Pedro J. Ramírez: "If I were in that situation a hundred times over, I would publish the UDEF report again."

BarcelonaPedro J. Ramírez (Logroño, 1952) is one of the most influential Spanish journalists of the democratic period and also one of the most controversial. He has now published his second volume of memoirs (You can tell the truth, Planeta), where he defends decisions as controversial as his covers with false accusations against pro-independence leaders.

Your second memoir begins with the ETA attack on Terminal 4 in Madrid in 2006. Looking back, was Zapatero right when he insisted on continuing negotiations with ETA?

— I think time has proven him right. I criticized him harshly at the time, thinking that ETA would never lay down its weapons, which was the same belief held by the Nationalist Nationalist Force (CNI) and the Civil Guard, but he had very good information about the group's inner circle through Eguiguren's contacts with Otegi and company. It's true that the narrative has been left in the hands of the Aberzale community, and that it must have been very hard for the victims, but overall, there's no doubt that Spanish society is better off when the bodies have disappeared at breakfast time. I believe, however, that the facts have not proved Zapatero right regarding Catalonia and the Trial.

He claims Zapatero was wrong about Catalonia because the Trial took place, but what about Pedro Sánchez? Was he right about the amnesty, given that the independence movement has lost its majority and its government?

— We must give time time. I believe that what brought down the independence movement was the work of the rule of law after the events of the 17th. If the justice system hadn't acted as it did, neither Sánchez nor Puigdemont would have had the political opportunity to negotiate the investiture in exchange for amnesty. What Sánchez did was put the rule of law right, but he did so because Junts had the seven deputies he needed; otherwise, Sánchez would have taken him to court in handcuffs, as he said.

But the fact is that under the PP, the independence movement was on the rise, but under Sánchez, who is trying to woo Catalonia, it has fallen.

— Especially if the alternative for the seduced It's spending several years in prison. If I were asked whether I'd rather be seduced by reunion or brotherhood or spend a few years in prison, I'd probably let myself be seduced. But I don't think the pro-independence convictions of the protagonists of the 1917 Revolution have changed. The balance of power has changed. For me, the role of the king and the established powers was essential to stopping the Trial.

And the role of the media? You, as director ofThe WorldDid you fight the independence movement?

— On an intellectual level, of course. But not now, perhaps as a child I was already a botifler, one of those Catalans who went to Mataró with Felipe V. I've always thought that within the EU, nationalism has no meaning, not Spanish nationalism, and even less so Catalan nationalism.

The question is whether this conviction has led him to violate the code of ethics. For example, with the publication of the apocryphal UDEF report containing false accusations against pro-independence leaders like Artur Mas just before the...

— No, it wasn't a false report; it was a draft from the UDEF, some of which have been proven true and others are pending investigation. For example, in the Pujol case, the investigation remains blocked in multiple instances, and we'll see what happens when their children take the stand. The fact that a piece of information can't be corroborated doesn't mean that it's recorded in a police document...

But that document didn't even bear a signature, and no one took responsibility afterward.

— Yes, the leader of SUP, the main police union,...

Excuse me, but this gentleman wasn't a public official... And later it was revealed that the report was part of Operation Catalunya.

— What caught my attention about the document was the coincidence with the money Artur Mas's father had in Liechtenstein and what the then secretary of the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), José Zaragoza, had told me when he urged us to publish the accusations of tax fraud against Mas's father. Incidentally, these accusations were surprisingly dismissed by the Prosecutor's Office when Zapatero needed to reach an agreement with them. And this is what I explain in the book. Therefore, no matter how many times I found myself in that situation, which we discussed at length, I would publish it again, because the bottom line was that Jordi Pujol's entourage had engaged in corrupt practices. And this has been more than proven.

Do you still question the investigation into the March 11 attacks in Madrid? Was it journalistic stubbornness or a strategy to sell more newspapers?

— I was just as stubborn when I said that the GAL attacks had connections with the state apparatus and Felipe's government, and we proved it and it was legally proven. I was just as stubborn when I said that the Gürtel case wasn't a story of four city councils but a plot orchestrated by the PP leadership, and when I got the famous message of "Luis, be strongand the party's black accounting. I was just as stubborn regarding 11-M. With one difference: I failed to find out or prove what happened on 11-M.

But do you still doubt the official version of the jihadist attack?

— That jihadist elements were involved is not in question, but I see that in Catalonia there is a great debate about the Rambla attack and whether or not it was a false flag attack. And in the March 11 attack, we also talked about people who were police informants. There are parallels.

Don't you regret anything?

— Man, I regret not having had more journalists and more resources to try to find out what we don't know. For me, 11-M is an open case. I don't have a concrete theory, but one can speculate that it was a much more professional operation than the verdict suggests. What does this mean? Well, intelligence services were probably involved. But I have no proof.

Has Aznar ever apologized for telling you it was ETA?

— No. I don't think he was trying to deceive me, but rather he was deceiving himself. His biggest mistake was supporting the invasion of Iraq. He wanted to take a shortcut to turning Spain into a great power, and that will forever taint what I believe was, on the whole, a good piece of government.

By the way, are you, a liberal, worried about the rise of Vox?

— No, because just like what happened with Podemos, I think the soufflé will go down.