Jaume Font Marí-Martí (Terrassa, 1918-2010) was so discreet that he practically never spoke about his clandestine struggle or how he infiltrated the Francoist military judicial machinery to alter records and save lives. "I had to pull many strings. He only spoke to me about it once. We were walking through Cerdanya with some friends, we were teenagers. Without looking directly at anyone, almost contemplating the landscape, my father explained that after the Civil War he had worked at the War Auditor's Office and that he had risked a lot by altering documents to reduce sentences or avoid death penalties. It was an unexpected and brief revelation. No one asked any questions. The conversation stopped there and he never spoke of it again," says his daughter, Núria Font.

Another case of police infiltration in social and political movements in the Catalan Countries, and this makes six. The latest research of The Direct, published this Tuesday, reveals that a National Police agent spent just over two years infiltrated activism in Lleida, around the pro-independence left. Under the false identity of Joan Llobet Garcia, and graduating from the Ávila Police School just a year before starting the espionage operation, the agent landed in the capital of Segrià in September 2019 and left in November 2021. During this time he was actively involved in the SANT protests against the Proceso sentence (2019) and those in support of the Lleida rapper Pablo Hasél.

The police tried to recruit Enric Pérez, 24, as an informer to infiltrate Jovent Republicà, Republican Left of Catalonia's (ERC) youth wing, but he decided to report it to ARA and La Directa to denounce espionage on the independence movement. This Tuesday, after his case was made public yesterday, ERC appeared in the Catalan Parliament alongside Pérez and the national spokesperson of Jovent Republicà, Kenya Domènech, to denounce the "violation of political freedom" and request the appearance of the Spanish government's delegate in Catalonia, Maria Eugènia Gay, to give explanations about what has happened. They have also assured that they are studying legal actions –but they have not yet given any details– and that this afternoon ERC MP in Madrid Marta Rosique will announce the actions they are preparing in the Spanish Parliament.

Enric Pérez waits at the foot of the 144-metre slab of concrete, aluminium and glass that is Glòries tower in Barcelona with his cell phone in his pocket and the recording application running. He is a little nervous. He has to meet a man who says he belongs to Spain's Department of Homeland Security, who in one call has shown that he knows too many things about him and wants to turn him into a confidant. Pérez is 24 years old, still studying, and from the start he contacts the ARA and the magazine Directa. It is Wednesday, March 30 and he is certain he wants to gather information and go public on these attempts to get him to spy on the independence movement.

The judge who for a year and a half has been investigating alleged spying on former Speaker and current Catalan minister for Enterprise and Employment Roger Torrent, and ERC Barcelona mayoral candidate Ernest Maragall has provisionally shelved the case, court sources have told ARA. So far this was the only court case open in Catalonia over Catalangate. In fact, the magistrate who is in charge of Barcelona's examining magistrate's court no. 32 still has to deal with complaints for the alleged spying on about sixty politicians, activists and lawyers, some of which were presented by Òmnium Cultural, CUP and lawyer Andreu van den Eynde, which had been sent from one court to another until they too ended up at court no. 32.

Over sixty people were spied on, around twenty after the secret services were given authorisation by a judge. Among these is the current president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès. Catalangate scandal is shaking the Spanish government's stability, which could be forced to call early elections. ERC and the rest of the pro-independence movement is demanding explanations but, for the moment, they have not been given any. All documents related to espionage are official secrets and, if the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) is careful enough to show only the essential part to MPs on the parliamentary official secrets committee –with a commitment of confidentiality– nobody else will know. The Generalitat has asked the Spanish Government to declassify these documents as an exercise in transparency that has few precedents in Spain. But who has the power to decide when secrets are made public?

For over a year now, Barcelona's Court no. 32 has been investigating alleged spying on former Catalan speaker – now a Catalan minister – Roger Torrent and ERC spokesman in Barcelona City Council Ernest Maragall using Pegasus spyware. But it is only now that the judge has ordered both politicians to hand in their mobile phones, so they may be analysed. This is one of the first proceedings ordered by the court, which until now had only requested information about Pegasus's developer, Israeli company NSO, through letters rogatory to different countries that are still awaiting a response.

The Spanish government has been left alone over the Pegasus case. This Tuesday opposition parties joined forces to demand Spanish president Pedro Sánchez's appearance in Parliament. They consider the explanations given so far are insufficient and demand the leader of the executive face parliamentary scrutiny over spying on pro-independence leaders, but also on Sánchez himself and the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles. Pro-independence groups, together with the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox, have voted in favour of this appearance at the meeting of Board of Party Spokespersons. Only the Socialists and Unidas Podemos opposed it, since they consider that before the Spanish president appears in the Spanish parliament "previous steps" should be taken first.

The scandal over the spying on some sixty Catalan pro-independence leaders has taken an unexpected turn this Monday with the denunciation by the Spanish government itself that the telephones of president Pedro Sánchez and Defence Minister Margarita Robles were also infected with the Pegasus programme. Specifically, experts from the National Cryptologic Centre, a branch of the CNI, have detected two extractions of information in May and June 2021 in the case of Sánchez, and only in June in the case of the minister.

