Spying report on Catalan president to be partially declassified

Spain's Council of Ministers has agreed to partially declassify the spying documentation on Catalan president Pere Aragonès, carried out in 2020, when he held the role of vice-president.

The declassification will reveal the arguments of the judge who authorized the spying, but will not include the methods or the documentation of Spain's secret services, the National Intelligence Center (CNI), who carried out the action.

Aragonès was one of dozens of pro-independence figures targeted by phone-hacking spyware Pegasus in a scandal known as 'Catalangate' as first revealed by Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto-based research group that reports on high-tech human rights abuses, and published in the New Yorker magazine in April 2022. 

With the declassification, the Spanish government responds to the request of the Barcelona court investigating the espionage of Aragonès.

Once this is approved, the executive will provide the declassified documents to the judge handling the case, who will decide whether to provide them to the parties involved.

Spokesperson for the Spanish government, Pilar Alegría, made it clear at a press conference on Tuesday that this is a "partial" declassification that the executive approves "for this specific case," in response to the request of the Barcelona judge. 

According to Alegría, it is an example of "maximum collaboration" of the Spanish government with the judiciary.

In December, Aragonès testified as a victim of the Pegasus spyware scandal. 

Outside the court, he told reporters that the Pegasus case must bring to light the "whole truth about espionage."

"We will fight this so that no other Catalan citizen is spied on as a result of their political ideology," he said.

Catalan police confirm Pegasus espionage

The Catalan police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, have confirmed for the first time that the mobile phones of pro-independence leaders were spied on with Pegasus software.

Specifically, after physically analyzing the devices, they detected intrusions with the spyware program on the mobile phones of MP Josep Maria Jové, MEP Diana Riba, and former MEP Sergi Sabrià, all from Esquerra Republicana, the party of Catalan president Pere Aragonès.

The scientific police unit of the Mossos have already delivered their report to the court investigating the case.