. Those that have caused so much nefarious destruction throughout history. This is recalled by the eloquent language used to justify the law of silence. Providing more data at the request of a Barcelona court would imply – I quote literally – "seriously compromise national defense";"cause serious prejudice to national security (that of all Spaniards)" or "compromise the fundamental interests of the nation". The loving epistle is signed by Minister Margarita Robles with a telematic signature from Félix Bolaños. And it is also signed, indirectly, by Israel: the technology used is from the NSO group. Charming.

In fact, since there are always more promptly tempting news that overshadow the important ones, it will be necessary to remember that the truly relevant news in this matter was from the previous Thursday. When Amnesty International presented a very harsh report against the papers and the bureaucratic papers of the government and the State in this matter. They recalled that the 65 spied individuals are seeking justice in ten scattered cases in different courts, that six years later nothing has happened judicially speaking and that the Public Prosecutor's Office's role has been obstructionist and has been fundamental in raising a wall of secrecy, silence, and impunity. The triad of political espionage, the Francoist law on official secrets, and the active role of the Public Prosecutor's Office to guarantee immunity functions smoothly, punctually, and perfectly. The fundamental interests of the nation, I suppose.

For the previous judicial documentation, I also learned surprising things, such as that apparently I traveled to Geneva with my mother, a statement that is absolutely false, although what more would I want and how much I would deserve it. I also decipher that the espionage was double and simultaneous, when dirty war can be legal and illegal –and where they don't reach with the first, they go with the second–. It turns out that during the same period of time, the National Court was investigating me, at the request of the Civil Guard and with the authorization of judge Manuel García-Castellón, while at the same time the Supreme Court authorized the CNI to do the same under the unassailable protection of the sinister secret of reason of state. The first is subjected to apparent judicial control; the second is a black hole where the only controller turns out to be the same one who spies at the same time. There is more to it. In the first case, it turns out that it is the same prosecutor from the National Court, Miguel Ángel Carballo, who, in his own handwriting, immediately orders the Civil Guard to stop intercepting my communications because the necessary constitutional justification for the interception of all communications has been called into question and fundamental rights would be violated. He says so, not I – I partially agree. It is also surprising to read the detail of the order for intervention with specific software, which is comprehensive: agenda, contacts, email, geolocation, web browsing, social networks, files, and history of all chats. And finally, dispelling a technological myth, remote activation of the mobile phone microphone "for the purpose of capturing oral communications". They say the enemy is internal. One thinks that by carrying a mobile phone, we carry a spy with us. Perhaps it is the only thing that consoles me: that the meritorious phone operators are struggling, report after report, because they are unable to install the software on me, because I don't say what they want, because I never talk about what interests them, and because they note that I have taken technological security measures. Not because I have anything to hide, but because I never intend to collaborate in my own espionage. And because I suspect that the complaint that we also have to win should be for a millionaire embezzlement of public funds – as Pegasus costs an arm and a leg that they want to scrutinize us for.

However, the official certification of last Friday's assault on privacy was not necessary – despite all that it means. We have known for too long that we were being spied on. When the now distant 2020 Citizen Lab presented its meticulous report on Catalangate, the theory of denial prevailed everywhere. The archives are good for everything. From saying it was all a lie to finally admitting that 18 people were spied on. And then the director of the CNI resigned. Today, six years later, they add a few more people to the list. And one day, in some year – "Everything will be known," Camilleri suggested – they will end up admitting everything. Surely before Christmas, as the beloved exile, nine long years ago, Lluís Puig, says. Which Christmas, we shall see. The saying goes that two pieces of news together give more understanding. Today we can read in the BOE that Via Laietana 43 is now officially – on the stamped paper of the State – a center for democratic memory. In reality, it continues to be a police station. And no: either one thing or the other. Either you declassify or you don't. Either you pay tribute to memory or you keep the police center operational. I say this because when Catalangate broke out, many instinctively referred to the essential film The Lives of Others. Luckily for good old Antoni Batista, who immediately corrected the reference so we could understand, recalling that the historical reference was not to be found in the dark Stasi of the GDR, but in this police building in the center of Barcelona, which has always watched, in dictatorship or democratura, the historical historic obsession of the Catalans for the useful passion of freedom. The final cherry on top, given a more than predictable hypothesis, is placed by the syllogism which predicts that if all this has happened during the most progressive government in history, what will not happen when Vox sits its ass on the council of ministers in less than a year. Between the greater evil and the lesser evil, word of Hannah Arendt, on some unexpected day we could aspire, with minimal politics, to the lesser good. For the best.