The question is not whether Spain spies. Obviously spying takes place. As in all surrounding European countries. As so often in Spain, the real question is the impunity with which people act against each other. That is to say, what democratic cost is paid when the law is transgressed and violated and what democratic control is exercised over power. It is clear that the overreach of the secret services and deep state activity will be as intense as the consequences of violating citizens' rights such as the secrecy of communications or the defence and expression of dissident ideas will be superficial.

"Vostè continues with the mantra of 60 and I don't know how many people spied on and investigated. It is very easy to say this without any evidentiary material, but, look, since you insist, I ask you: what does a good state have to do? What does a government have to do when someone violates the Constitution? When someone declares independence, when someone cuts the public roads and leads public disorder? When someone has relations with politicians of a country that is invading Ukraine? You have not said anything about this, you have not said anything and you are not saying anything. And when organizations such as the SEPE are plundered and workers are prevented from being paid? When there has also been looting of ministers' telephones? I have not heard him say anything. I have not read anything.

"An inquiry does not make any sense". These are the words Minister of the Presidency Félix Bolaños used to dismiss requests made by Catalan pro-independence parties but also the Socialists' coalition partner Unidas Podemos for the Catalangate espionage scandal to be dealt with by a parliamentary inquiry. The Socialists argue that participants in this inquiry would not be obliged to testify under the official secrets law. On the other hand, if they were called to the committee for official secrets they would be. The problem is that this committee is not public and the MPs who take part have to maintain confidentiality. Therefore, the public would not have access to any information about the case. And this is exactly what the groups demanding an investigation want to avoid.

For a decade now, communications in Catalonia have not been secure. That is to say, for a decade many people in Catalonia have feared – and now know for sure – that the privacy of their conversations and everything they store on their mobile phones is not private and can be leaked at any time. That their mobile phone can record them in any situation.

The first meeting between the Catalan and Spanish Governments to address Catalangate, a week after the outbreak of the scandal, lasted just over two hours and ended without the results sought by the Generalitat. The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, met his Catalan counterpart, Laura Vilagrà, and afterwards spoke of a "cordial, sincere and correct" meeting with the idea of "looking for solutions" to the espionage scandal. But Vilagrà disagreed: "The meeting has not gone well. The explanations given are totally insufficient, vague, inconcrete and with uncertain results", she said. Bolaños, who guaranteed the "unequivocal will" of the Spanish government in "working to clarify the facts", has announced an internal investigation of the Intelligence Services would be launched "at the organisation's request" in order to analyse its actions. He also guaranteed the "full disposition" of Spanish intelligence services to "facilitate and collaborate" in an investigation that will also be initiated by the Spanish Ombudsman.

Catalan president Pere Aragonès travelled to Madrid today to put further pressure to the Moncloa to assume responsibilities over the Catalangate scandal. The president of the Generalitat met with the pro-independence members of the Spanish parliament who were the object of espionage, but also with Unidas Podemos leaders, as he questioned whether the Spanish government would continue receiving the support of nationalist parties. "A minimum of trust must be preserved. At the moment there is zero trust. If there has been spying, there can be no trust," Aragonès said in statements to the media after the meeting. In fact, the Catalan president avoided guaranteeing ERC’s support for the decree of economic measures against the economic crisis. "If you want your partner to continue supporting you, you have to make decisions, be very clear and go all the way," Aragonès warned. Depending on the "decisions" taken by the Spanish executive, the Generalitat will take its own, he concluded.

From the beginning, the independence movement has seen Catalangate as a State operation against the movement. Yet Catalan president Pere Aragonès has gone a step further this Wednesday and has pointed the finger at Spanish intelligence services CNI as responsible for the mass electronic surveillance of around sixty politicians and activists. The head of the Catalan Government defended in an interview on RAC1 that there is "clear evidence" that for this, arguing that the Israeli spyware used is only available to states and has a very high cost. "What other intelligence service would want to allocate millions of euros to spy on people which it has no relations with?", he wondered, adding that "you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes" to suspect the CNI.

The way in which Spain has dealt with the Catalan independence movement in recent years leaves much to be desired from a democratic state. If until now we knew about police repression and the actions of a politicised high judiciary, now there are new indications of a third no less scandalous aspect about which there were already very strong suspicions: espionage against elected politicians, activists, lawyers and journalists, which according to an investigation by Citizen Lab, a group of cybersecurity experts from the University of Toronto, affected over 60 people through using Israeli spyware Pegasus, mostly in the years 2019 and 2020. Is this the way a democratic state understands that it must fight part of its population's project to obtain sovereignty? In the cases of Scotland and Quebec, the respective states concerned, the United Kingdom and Canada, in no case used repressive actions, skewed judicial processes or mass spying.