Former president Torra to file a complaint against Spanish PM after Catalangate

The former Catalan president, Quim Torra, has announced that will file a complaint against Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez after being allegedly spied on with Pegasus spyware. Torra is one of the over 60 Catalan pro-independence figures who have been found to be victims of the Catalangate espionage controversy. 

Torra’s device was allegedly hacked eight times, leading him to denounce Pedro Sánchez arguing that the Spanish Prime Minister is the "highest representative and responsible of the State intelligence agencies." He is joined by former parliament vice president Josep Costa, whose phone is believed to have been infected with spyware four times in 2019.

The revelations of phone hackings with the Pegasus spyware came from a report published by Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto-based research group, and the New Yorker magazine. At the time of the infections, Torra was serving as the Catalan president. 

Both victims have also requested the Spanish government and the Spanish PM for their fundamental rights to be preserved as they have been "victims of an illegal espionage."

Torra is not the only Catalan president victim of Pegasus spyware, a software developed by Israel’s NSO Group company. Since 2010, all phones from Catalonia’s presidents have been infected with spyware, as the Citizen Lab report found.

On Monday the Spanish government announced that Sánchez himself, as well as Spain’s defense minister Margarita Robles, had their devices hacked also. Félix Bolaños, the Spanish presidency minister, explained that these hackings lacked "judicial authorization" and are "not related to [Spanish] state administrations," and therefore he concluded that the espionage was “external.”

Many figures on the pro-independence side of Catalan politics doubted the veracity of the Spanish government’s account, with government spokesperson Patrícia Plaja affirming that the Spanish government was the "only responsible" party behind the alleged acts. 

Torra’s removal from office

In 2020, Quim Torra was found guilty of disobedience for not removing signs and symbols deemed partisan from public buildings during an election period. Part of his sentence was a disqualification from holding public office. 

After his appeals were rejected, he was removed as president of Catalonia in September 2020.

Catalan government to legally back victims

The Catalan government announced on Tuesday morning that it will get involved in any judicial case stemming from Catalangate as a private prosecutor, thus backing those allegedly spied on.

"This is an international-scale scandal that is making the basic pillars of Spanish democracy collapse," said spokesperson Patrícia Plaja.

After the weekly cabinet meeting, she insisted there should be resignations within Spanish state bodies, an inquiry committee launched, and the "Franco-era" official secrets law reviewed.

"The Spanish government has to make sensible decisions, since a full working democracy is enforced, not only declared."

No inquiry committee to investigate espionage

Yet, Spain’s presidency minister has rejected the idea of creating an inquiry committee in the Spanish congress to investigate the alleged espionage of figures involved in the pro-independence movement and various officials in the Spanish government. 

Felix Bolaños argues that creating such a commission would not provide any relevant information or be of any use. "It would make no sense, because people who know something could not speak under the law of secrets and the law of the intelligence agency, so only those who do not know would speak." 

He added, therefore, that "the body that must investigate and is the official secrets commission."

Bolaños also explained in comments to Spanish news outlet Ser that the phones of other members of the Spanish government are currently being checked whether they’ve been infected with Pegasus spyware, and stated that the executive discovered the hacking of Sánchez and Robles' telephones as a result of the "concern" that arose in the wake of The New Yorker’s initial report.

In any case, he has called for no "assumptions" about the perpetrators of espionage or the publication of "unconfirmed information." Bolaños insisted the attacks were "external," as he argued on Monday morning after revealing that Spanish officials’ devices were also hacked.  

The Spanish minister said that the government does not know who is behind the espionage, but "we know for sure" that "it was not an institution of the state."

ERC: espionage could damage legislature

Spokesperson for Esquerra Republicana in the Spanish Congress, Gabriel Rufián, has warned the Socialists that the espionage controversy could damage the current legislature. 

The current Spanish government, led by the Socialists and in coalition with Podemos, were facilitated into office by pro-independence ERC. Rufián believes that the Spanish executive "is not properly assessing the magnitude" of the Catalangate espionage issue. 

In a press conference on Tuesday, Rufián defended that "it is not normal" for an administration to recognize the espionage of "two people who should be protected," but at the same time that the Socialists vote against an inquiry committee in congress. 

"I think they are not aware of the consequences of this vote. Whoever thinks this will be covered up and the legislature cannot be burdened is not properly assessing the magnitude of what we have in front of us," he said.