The Spanish interior ministry had assured that the planting of undercover National Police moles into Barcelona social movements - and without judicial authorization - had ceased. But everything seems to indicate that, once again, the Spanish government was being economical with the truth. A journalistic investigation by the digital newspaper La Directa has discovered a new undercover agent. It is not the first that this cooperatively-run publication has managed to unmask. Last summer, it emerged that an officer originally from the Balearic Islands had been able to infiltrate social groups such as the Catalan countries students' union (SEPC) and the Jovent Republicanà - the ERC party's youth division - posing as an activist despite being, in reality, a newly-graduated Spanish police officer. Following the same pattern, and also involving a strange coincidence, it has now become known that a second undercover agent was also able to access the circles of left-wing movements in the Catalan capital to gather information about the members, their movements and their lines of strategy and action.
In the case that was discovered today, the officer involved called himself Daniel Hernández Pons - the same last name as the other mole, also originally from Mallorca - and whose career as a police infiltrator in the Barcelona district of Sant Andreu began in the year 2020. He was 31 years old and applied himself conscientiously to the role; he had tattoos, dyed his hair and was well-educated in the cause, especially in libertarian and anarchist issues. His entry point was the gym of a busy squatter social centre, from where he built a character who gained the trust of other activists, according to La Directa. He began to have a social life and gradually joined groups and became just one more member of the ecosystem of these alternative left groups in the city of Barcelona. He even got to be responsible for the keys to some squatted premises and social centres; according to the investigation, it was thanks to having sexual relations with people from the libertarian environment that he had met through the OkCupid dating application.
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The man who is now believed to be an undercover Spanish police officer - and who has disappeared, claiming that he returned home - was seen in a multitude of events such as the alternative activities attached to the major neighbourhood festivals of Gràcia and Sants and also at activities run by alternative communities like Can Masdeu, Can Batlló, Kasa de la Muntanya, Ateneu l'Harmonia and La Comunal and even, in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, in La Lokomotiva. He was also required to produce his ID by the Mossos police during several anti-eviction actions, where he even received a fine, which he said he didn't pay. When the first undercover agent was discovered last year, his bosses pulled him out of his role and he was no longer to be found in Barcelona, claiming that he had travelled to the south of Spain and then gone abroad. People suspected him, almost from the start, but his apparent commitment, training and tattoos helped him succeed in his mission.
More Spanish undercover agents
As well as last year's unmasking of an officer who successfully infiltrated student and neighbourhood groups, there was another case revealed of attempted recruitment of a mole, which failed and went no further. Now, the discovery of this second agent, and what La Directa describe as the infiltration of police officers posing as false activists to obtain information on social movements and the alternative left in Barcelona, reveal a recurring activity that the Spanish state, and specifically the National Police, have carried out in recent years - and have even claimed is justified. It cannot be ruled out that there are others who have been - or perhaps still are - involved in this type of group who may be following orders from the Spanish National Police's information gathering unit.