Spain declassifies information on August 2017 terrorist attacks

Spanish government declassified information from the defense and the interior ministries related to the August 2017 terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.

The documents include all the information regarding the attacks and their authors, including the visits of Spain's national intelligence agency (CNI) to Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty, the operation's mastermind, in prison.

Among the other declassified documents are videos of testimonies, tests performed in Es Satty's van in Sant Carles de la Ràpita, and many other files.

PM Pedro Sánchez and former PM Mariano Rajoy's cabinets have consistently ruled out any relationship between the CNI and Es Satty. There was "no relationship, nor as an informant nor collaborator for Spain's national police nor Guàrdia Civil," José Antonio Nieto, former security secretary, said.

The cabinet decision comes a year after a deal between the Socialists and pro-independence Junts agreed on the declassification to see Socialist Francina Armengol elected Congress speaker.

Meeting Carles Puigdemont

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in a press conference after the last cabinet meeting of the year on Monday that the cabinet he leads is "following" all the agreements reached with its different Congress partners.

"I do not have any problem" with meeting up with former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, former vice-president, and Esquerra Republicana leader Oriol Junqueras, Sánchez said.

"Catalans and Spaniards are leaving 2017 behind," he said about the peak of the independence push seen in 2017 with the referendum on October 1 of that year.

Puigdemont is currently based in Belgium after leaving Catalonia in 2017 and briefly returning in August this year. He is pending an amnesty law, which is already in place, although the Constitutional Court still needs to rule on its legality.

Sánchez's statement follows a similar position to Catalan president Salvador Illa, also a Socialist, who is open to meeting with Puigdemont.