Sáenz de Santamaría denies that the CNI spied on Mas and warns that it is "classified information."

Madrid"I have no knowledge of any patriotic police force or any Catalonia operation." These were the first words of former Spanish Vice President Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, one of the key figures in the commission of inquiry's session this Monday in Congress. In the afternoon, it will be the turn of former President of the Generalitat (Catalan government) Artur Mas, one of the main victims of the State's dirty war against the Process. "I never gave any instructions to investigate anyone. I don't know, nor can I say, who gave instructions to create something that never existed," insisted the former right-hand man of Mariano Rajoy in the Moncloa Palace. "We were a government that always respected the Constitution and the laws," she asserted.

Sáenz de Santamaría, now a member of the Council of State and an external advisor to the Barcelona law firm Cuatrecasas, is not one of the main protagonists of Operation Catalunya, according to the known audio recordings and the diaries of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo. According to the evidence, the maneuvers were developed in the Ministry of the Interior and at the Génova headquarters, outside Sáenz de Santamaría's direct area of influence, who was at odds with her arch-enemy Cospedal. However, the National Intelligence Center (CNI)—previously and subsequently under the Ministry of Defense—reported to her, and spied on dozens of figures linked to the independence movement using the Pegasus program.

Malgart that the vast majority of identified wiretaps were already with Pedro Sánchez in the Spanish government, the popular leader was in charge of the CNI when the spying on Artur Mas began, according to a report by Citizen Lab published this Monday by RAC1The research center that uncovered the Catalangate scandal suggests that the former Catalan leader's cell phone was infected thirty times over five years, between July 2015 and May 2020, meaning he was already being spied on while he was president. Initially, Mas was not on the list that the CNI admitted to having spied on with judicial authorization, so it would have been without legal protection. The former president would have been the first victim of Pegasus in Spain and the second worldwide, according to Citizen Lab. All of the infections on his cell phone coincided with minutes or meetings related to the independence process.

Classified information

Saenz de Santamaría has distanced herself from this espionage, asserting that she never gave any instructions to the then director of the CNI, Félix Sanz Roldán, "other than to comply with the national intelligence directive in accordance with the Constitution and the law." This secret document outlines the CNI's strategy and, at the time—also during Sánchez's first term—considered the independence movement a threat. The former vice president reiterated in general terms that the secret services complied with the directive, recalling that its content and any information about third parties that may be obtained are "classified," and that she appeared before the Congressional Committee on Official Secrets to explain what the CNI reported to her. "I reported on everything they asked me. It's very difficult for me to report on something that doesn't exist," he emphasized, adding: "It strikes me that this report [the one from Citizen Lab] appears 10 years later, on the very day Mas and I appear before this committee. Curious, to say the least," he stressed.

Returning to the Catalunya operation, a few days ago RAC1 already published a conversation between Cospedal 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 untrue. The former president later acknowledged that his father had one in Liechtenstein, but asserted that he never benefited from it. Mas announced in statements to RAC1 that he hasn't ruled out announcing a lawsuit this Monday regarding the Catalunya operation. "There will be a very powerful formal act today. I didn't want to file the lawsuit before my appearance. I want to see how it goes before making the final decision," he said. Until now, legal initiatives regarding these events have always ended in vain.