- Several media outlets have announced their impeachment since last week. The government has taken the decision to close the alarm and the crisis caused by the Pegasus spying case, but it remains to be seen whether it will achieve it, because many questions remain unanswered.
The newspaper El País has given the news. The Spanish Council of Ministers on Tuesday decided to dismiss Paz Esteban, head of the secret services. Esteban has been in office since 2019 and has been the first woman to lead the CNI. Since last week a number of media have considered the cessation to be safe.
The crisis has not closed
When the research center Citizen Lab reported that the phones of 65 people related to independence in Catalonia and Euskal Herria have been spied on with the Pegasus software, a profound political crisis broke out in the state. The government has tried to close the crisis with the impeachment of Esteban, but it seems difficult that it only achieves this measure.
Esteban is dismissed, but not Margarita Robles, Spanish Minister of Defence. Robles is also politically responsible for the CNI, which has added fire to the crisis with its statements, fighting the independentists and justifying espionage. Catalan independence has on several occasions called for the head of Robles and Podemos, which governs in coalition with the PSOE in the Government of Spain. The crisis has also revealed the internal tensions of the PSOE, between the team of President Pedro Sánchez and the supporters of Robles.
On the other hand, most questions arising from the knowledge of espionage remain unanswered. Esteban himself presented last Friday in the official secret committee of Congress the permits granted to the CNI by the Spanish Supreme Court to spy on person 28 or 29 (according to the media). It did not provide information on other cases reported by Lab on Citizen (currently 65, but some media have announced that the association will publish a list of 150 people without delay). He didn't even explain who asked to spy on the independentists. In the midst of the crisis, the Government of Spain announced in a press conference that the pockets of Pedro Sánchez and Margarita Robles have also been stalked with the Pegasus program, which denounced independence as the "smokescreen" to divert attention, and then it has been filtered that Grande Marlaska was the same as the Minister of the Interior. Nor has the government provided any information about those responsible for this espionage.