Of all the moves that the public prosecutors could make in response to the range of information published these last two weeks on the participation of the Spanish government's interior ministry in Operation Catalonia - which, as ElNacional.cat readers well know, has included previously-unpublished information - the most limited action that it could take is the opening of an investigation of the material suggesting that the patriotic police's anti-independentism campaign included the senior Catalonia prosecutor, Martín Rodríguez Sol. This is so clear that one can easy be led to the view that the prosecutors' interest lies above all in the fact that the interior ministry tried to investigate one of their own.
Even if this is the case, we must trust that, once inside the case, the prosecutors will seek to go beyond the case of Martín Rodríguez Sol and try to clarify all the other cases that have emerged, as well as the key to the whole issue: what was the role of the interior ministry and how was all this material conveyed to the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy? The new papers from Operation Catalonia shine a spotlight on ways of doing things that are absolutely unacceptable in a democratic system and leave no doubt that the political operation against the Catalan independence movement was not the work of a few police officers acting on their own initiative and at their own risk. They had the operational cover of the interior ministry at the highest level and the knowledge that Rajoy himself was fully aware of all the illegal activities that were being carried out.
For those who do not know, it is important to remember that the senior prosecutor in Catalonia, Rodríguez Sol was removed from his position in 2013, after taking a position in favour of the possibility of the Catalans deciding on their future. He did not speak out in favour of independence, to which he was opposed, but what he did do was enough for the chief Spanish prosecutor Torres-Dulce to bring a case for his removal. Nor did Madrid like it when he opened proceedings against the newspaper El Mundo for the publication of false information against Artur Mas and Jordi Pujol, a suit which ultimately did not succeed. As much as they tried to present him as a collaborator with the independence movement, if he stood out for something, it was because of his moderate and competent profile. With this background, it can be understood that he had presided, between the years 2000 and 2004, over the conservative Association of Prosecutors.
We must trust that the prosecutors will seek to go further and try to clarify what the role of the Spanish interior ministry was, and how all this material was conveyed to the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy
While the public prosecutors at the Catalan High Court (TSJC) open this path - and we can but wait and see how far it goes - another prosecutors' office, in this case that of the Supreme Court, will have to answer the Madrid court's question about whether it should investigate the president in exile Carles Puigdemont for terrorism in the Tsunami case. The question is of interest, since the National Audience judge Manuel García-Castellón has considered that, indeed, it should, while that court's prosecutors have come out against it and already presented a strong report against the decision of the judge, arguing that the facts gathered in the investigation do not fit the crime of terrorism either for Puigdemont, or for the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira. There should be a common position between the two prosecutors' offices, but we'll have to wait and see. At the National Audience and the Supreme Court, we already have enough experience not to take anything for granted.