Operation Catalonia is the "illicit" origin of the case against the Pujol family. This is the argument being presented by the defense lawyers for the former president's family in the trial at the National Court. The court, in fact, has accepted that the leadership of the "patriotic police" must testify as a witness in the trialAnd this Thursday, new evidence of his role in the case against the Pujol family was published. It is an audio recording from 2017. disseminated by Eldiario.esIn a recording, former police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo confirms that Victoria Álvarez, former partner of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola and a key figure in the origin of the case against the family, was paid by the National Police. He states this in a conversation with former PP Secretary General María Dolores de Cospedal. According to the aforementioned media outlet, the conversation took place on September 12, 2017, shortly before the October 1 referendum, at the PP headquarters on Génova Street. "If they find out that Vicky is being paid by the Police, we're in trouble, don't you think?" Villarejo says at one point in the recording. "Well, yes," Cospedal replies, in further evidence implicating the PP leader in Operation Catalonia. The recording, according to the same report, has been in the hands of the National Court judges investigating the Kitchen case for two years, who have allegedly ignored it.

First legal actions following the new revelations about Operation Catalunya. The PSOE, which is acting as the private prosecutor in the Tandem macro-case concerning everything surrounding the illegal practices of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, filed a brief with the National Court on April 11—advanced by The Country and to which ARA has had access – in which he demands that the former number 2 of the PP, María Dolores de Cospedal, be charged. audios published on RAC1 In which the retired police officer and the former Minister of Defense converse on September 15, 2014, about how they "changed history" with their maneuvers. "From 62 to 50. I think it was positive," said Villarejo, referring to the number of seats Convergència i Unió won in the 2012 elections.

This week's Monday started with the broadcast on the program The world on RAC1 New audio recordings about the so-called Operation Catalonia. Aside from the ineffable Commissioner Villarejo, this time the protagonists were María Dolores de Cospedal and Alícia Sánchez-Camacho. The recording dates back to 2014, at the height of the Catalan self-determination movement. At that time, Villarejo was an active National Police Commissioner, and the two female political leaders wielded considerable power: Cospedal was the general secretary of the PP at the Spanish level, and Sánchez-Camacho presided over the Catalan PP. The former made and unmade Spain, the latter in Catalonia. It's worth remembering, as a very relevant fact, that these were the years when the PP governed Spain with an absolute majority, with Rajoy as president.

A new chapter in this great Spanish comedy about anything important related to Catalonia. I would never say it: now it turns out that even the PSOE has well-founded suspicions that Cospedal may have lied in Parliament (it's a crime) when she said that Operation Catalunya didn't ring a bell, despite the fact that in an audio recording she seemed so calm celebrating with Commissioner Villarejo that the fabrication of lies with public money had been involved in order to divert money from public contracts in order to pay off debts to illustrious police informants. The Socialists have become dignified: "We cannot accept as normal the serious audio recordings published [...] in which Cospedal points to theknowledge on the part of Mariano Rajoyof the facts being judged."

The string of audio recordings published in recent days about Operation Catalunya are cornering María Dolores de Cospedal. The former general secretary of the PP, who On Monday he appeared before the Congressional committee who is investigating the dirty war against the independence movement, will be summoned again in the Lower House with the support of the majority of parties. The PSOE has confirmed that it will vote in favor following the latest recordings broadcast by RAC1, in which the former Defense Minister also implicates Mariano Rajoy in the Kitchen plot. The votes of the socialists will be added to those of ERC, Junts, Sumar, Podemos and Bildu and will force Cospedal to a new interrogation in Parliament.

Despite the PP's efforts to deny its existence, the maneuvers of the state's sewers during Mariano Rajoy's governments are accumulating ever more evidence. New audio published this Wednesday by RAC1In fact, it directly implicates the former Spanish president in the Kitchen operation, the operation paid for with secret funds to steal information about the party's corruption from former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas. It concerns a September 2014 conversation between María Dolores de Cospedal and José Manuel Villarejo. "I know that they had previously found, and more or less cleaned out, everything he had," the former PP secretary general says at one point, supposedly about Bárcenas. She adds: "The president told me, no one else did."

Perhaps many Catalans didn't remember the histrionic nature of Alícia Sánchez-Camacho, now that it's been eight years since she ceased to be the leader of the Catalan People's Party (PP) and has continued her political career in the background in Madrid. Rumor has it that services rendered in the Catalonia operation are rewarded. Her appearance this Monday before the Congressional inquiry committee served to refresh memories and revive heated debates, with the volume turned up very high. "Don't call me," Camacho told Podemos MP Martina Velarde. "You're the one calling!" she retorted. The spokespersons for Junts and ERC—two parties fiercely opposed to each other in Madrid today—Josep Pagès and Pilar Vallugera, tried to give each other advice to unsettle Sánchez-Camacho, who ended up driving them crazy. "You didn't come to scold me or insult me. It's embarrassing how you treated my colleagues," Vallugera warned her.

Cospedal and Sánchez-Camacho's time in Congress was just as we reported yesterday here: both denied reality and Camacho still He had the nerve to present himself as a victim.

The appearance this Monday of former PP deputy leader and former Defense Minister María Dolores de Cospedal and former Catalan PP president Alicia Sánchez-Camacho before the commission of inquiry into Operation Catalunya leaves a taste of helplessness due to the shamelessness shown by the two PP politicians in the face of the evidence against them. One can greatly distrust José Manuel Villarejo's motivations, but it is difficult to doubt the veracity of his recordings. And they expose both.

Declining to acknowledge the authenticity of the audio recordings and claiming they were manipulated and edited. This has been the joint strategy of former PP deputy leader María Dolores de Cospedal and former PP leader in Catalonia Alícia Sánchez-Camacho to evade the new evidence linking them to Operation Catalunya. This Monday, precisely, The world on RAC1 has published a conversation the former Defense Minister had with former Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo in September 2014, in which they openly discussed the dirty war against the independence movement. "I don't remember talking about Catalonia with Villarejo," Cospedal asserted during her appearance before the Congressional commission of inquiry. Far from shedding light on the maneuvers against leaders of the Process, Sánchez-Camacho attempted to spin the narrative: she presented herself as a "second-class citizen" and a victim of "persecution" that "forced her to leave the territory she loved." "This is the real Operation Catalonia," she criticized.