The verdict of the separatists is notorious: Spain is not a full-fledged democracy, but a repressive regime. That is why they want to create their own, more just and democratic, better state in Catalonia. This promise kept the Catalan independence movement alive for a long time. It was doubly attractive: on the one hand for do-gooders who believed in utopia and on the other for power-conscious politicians who propagated it. The hot phase of the Catalonia conflict is now over, and it is becoming apparent that the dialogue with Madrid is probably bearing more fruit than the heated fight against the enemy image of fascist Spain.
But now the old narrative is suddenly threatened with new material. Research by the Citizen Lab, a renowned research institute in Toronto, with which the Southgerman newspaper has already worked together suggest that in recent years at least 65 Catalan politicians, activists and people from their private circle have been spied on, among other things, with the spy software Pegasus, presumably by the Spanish secret service CNI or another state body. There is a suspicion that Spanish citizens were bugged here by the Spanish state. Whether there was a legal basis for this is just as open as the question of who commissioned this action or at least approved it.
The timing of the cyber attacks is particularly explosive: Some of these took place almost three years after the independence referendum, which was classified as unconstitutional and illegal and brought the initiators long prison sentences. It seems understandable that in such a conflict a state should defend itself against anti-constitutional efforts with all the means to which it is legally entitled. But months and years later? Some of the attacks only happened in the summer of 2020, by which time the Catalonia conflict had long since cooled down. At that time, a prime minister was already in power in Madrid who was dependent on the support of Catalan separatists in parliament and had previously given credible assurances that he was interested in dialogue and reconciliation between Madrid and Barcelona.
It’s about restoring broken trust
After the allegations of espionage became known, Pedro Sánchez said the Spanish government had nothing to hide. She also does not allow the quality of democracy to be called into question. But these words must be followed by deeds. The succinct assurance that Spain respects the rights of its citizens is not enough in the face of such outrageous allegations. It is now a question of restoring destroyed trust.
The Pegasus research of the past few months made one thing clear above all: the EU needs a reliable legal basis on which spy software can be used by democratic constitutional states. If these do not exist, fundamental civil rights, which are always also rights to defend against state attacks, threaten to erode.
In this situation, Catalonia’s regional president, Pere Aragonès, is to be credited for not drooling over calls for reparations, but instead demanding factual clarification from the Spanish government. This demand is legitimate. Clarification is imperative if the propagandists of the old image of the enemy are not to gain new support.