Mariano Rajoy’s government put the police leadership of the Ministry of the Interior, led by Jorge Fernández Díaz, at the service of its political maneuvers outside the law, mainly special operations against the independence movement and its political rivals, as well as cover-up and obstruction of investigations into his corruption cases. Here we review the main keys to the so-called Catalunya operation in light of the new revelations offered by a joint investigation by La Vanguardia and Eldiario.es.
The operation was launched in September 2012, just after the first massive Diada in the streets of Barcelona in favor of independence. From then on, the table of the Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, became the landing pad for all kinds of informative notes and dossiers on the matter. What could probably be considered the first written contribution sent to the minister in the information note format of Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo is precisely dated October 18, 2012.
The informative notes were the idea of ??the then number two in the ministry and Fernández Díaz’s trusted man, Francisco Martínez, first as head of his cabinet and since January 2013 as Secretary of State, to formalize the contributions on his investigations that until then the commissioner José Manuel Villarejo had performed orally. From that moment on, the police officer delivered them and registered them at the police headquarters, which in turn sent them to the ministerial person in charge; He also sent copies directly to the minister through Martínez.
In most cases, these were prospective investigations, that is, motivated by the predetermined political objective of discovering irregularities, but without evidence, something prohibited by law. In the vast majority of cases, these investigations did not obtain results in the form of the discovery of illegalities – with the great exception of the secret Andorran accounts of the Pujol family, while the rest have declined one after another.
The new data makes it possible to reconstruct the procedures outside the law and the formal police protocols used by the plot: prospective collection of information on real or suspected independentists, using the means of the police forces; preparation of dossiers with mostly false information and in some cases with confidential data provided by the Ministry of Finance, headed by Cristóbal Montoro. A central element of the operation was Villarejo and his plot, but members of the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF), the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (Citco), and the central operational support unit ( UCAO), of the General Information Commissioner’s Office, the Provincial Information Brigade of Barcelona and the Anti-Frau Agency of Catalonia.
These dossiers became reports that were leaked to the militant press and/or were introduced into judicial cases with irregular methods, in order to stimulate the zeal of judges, prosecutors and far-right groups that filed complaints in court.
The informative notes tried to discredit the PP’s rivals, particularly pro-independence supporters. There were notes about the Palau case and the collection of commissions by CDC, accounts were attributed to convergent leaders (Artur Mas or Xavier Trias) in Switzerland, Liechtenstein or Andorra – among them, the fortune of the Pujol family that the former president attributed to his father’s inheritance. Precisely this triggered the public declaration of the family patriarch. The author of the note informed the official recipients that this information was obtained “in a forced and obligatory manner due to the circumstances, it would have been provided by those responsible for the BPA (Private Banking of Andorra), who, due to the fear of license to practice in Spain as a private bank through the Banca Madrid brand, have chosen to agree to collaborate with the Spanish judicial and/or tax authorities.”
According to sources involved in the events, Minister Fernández Díaz sent a good part of these documents, in sealed envelopes and through his bodyguards, to the president of the government.
Despite the seriousness of the many facts already known and the attempts of the victims of the operation to prosecute it, the Spanish justice system has not considered it necessary to investigate what happened, and politically the affected police agencies have not been purged. However, as a counterpart for the constitution of the Congress Board in August, the PSOE agreed with Junts on an investigation commission on the Catalunya operation with the commitment that requests for appearances will not be vetoed, so appearances in the Lower House of former president Mariano Rajoy at the request of the post-convergents.
