The Spanish defence minister, Margarita Robles, has said this Thursday that she is convinced that the US-Spanish relationship will not be affected after today's latest developments in an espionage scandal saw two American spies expelled by Madrid for bribing members of Spanish intelligence in order to obtain confidential information.
When asked about this issue during a ministerial visit to the Guadarrama XII Brigade, she affirmed that "when there are issues that could affect the [diplomatic relationship], they are discussed and dealt with" and she defined Spain's commitment to the North American country as "firm". "We are serious, allied and committed countries", she proclaimed.
American spies expelled from Spain
At the start of this week, it became known that two agents from Spain's National Information Centre (CNI) has been bribed to leak classified information to the United States. On the same day, the minister Robles confirmed the existence of this investigation during her visit to the Adazi military base (in Latvia) and indicated that the investigation into the agents arose as a result of work by the CNI itself, which detected a series of "irregular behaviours" that could have been evidence of a crime. That case is currently in the hands of the Madrid courts.
This Thursday it was learned that at least two American agents, assigned to the embassy in Madrid, have been expelled from Spain for having been directly involved in the scandal as recruiters of the CNI employees from whom the leaked information was obtained. The newspaper El Mundo reported on Thursday afternoon that the number of expelled agents had risen to three.
The decision to expel the agents was taken by the Spanish defence ministry, headed by Robles, and Spain's foreign ministry, led by José Manuel Albares. In addition, both Robles and Albares summoned the American ambassador in Madrid, Julissa Reynoso, to demand an explanation of the incident between the two countries and convey to her the discomfort that this interference in the CNI has caused in the government of Pedro Sánchez. This was how El País reported it, and the Spanish daily also stated that the American ambassador assured Robles that she was unaware of the actions and that the agents who carried out the interference acted without her being aware of it, and through a programme launched by the previous US administration, before the arrival of Joe Biden to the presidency. Reynoso also apologized and promised to collaborate in clarifying the facts.