There is no one to delete the stain from the Catalonia operation | Opinion

When the 2017 Catalan crisis occurred, Spanish democracy showed no face. That was a kind of resistance proof for our political system, and I believe that We do not go well stopped. I am aware that this vision of what was then happened is not very popular and there are people who solivantly, who feel their patriotic pride injured. In 2018, I published an essay on this matter, National confusiondefending the thesis that our democratic system was not up to what could be demanded; It will not surprise if I say that the reception was between cold and hostile.

In my opinion, there was in 2017 a systemic ruling that affected the government, justice, security forces and the media. In addition, an important part of public opinion had an intolerant and exclusive reaction. The thesis was imposed that the independence leaders were giving a coup d’etat and that the only thing that could be done to something like that was to apply criminal solutions. Instead of promoting dialogue and negotiation in search of a constitutional rank agreement in which all parties could feel comfortable with their respective territorial and national identities, he went to confrontation and imposition. The others, the independentistas, also did not play their democratic letters and They embarked on unilateralism unjustifiable, Without popular legitimacy, although, being inferior to the State, they took the worst part: their leaders They ended in jail with long convictions.

Fortunately, all this has been corrected. With the leftist government there have been important steps to redirect the situation. The Executive has had to defeat very strong resistance, but has pardoned the convicted, has modified the regulation of the crime of sedition and has approved an amnesty law (which the Supreme Court, in an act of institutional chulería, has decided not to apply, severely contravening the division of powers). Thanks to the change in government orientation, the situation in Catalonia is completely different from the year of the altoges of the Proces. You will have to congratulate yourself for it.

However, there is a very ugly matter of that period that does not just resolved. I mean the Catalonia operation. Beyond the trial that each one can have on how the Catalan crisis was politically managed, there is a matter of fact that cannot be ignored: in the midst of the conflict, a clandestine operation was carried out to end political rivals, starring high positions of the government of Mariano Rajoy, Popular Party leaders, journalists, security forces, intelligence services and gangster characters as Commissioner Villarejo. That plot constitutes a huge blur in our democracy. Has had other derivatives (there is he Pisa report, against Podemos, or he Kitchen case, in which the PP, using reserved funds, tried to destroy the evidence of their illegal financing that were held by former Luis Bárcenas).

Using false reports that leaked to the media, the participants in the Catalonia operation made scandals aimed at undermining the reputation of Catalan politicians and businessmen. To do this, they needed the collusion of police and journalists. Many of these false scandals were designed in the Ministry of Interior led by Jorge Fernández Díaz. The then general secretary of the Popular Party, María Dolores de Cospedal, also had an essential role in several of the operations carried out. There were also coercion and threats (for example, in the operation against the Andorran bank).

Of all this there is abundant documentation: handwritten notes, recorded conversations, subsequent statements, and so on. Recently, new audios have come out that show how far the Popular Party strategy came. In a conversation between Cospedal and Villarejo, the latter was driving, thanks to his criminal actions, to reduce the number of CiU deputies of 62 in the autonomous elections from 2010 to 50 in those of 2012. Obviously, there is a part of fanfarronería in the achievements that Villarejo is attributed to his partner, but the fact that they will speak in those terms reveals the scope of the plot. Not only did he harm concrete politicians, but also seriously interfere in the democratic process.

However unfortunate it is, it is not a great surprise that neither the Popular Party as a political party, nor Mariano Rajoy as former president of the Government and former president of the party, nor the politicians involved in the operation have ever admitted the existence of this dirty game. So far, they have refused to recognize anything. A few weeks ago, We saw Cospedal in the Investigation Commission In the Congress on the Catalonia Operation, to declare, with a cynical smile, that he did not recognize his voice in the new recordings of Villarejo. The same happened in the appearance of Alicia Sánchez-Camacho: not a glimpse of explanation or apology; On the contrary, he appeared as a victim of independence. Sánchez-Camacho starred in some of the first episodes of the plot. Politically achicharrada in Catalonia, the PP, for greater resort, included it in the national lists and appointed it first secretary of the Congress in 2016. At present, it has been welcomed by Isabel Díaz Ayuso and is a deputy in the Assembly of Madrid.

We are well used to this political impunity. What is already more shocking is judicial impunity. While some judges do not save efforts or time to reveal the Crimes committed by Begoña Gómezor in pursueing the State Attorney General with an admirable zeal for the filtration of an email that leaves the couple of Díaz Ayuso in poor place, thus achieving and exciting the media on the right, the Catalonia operation goes through various courts without aroused the interest of our judges. This double measure of measuring is scandalous and has no easy explanation. That for more than a decade the Operation Catalonia has not deserved the attention of the judges can only be explained under the assumption that The justice system is at the service of a certain conception of Spain and not of the impartial application of the law. Some judges seem to think that the independentistas did so much damage to the homeland that it is justified to look the other way when the complaints of illegal operations of the State arrive.

To definitely overcome the 2017 autumn crisis, it is necessary to debug responsibilities. We cannot be shielded that an idea of ​​Spain was in danger. Operation Catalonia was wrong, you look at how you look, and it is a reason for shame as a country. In a democracy it cannot be admitted that a government and a political party are involved in dirty game plots in which funds reserved illegally are used, information is invented and politicians and businessmen are coerced. If justice sentenced an interior minister prison Already a Secretary of State for Security for his involvement in the dirty war against terrorism in the 1990s, there is no sense that something like Operation Catalonia is unpunished. Unless the difference is that those were members of a socialist government, while these were from a government of the Popular Party.