They were informally known as Spain's "patriotic police", and they had no problems about loudly asserting the merits of their corrupt and illegal actions. "They've already forgotten that everything we did is paying off," were the words used by the ex-head of the Central Operational Support Unit for the National Police Corps, Enrique García Castaño, in a Whatsapp conversation with the ex-number two of the Spanish interior ministry, Francisco Martínez, about Operation Catalonia, the para-police plot to dismantle the Catalan independence movement. According to leaked conversations seen by the ACN agency in another of Spain's police and political corruption affairs - the so-called Kitchen case - on April 27th, 2017, and by this date with Juan Ignacio Zoido as interior minister - Martínez sent Castaño a voice message saying: "Villarejo is good if he investigates Ignacio González and bad if he investigates the Pujols...This cannot be". Castaño replied: "Look at the overall result: Mas convicted, Homs too, now the Pujols." That is, key Catalan nationalist and pro-independence figures were being prosecuted and he thus concluded: "So what's wrong with any of that?" As well, the conversations deal with the terrorist attacks in Catalonia on 17th August, 2017, the images of which they say "are exceptional" as well as commenting that there could be another attack on October 1st, 2017.
"Everything we did is paying off"
On May 22nd, 2017, coinciding with the leaking of the draft independence process bills on breaking away from Spain, Castaño, who after his dismissal from the police leadership had been assigned to a police station in the south of Madrid, is conclusive: "What a shame, the Catalan government's document is leaked and nothing is happening. They've already forgotten that everything we did is producing results." In the chats between Martínez and Castaño, which span the period between 2015 and 2018, they talk about the use of reports that often ended up being leaked to the media. On March 11th, 2015, Enrique García Castaño, who was then in charge of the Central Operational Support Unit, also informed Martínez that he had "prepared" "a Podemos-Bildu report", for the deputy operational director (DAO), Eugenio Pino - the only one convicted so far for Operation Catalonia, and that the information had been published in the right-wing ABC newspaper. Shortly after saying this, he claimed that a news item in another paper of the Spanish right, La Razón, had put "the collaborator I have" at the Basque left-wing party Bildu in a tight spot because "the details are very precise".
In another case, on August 31st, 2015, Castaño tells the then-number two of the Spanish ministry that they should have a coffee with leading journalist and editor, Pedro J. Ramírez, who "is in favour of giving the Catalans and Podemos a caning." "He needs to come out strongly in October with El Español," he concluded. On October 14th, 2015, Ramirez's new digital daily El Español was launched with the content of the rogatory commission to obtain information from Andorra on the Catalan political family, the Pujols. A day earlier, commissioner Castaño had given himself the credit for this effort: "We took the documents from the rogatory commission to Andorra". The then-number two of Interior replied: "Damn, that's good".
Terror attack on October 1st was expected
By August 2017, Martínez and Castaño had already been relieved of the leadership of the Spanish interior ministry, but they kept in touch. On the 17th, after the attack on La Rambla in Barcelona, they tried to organize a lunch date. Castaño asked for it to be "before October 1st" because he believed that on that date - the date of the Catalan independence referendum - there could be "a March 11th" - in reference to the date of the 2004 terror attacks in Madrid. "I hope those who are telling me this are wrong," he wrote. Martínez asked him about the source: "Americans?" García Castaño replied: "No, m*ros", "they are not usually wrong", he stated. Later, Castaño asserted that he thought that the objective of this 1st October attack would be "Madrid or the south: Rota or Gibraltar", because "Al-Qaeda is looking for what is spectacular".
"They could have been avoided"
Once they received information about the Rambla van attack on 17th August, Castaño commented that the images "are exceptional" and Martínez replied: "Horrible". In the following 48 hours, both speculated about the authorship of Daesh or Al-Qaeda, and ended up criticizing the lack of foresight of the interior ministry, where according to Castaño "no one really investigates", and the operations of the Mossos d'Esquadra. According to Castaño, "if the Mossos had done a serious investigation, the attacks could have been avoided." Martínez raised questions about the same area and about the fact that neither radicalization nor the storage of butane cylinders had been detected. Castaño replied: "We've been talking about it for a long time. There's no investigation, there's no walking the streets." The commissioner maintained that the Mossos killed the terrorists "because they had no other choice". "The death of the last one, as you can see in the pictures, was a botch job. If the explosives belt had been real, it would have taken them with it," he said.
Castaño also explained to Martínez that although the Mossos and the Civil Guard initially took charge of the investigation of the attacks by tracking the rented van and the cell phones, Enrique Barón, who had overall responsibility for the National Police's anti-terrorist fight, "began to complain, and Andreu [National Audience judge Fernando Andreu] gave him a share of the telephone monitoring." Shortly after, the same Castaño explained that the Civil Guard and the Mossos had, "years ago", signed a protocol on cooperation in the fight against terrorism, but the head of the Spanish paramilitary force's General Information Office "did not want to deal with them", that is, with the Catalan force. There was even "a complaint in the Police Court against the General Information Office". As for the role of the president of Catalonia at that time, Carles Puigdemont, Castaño referred to some statements the president had made and called him "a motherfucker and son of a bitch".