Now that there is so much interest once again in talking about the patriotic police that were set up under Spain's PP government - but with the reason being, to try to get to the bottom of their role in the matter of the Bárcenas papers - the pro-independence parties should ensure that these things are not done by half measures. As is well known, the PP and the PSOE both agreed to the creation of an illegal police unit that would dismantle the independence process, put its highest leaders in compromising positions and obtain the greatest possible information about their movements, their conversations and their actions. There is not an Operation Catalonia 1, an Operation Catalonia 2 and an Operation Catalonia 3. There is simply an Operation Catalonia, which was extended through time while ministers came and went and even through changes of government.
Without looking any further, this Wednesday, the president of the ANC, Elisenda Paluzie, has revealed that her mobile phone is bugged and blames the secret services of the PSOE-Podemos government. In July, it also transpired that the phone of Catalan parliamentary speaker Roger Torrent had been spied on via the Pegasus program, software which is only available to national governments. But neither the case of Paluzie nor that of Torrent seem important to the Spanish government: the party representative committee in the Congress of Deputies has vetoed a proposed parliamentary motion to create a commission of inquiry into the espionage against pro-independence politicians. An attitude that contrasts with the scandal they have let loose over the intervention of the patriotic police in Operation Kitchen, an issue on which they do understand that it is of the utmost interest to create a commission of inquiry. I am not belittling the importance of taking this action in the case of the PP government's irregularities and the police frame-up to rescue Mariano Rajoy from the Bárcenas papers; it's just that in politics, a position of naivete does not give good counsel.
The PP and the PSOE are much more interested in their own battles aimed at wearing down the rival than they are in denouncing irregular police action or thwarting operations that were launched against certain opponents with the blatantly-declared excuse of saving Spanish unity. Operation Kitchen will run and run, between the courts and the Congress, and nothing should be ruled out as it has only just begun. A report from the Spanish National Police's Internal Affairs Unit reveals that the commissioner in charge of spying on the Bárcenas family to clean up any trace of Rajoy had a massive 71 officers at his command, including police, officers and inspectors to monitor the ex-PP treasurer's wife, their son and even the household helper. They made sure they would never be short of officers in a markedly irregular operation. The new PSOE government has not hesitated - and has done well in this aspect - to make it public and try to pin down former prime minister Rajoy.
When will we see a report like this by the Spanish government after years and years looking for information on the independence movement, inventing stories and divulging false documents to compromise its leaders? It would be a wonderful dossier to place in front of the Spanish prime minister at the meeting of the so-called table for dialogue with the Catalan government which Pedro Sanchez and Quim Torra are now negotiating.