Artur Mas announces a lawsuit over Operation Catalunya: "If you don't fight, you've lost."

Madrid"Knowing the truth and ensuring that everyone assumes their responsibilities is the only way to restore and heal the wounds inflicted on the Spanish democratic system by Operation Catalunya." With these words, former President of the Generalitat (Catalan government) Artur Mas demanded that the instigators of the dirty war against the Proceso (Procession of the Process) during the last PP government pay the consequences. In this regard, one of the main victims of these maneuvers has announced the filing of a lawsuit. "If you don't fight, you've already lost," he asserted during his appearance before the commission of inquiry into Operation Catalunya in Congress. So far, all legal initiatives have ended in failure.

Precisely, this Monday RAC1 has published that Mas was the main victim of espionage with Pegasus between 2015 and 2020. "From the heart of the State an operation was organized that I describe as illegal, illegitimate and immoral to destroy political projects," he has glossed over the actions of the call to the police. patriotic. "The victim is not Artur Mas. The victim is not President Pujol, the mayor [Xavier] Trias, the president of Barça at the time. Not only that. The victims were the citizens of Catalonia who saw how everything necessary was manipulated to alter their vote, the cornerstone of any democracy.And this has happened in the history of recent Spain," he criticized.

One of those responsible could be former Spanish Vice President Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, who in her appearance this Monday also denied and distanced herself from the Pegasus spying on Artur Mas. "My instructions were always to fulfill the objectives of the national intelligence directive, subject to the law. Neither [former CNI director] Félix Sanz Roldán nor anyone from the government informed me of anything in this regard," she stated. Mas admitted that she has "no evidence" showing that Sáenz de Santamaría was behind it, but wondered who could authorize such a pursuit, given that only the CNI, the Civil Guard, and the Spanish police could have Pegasus. "If the Vice President of the Spanish government is unaware of the intelligence operations carried out by an agency that reports to her, can she guarantee state security?" she added.

Sáenz de Santamaría was head of the CNI at a time when the secret services depended on her department and not on the Ministry of Defense, as they do now. The secret intelligence directive is what defines the CNI's strategy and, at that time—also during Sánchez's first term—it placed the independence movement as a threat. The former vice president reiterated that the secret services complied with the directive, recalling that its content and the information they may obtain about third parties is "classified," and that she appeared before Congress's Committee on Official Secrets to explain what the CNI reported to her. "I reported everything they asked me. It's very difficult for me to report on something that doesn't exist," she emphasized.

In fact, he has questioned the credibility of the Citizen Lab report. "It strikes me as odd that this report appears 10 years later, on the very day Mas and I are appearing before this committee. Curious, to say the least," he stressed. At the start of the session, a PP spokesperson humorously criticized a pro-independence spokesperson for these "coincidences," given that the day former PP number two María Dolores de Cospedal appeared, RAC1 also published news about her participation in Operation Catalunya.

This report, which sources consulted by ARA indicate is not yet complete, reflects around thirty infections on Mas's phone from 2015 to 2020. All of them coincided with minutes or meetings related to the independence process. Most of them were during Pedro Sánchez's time in the Spanish government [starting in June 2018], but nine were reportedly when Sáenz de Santamaría was head of the CNI. The investigative center that uncovered the Catalangate scandal in 2022 had already indicated that Mas was one of the victims, but he is not one of the 18 people the CNI admitted to having spied on with judicial authorization. The investigation into Mas, therefore, would fall outside the law. "I have always told the CNI that their actions were in accordance with the Constitution and the law. There was no foul play," the former Spanish vice president stated, although the former director of the secret services, Paz Esteban, is charged in a Barcelona court for these events.

"Operation Catalonia did not exist"

Sáenz de Santamaría, now a member of the Council of State and an external advisor to the Barcelona law firm Cuatrecasas, would not, in any case, be one of the main protagonists of Operation Catalunya, according to the known audio recordings and the diaries of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo. "I have no knowledge of any patriotic police force or any Operation Catalunya. It didn't exist," she stated. A few days ago, RAC1 published a conversation between the former PP number two, María Dolores de Cospedal—Sáenz de Santamaría's arch-enemy—and former commissioner Villarejo in which, among other things, they praised the decline in the polls of CiU in November 2012. A few days before those elections, the newspaper The World had published that Mas had accounts in tax havens, which was not true. The former president later acknowledged that his father had one in Liechtenstein, but asserted that he never benefited from it.

Another branch of Operation Catalunya is the one related to the intervention of the Banca Privada de Andorra (BPA), according to which the Spanish government maneuvered to force its downfall because its leaders refused to provide tax information on Catalans who allegedly had fortunes in the Principality. "The Spanish government had no involvement because it was not within its jurisdiction. From what I have read, the CNI has expressed its opinion on the matter and I believe the Andorran government has as well," he stressed. Several ministers in the Andorran government during the events, in 2014 and 2015, denied the thesis denounced by the owners of BPA.