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It seems that the security forces of the Spanish state have been knocking on a lot of doors in order to obtain informers within the Catalan independence movement. The case that came to light a few weeks ago, of an undercover Spanish National Police officer who maintained a false identity for two years and was active in several groups in the pro-independence left, had already shown the interest of the security forces in obtaining information from these spaces. Now, the magazine Directa and the newspaper Ara have revealed a new case of an attempt to recruit an informer in pro-independence circles. Enric Pérez is a 24-year-old man who has twice taken the entry tests to train as a police officer for the Mossos d'Esquadra. On March 28th this year, he received a call that would be the beginning of an attempt to recruit him. Two alleged agents of Spain's National Security department, a unit which depends on the prime minister's ministry within the Spanish government. These two men asked him to rejoin the Jovent Republicà, the youth group of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) in order to investigate the activity of Batec, another group of young pro-independence activists.

“We work in the National Security department and our job is to find collaborators, people who can lend us a hand on a variety of topics,” said one of the men who identified himself as Juan. Enric Pérez recorded part of the meetings and has shared some of the dialogue with the two media. "In Catalonia, of course, we focus on the independence movement and other things," Juan himself told Pérez. The other man went by the name of Alfredo and between the two they tried to convince the young would-be police officer to work with them. In fact, Pérez's career ambitions were put on the table by Alfredo whose message to him was full of insinuations: "We, with the people who help us, in the future, okay? In the future and after getting to know each other well, then yes, assistance can be given, it is given."

According to Directa, Enric's case is not the only one, but it is one of the best documented. The two men who identified themselves as officers tried to convince the young man to re-establish his contacts within the independence movement in order to inform the police, but instead, Pérez contacted the two media.

An "interesting" profile

"Anyone who goes through a selection process for a security body enters our database. From there we have people who are especially dedicated to looking for profiles that could be interesting," Alfredo explained to Pérez. “This is the wonderful world of big data,” added Juan. Pérez's profile was considered interesting, due to the fact that in 2018 he had joined the ERC youth wing, and although he later left the organization, as he himself narrated it, he did not leave due to any difference with them. Given this fact, the two men asked him if he could get back in touch with his former companions.

Although Pérez's profile could be found using big data, the two alleged agents met to establish whether they could trust Pérez. To that end, they sounde him out on matters like what he thought of exiled Catalan president Carles Puigdemont. “The day that he returns, he'll have to go through the same thing as the others went through,” Juan assured. After the first face-to-face meetings, the rest of the communications between the young man and the alleged agents were made via the Telegram messaging application. Alfredo encouraged Pérez to gradually return to his relationship with those who had been his fellow group members and asked him for information about Batec, especially after protests organized by this group in May.

Both groups have made complaints about this attempt to infiltrate their ranks, although they are not entirely surprised. "The fact that the Spanish state wants to spy on us does not surprise us, but it is still extremely serious. Batec is an organized network that has clear, majority and common sense demands, and if they are seeking to spy on us, that's the reason why", a spokesperson for the group told Directa. And Kènia Domènech, of Jovent Republicà, told the Ara newspaper: "We suspected, and now it is confirmed, that the [mechanism of] state repression has the will to control and pursue us."