Catalonia freezes dialogue with Spain over spying allegations

OVIEDO, Spain

Catalonia froze dialogue with the Spanish government on Tuesday until Madrid investigates allegations of mass espionage against Catalan separatists.

"Trust has been damaged and the state needs to mobilize," Catalan President Pere Aragones after an extraordinary meeting with his government. "Things can't continue on this way."

On Monday, Citizen Lab, a research institution based at the University of Toronto, published research showing that at least 63 Catalan separatists were targeted with Pegasus spyware, mostly between 2017 and 2020.

All Catalan presidents during that timeframe were targets and most had their devices infected in what was the largest known deployment of the spyware to date, with Citizen Lab suggesting that the true number of victims was much higher.

Pegasus spyware allows hackers to read text messages, track calls, collect passwords, extract contacts and gather information from apps such as WhatsApp and Gmail.

The powerful spyware was created by Israeli technology company NSO Group, which says it only sells its products to authorized governments.

Citizen Lab did not directly link the mass espionage of Catalan separatists to the Spanish state, although the report says "circumstantial evidence suggests a strong nexus."

On Monday, Spain's Interior Minister said the government is not a client of NSO Group and denied any wrongdoing. However, Citizen Lab said Spain is "reported" to be a government client of NSO.

"Here, we don't spy. We don't intervene in conversations without the backing of the law," said Territorial Minister Isabel Rodriguez on Tuesday.

In 2017, the Catalan government held an illegal referendum on independence and tried to break away from Spain. Several leaders were charged with crimes including sedition.

Aragones did not detail what the freeze in dialogue would entail and demanded an immediate audience with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez over the alleged spying.

Sanchez has yet to comment on the so-called CatalanGate spy operation.

After the 2017 independence crisis, the Catalan and Spanish governments did not sit down to talk about the political conflict for almost two and a half years.

In 2020, then-Catalan President Quim Torra finally sat down with Sanchez, whose coalition government relied on the support of Catalan separatist parties.

In 2021, Spain's government pardoned nine Catalan activists and politicians who had been sentenced to years behind bars for their role in the crisis.