At the point we have reached, there is little doubt that Operation Catalonia was basically a Spanish state operation launched in 2012 to put an end to the then-incipient Catalan independence process. Based in the interior ministry and simultaneously making use of the political apparatus and the 'sewers of the state', it included illegal investigations, the construction of false evidence, the use of journalists who were in on the plan and, as a result, one of the consequences was that electoral results were manipulated. The fact that the evidential fishing expedition went far beyond the strictly political ranks and penetrated into different sections of Catalan society - from Futbol Club Barcelona to the La Caixa bank - demonstrates at least two things: the panic that there was at that time caused by a movement that was politically transversal, highly cohesive socially and with an extraordinary territorial capillarity; and secondly, the impunity of the state - which moved, as we know today, on the precept that against the independence process everything was valid, whether legal or illegal.
This Monday, former Catalan minister of economy Jaume Giró has entered this fray with a new complaint in the Madrid courts. It is a complaint against the former interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, his former number two in the ministry Francisco Martínez, the former defence ministry and former People's Party (PP) secretary general María Dolores de Cospedal and the retired Spanish police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo. The charges are for the crimes of disclosure of secrets, misuse of public funds and belonging to a criminal organization and group. We will see if in the next few days the former president of Catalonia Artur Mas also issues a complaint against the patriotic police. Finally, something is happening that was inevitable, a trickle of judicial initiatives by all the people who were illegally investigated and who the perpetrators tried to ruin, either politically or financially.
More than ten years have passed since the start of the darkest operation launched by the state against a legal and democratic political option. Nothing like this has happened since the beginning of the so-called Spanish Transition and we do not know, and it will be difficult to ever find out, where the leadership of Operation Catalonia was located. It is clear who the executing arms were, and that they sat at the Spanish cabinet table, but who was part of it at the highest level? What information did they have? To what extent did the PSOE of that time know about it and received informed on it from the interior minister? If there was a Mr X, was it Mariano Rajoy or did it go even higher? What was the role of the judiciary?
The way that Pedro Sánchez's government has tried to put a lid on that era of the People's Party - in fact, the congressional committee on the operation is languishing, without any signs of having a will to be genuinely effective - suggests that there were more agreements made than we are aware of. Afterwards, the Socialists pretended that none of this was anything to do with them, but they have since erected a wall that favours the impunity of those who were behind it, conspiring against the rule of law. How can it be that this has ended up being an issue for the Catalans, while, on the other hand, there is no special concern in Spain because Operation Catalonia was brought to fruition? Is it just that, beyond the Ebro, anything goes when the issue is the unity of Spain?
The Spanish state would not be weaker if it apportioned responsibilities. Today, that era can no longer be hidden under the mats in the official chambers. Because every time it seems that the issue disappears from the front pages, it returns soon after with more force and with new revelations. And so it will go until we get to the truth. Time will go by, we don't know how much, but I have no doubt that the whole truth will out. And that those responsible will pay the consequences.