Esquerra Republicana, Junts per Catalunya, the CUP, Òmnium and the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), that is, the independence movement in full, have accused the Spanish authorities and parties this Thursday of trying to obstruct the mission of the European Parliament investigating the Pegasus cyber espionage case. A delegation from the European Parliament plans to travel to Spain on March 20 and 21 and will find that the first day is a holiday in Madrid and the second day the Congress of Deputies will be monopolized by Vox’s motion of no confidence. The Lower House has already informed the mission that it will not receive the MEPs, including four Spaniards from the PP, the PSOE, ERC and Vox
In a letter addressed to the president of the commission of inquiry in charge of examining the use of Pegasus and other equivalent programs, Jeroen Lenaers, and to the rapporteur, Sophie In’T Veld, the pro-independence actors show their “deep concern” about the “apparent efforts ” of the Spanish authorities to “obstruct the progress of the mission”.
The political formations and the sovereignist entities have also recalled that all the Spanish parties that participate in the committee (PP, PSOE, Cs and Vox) have continuously reiterated and rejected the celebration of the EP mission in Spain and are, in their opinion, trying to “eliminate proven facts”, such as the so-called Catalangate from the report by introducing a large number of amendments to the project and adding inaccurate elements of disinformation in order to prevent the committee from fulfilling its duty.
These organizations also reproach the Spanish authorities for not notifying the European Parliament that March 20 was a holiday in Madrid until a week before the visit and for “blocking the plural participation of the victims of the Catalangate”, preventing a broad representation of this. They also disgrace the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet, who scheduled Vox’s motion of no confidence six days before the mission, when the committee had required her to meet with a delegation from the Spanish Parliament.
Junts, ERC, the CUP, Òmnium and the ANC regret not having “solid information” regarding the schedule of the mission and that these are apparently limited mainly to the Ombudsman and the CNI, which already stated at the Committee hearing that it cannot reveal Any information.
The one who has announced that he will meet with the mission in Madrid is the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, at a press conference in the Uruguayan Parliament, during his visit to Montevideo as part of his tour of Latin America. “Whether in Madrid or Brussels, I will go to denounce the situation of espionage that we have suffered due to our political activism and institutional position, people like myself. I will always go wherever and whenever necessary to denounce this political espionage,” said the Catalan president.
The spokesperson and deputy general secretary of ERC, Marta Vilalta, has lamented the “boycott and blockade of the Spanish institutions” to the mission while the CUP in a statement has accused the Government and Congress of boycotting the commission “using as an excuse” the calendar. Vilalta has criticized that they are trying “to prevent meetings from being held” with the mission instead of helping to clarify the facts of Pegasus, software with which some 65 people linked to the independence movement were allegedly spied on, according to the Canadian center The Citizen Lab.
For its part, the CUP has maintained that Congress has set the motion of censure on March 20 so as not to schedule work meetings that day, which it sees as “a lack of respect for the European Parliament.” In addition, and as detailed by the party, the CUP deputies in Congress, Mireia Vehí and Albert Botran, did not receive “any official notification” about the visit of this mission from the Eurochamber. Botran and Vehí have offered to receive the mission as deputies of the Congress before the “official boycott” that the institution considers to be carrying out the European mission.
