Catalan unlawfully investigated by former government – leak

Members of the former government of Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy (PP/EPP) used the national police to illegally investigate the political activities of several leaders of Catalan separatist forces for at least five years, using public funds, the newspapers La Vanguardia and Eldiario.es revealed on Monday.

Both media gained access to a series of “confidential” documents sent from 2012 onwards by various police units to then interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz (PP/EPP), and, according to the sources quoted by the two media, also sent those classified document to Rajoy, ElDiario.es reported.

Fernández Díaz, who has always denied having had access to such “X files” of the so-called ‘Operation Catalonia’, centralised the information and directed police operations against members of the Catalan separatist movement from 2012 onwards.

The activities of “state espionage” or “dirty war” against some Catalan separatist politicians, as defined by ElDiario.es, were carried out at least between 2012 and 2016.

The investigation points to the important role in the operation of the director of the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia, Daniel de Alfonso, who – according to both media – collected information on the separatists and drafted reports that often contained false information, sometimes generated from confidential data provided by the finance ministry which at the time was headed by Cristóbal Montoro (PP).

These reports were often leaked to the press and were even used to open legal cases against separatist leaders, La Vanguardia reported.

The confidential information circulated through various ministries of the (then PP) government and – according to the two newspapers – Fernández Díaz had police escorts hand-deliver to the prime minister at the executive’s seat at the Moncloa Palace on the outskirts of Madrid.

In September 2012, after the celebration of the first National Day of Catalonia, Fernández Díaz’s office received abundant documentation affecting members of the now-defunct pro-independence party Convergència Democrática.

The information included the controversial cases of the attribution to former Catalan separatist president Artur Mas of bank accounts in Liechtenstein, the investigation of bank accounts in Andorra of the family of former Catalan president Jordi Pujol and the case of the false report on the accounts of the former separatist mayor of Barcelona Xavier Trias in Switzerland, both media outlets reported.

Catalonia’s independence, the “only way” forward

In an interview aired on Monday by the Spanish public radio (RNE), the country’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D), stressed that his government has never used “levers of the state” such as the police with “partisan interests” and called what the PP-government did “regrettable and shameful”.

The separatist Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) party in the government of Catalonia on Monday called on Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska (PSOE/S&D) to appear in parliament and explain what measures he intends to take against those allegedly responsible for this case at the top of the police and his ministry.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)