Everyone says she’s a scapegoat. Javier Pérez Royo, professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Seville, reacted to the removal from office of the director of the CNI intelligence agency, Paz Esteban by asserting that "the Spanish government has lost control". His point is that the Pegasus espionage scandal "has reached a point where something needs to be done" and the central executive "has decided that the defence minister is untouchable", according to Pérez Royo this Tuesday on the Catalan public television show Tot es mou. "I am very disappointed," said the academic, about Pedro Sánchez's handling of CatalanGate. Not only has Margarita Robles not been touched, but she has even decided who the new director of Spanish intelligence is to be.
On top of all this, Pérez Royo told the programme that any espionage with Pegasus (Esteban herself recognized that the CNI had used it) is a "crime" in itself and that an "international agreement" is needed to ban the sales of the software, "as was done with torture ". "[Using the software] is not a limitation of rights, it's a denial of fundamental rights," he said. He also criticized the alleged judicial authorization: "Unlike other communications interceptions, in this case the judge sets in motion something he does not control." "Judicial authorization is a very weak guarantee. Having authorization does not mean that the judge controls what is being spied on," he added.
Pérez Royo insisted that "we still don't know what happened" and that, therefore, "the first thing to do is put things in order to know what has been done with Pegasus in Spain". "Pegasus was purchased in 2014. And from 2014 to 2019 many things have happened in Spain. We don't know if Pegasus has come into play. We should trace it and see the trajectory of the application in Spain," said the expert. He therefore reiterated the need for a committee of inquiry in the Congress of Deputies to clarify all issues related to the espionage.
The professor's position is similar to that expressed by both the Catalan government and the rest of the independence movement. The spokesperson for the Generalitat, Patrícia Plaja, stated today that the sacrifice of Paz Esteban "does not solve everything" and "does not close the issue" of the espionage. "Anyone who thinks that this is the case is wrong. It is not enough," she warned. In this line, she warned that the Catalan executive is not satisfied with mere gestures such as this dismissal, but that there must be "wise decisions" on the part of the Spanish executive.