The refusal by Mariano Rajoy's government to let the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) join Europol continues to make waves internationally, as does the hiding of key information about the Ripoll imam, among others, from them.
This time, it's the European thinktank Eurointelligence dedicated to analysing the Eurozone that has warned the Spanish government that, in the same way that the Interior Ministry designated the Basque police as a competent authority of Europol in June, they need to do the same with the Mossos and the regional police of Navarre.
It is clear to Eurointelligence that "the recent terrorist attacks in Barcelona have intensified the internal political tensions around the political organisation of Spain" and they lamented in their statement that this "would be just a domestic political problem if it weren't that Spain's political dysfunction affects European cooperation".
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According to this thinktank, the Spanish authorities prefer to be the intermediary for all communications between Europol and the different regional police forces, except the Basque one, which they note as being "like a quid pro quo to pass Rajoy's budget". They say that otherwise "the regional police forces would appear too sovereign for the comfort of the Spanish nationalists".
All this has meant that "the Catalan authorities feel aggravated for the differential treatment" when, it should be said, "that Spain designated in 2014 the Civil Guard in the Department of Defence doesn't mean that any type of information stopped flowing to the National Police", which depends on the Ministry of the Interior.
Precisely because of that, Eurointelligence reminded Rajoy and his supporters that "Europol allows the member-states to designate the powers of regional police forces", in the same way that "it has to send a copy to the National Police of any type of communication with another competent authority within the member state".