Artur Mas will file a complaint regarding Operation Catalunya and the Pegasus spying.

MadridThe last time Artur Mas appeared in Congress was in November 2005 to defend the Statute of Autonomy, and almost 20 years later, he returned this Monday to "solemnly," he said, announce a complaint regarding Operation Catalunya. The two issues are interrelated, as evidenced by the fact that they appeared throughout the former president of the Generalitat's appearance before the commission on the dirty war against the Catalan Process. His appearance was preceded by the publication on RAC1 that Mas is the main victim of Pegasus spying in Spain, with around thirty infections on his mobile phone between 2015 and 2020—during a period, he was president—which has acted as a trigger for legal action. "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," he argued.

But a new session of this committee, which Junts and ERC agreed upon with the PSOE, has once again confirmed the obstructionist attitude of the PP and the members of Mariano Rajoy's government, who one by one have denied the existence of Operation Catalunya and have distanced themselves from it. The latest, former Spanish Vice President Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, stated this morning that as head of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), no one informed her of any espionage on the then president of the Generalitat.

"My instructions to [former director of the secret services] Félix Sanz Roldán were always to fulfill the objectives of the national intelligence directive in accordance with the Constitution and the law. There was no foul play," she asserted. However, the truth is that, as a result of the Catalangate scandal, former CNI director Paz Esteban is facing charges in a Barcelona court for allegedly spying on pro-independence leaders without judicial authorization. "If the vice president of the Spanish government doesn't know about the intelligence operations carried out by an agency that reports to her, can she guarantee state security?" Mas asked.

Sáenz de Santamaría distances herself from this.

The CNI's espionage with Pegasus has made its way to court, unlike all the judicial initiatives that have been promoted in relation to Operation Catalunya. Everything related to the maneuvers hatched by the Ministry of the Interior led by Jorge Fernández Díaz and coordinated by former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo has fallen on deaf ears, despite the audio and written evidence that has proven the plot. Mas has decided to take the step—it has yet to be specified who will be targeted and whether it will be one or two complaints—after a few weeks in which new clues have emerged, such as the Conversation between Villarejo and former PP number 2, María Dolores de Cospedal in which they boasted of having managed to increase CiU's number of seats from 62 to 50 in the 2012 elections and of the contribution made by Alícia Sánchez-Camacho.

The former leader of the Catalan PP provided names from the pro-independence circles to be investigated, just days before the November 2012 elections. The World falsely published that Mas had accounts abroad. "The victim is not Artur Mas. The victim is not President Pujol or Mayor [Xavier] Trias. 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 that has happened throughout the history of recent Spain," Mas criticized.

Except for Vox and the PP, spokespersons for all the parties have expressed their solidarity with him—even EH Bildu MP Jon Iñarritu conducted his entire interrogation in Catalan—but it has not been as placid as one might have expected. Gabriel Rufián (ERC) has inquired about the foreign accounts his father had held in Liechtenstein and about when he coincided on a trip to Argentina with Jordi Pujol Ferrussola when he was a minister, and has described it as a "betrayal" that he agreed to lower the Statute of Autonomy in Madrid.

The Republican spokesperson also agreed with Gerardo Pisarello (Comuns-Sumar) in criticizing Junts for being tempted to look to the right and moving closer to both the PP and the Catalan Alliance. "We should avoid the Alicia Sánchez-Camacho syndrome," in the words of Pisarello, who thus christened the pact with someone who, secretly, conspired to destroy their political adversary with reprehensible methods. In fact, Mas himself acknowledged that he may have been guilty of "naivety." In any case, the former president asserted that he did not appear in Congress to reveal the "private conversations with Junts" about his possible pacts.

"Cowardice" of the PP

But I wanted to talk about the sewers. "From the heart of the State, an operation was organized that I describe as illegal, illegitimate, and immoral to destroy political projects, ideas, people, and leadership," the former president denounced, criticizing the "cowardice" of the PP leaders for "burying their heads in the sand" and "running like a rabbit." In that sense, a short while earlier, Sáenz de Santamaría had denied the facts, to the despair of pro-independence spokespeople, who had been taught by a staunch defense of Article 155 and the judicialization of the process. In contrast, the former Spanish vice president disassociated herself from espionage and, in any case, shielded herself behind the fact that the CNI information is "classified."

The Citizen Lab center, which already revealed the Catalangate scandal, has reportedly confirmed nine tappings of former Prime Minister Artur Mas's phone during Rajoy's term and the rest during Pedro Sánchez's administration—starting in June 2018. Both the PP and PSOE governments maintained an intelligence directive, which governs the actions of the secret services, that placed the independence movement as a threat. This justified spying on some independence supporters with judicial authorization, but many cases remain to be clarified. On May 19, ERC leader Oriol Junqueras and former Barcelona mayor Xavier Trias will appear before the commission.