The parliamentary uproar in Spain's Congress of Deputies over the consideration of the proposed amnesty law, its voting and its approval last Tuesday overshadowed the approval of three parliamentary commissions, one to investigate the Operation Catalonia campaign against pro-independence leaders, a second on the illegal espionage with Pegasus spyware carried out against the same movement, and a third to try and shed some light on the jihadist attacks that took place in August 2017 in Barcelona and Cambrils. Of the three inquiries, the first was already underway in the previous legislature, although the prevailing political majorities led to the screening out of some appearances, and the snap election ended up canning the whole thing. As for the other two, the independence movement also tried to put them on the agenda, but the congressional Bureau ended up rejecting them.
Although all three are important, there is no doubt that Operation Catalonia will be the first to expose the terrain covered by what was a major operation of the People's Party government and the so-called state sewers - the illicit, dirty arms of the Spanish state - to try to undermine the movement that launched the process aimed at Catalan independence in 2012. It is no coincidence that there is so much talk of lawfare these days and that the different arms of the legal and judicial powers - from the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) to the Supreme Court, the National Audience and the prosecutors - are all fighting tooth and nail, since in Operation Catalonia, clearly illegal investigative processes are mixed with cases of lawfare - that is, judicial procedures used with the intention of political persecution.
For this reason, the fact that senior judges could be called to testify in one of these commissions in Congress has put the judiciary on a war footing and the CGPJ is preparing a report that excuses judges from having to appear when they are summoned. They even claim that the request for them to appear should not even be considered. The CGPJ president, Vicente Guilarte, has jumped ahead of this moment by asserting that we may be on the verge of a brutal clash between the powers of the state. It is true that there are no precedents for the parliamentary review of judicial decisions, but we will see what position the government of Pedro Sánchez adopts, how it manages its parliamentary support, how it fulfills the commitments acquired in its investiture and how it might deal with the information already published and those things that, hypothetically, could be published again.
It is no coincidence that there is so much talk of lawfare these days and that the different legal and judicial powers are fighting tooth and nail
At this moment, we already know that Operation Catalonia involved sufficient ingredients of the deep state that it prioritised what they understood to be the defence of the unity of Spain. That chant of ¡A por ellos! - "go get 'em" - Felipe VI's speech, the police repression, the judicial collusion, the social, political, media and economic environment - it all added up to a free invitation to cross the red lines of a democratic state.
Today, many of those people look back with a certain discomfort, since politics has now made new travelling companions. Thus, some of the print press that endorsed the repression of the independence movement now defend the amnesty law and seem to have forgotten all the damage done. Since July, I have read things that seemed impossible, and I have seen signatures on some texts whose writers must have had to swallow very hard before adding their names.