The appearance of the director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), Paz Esteban, and his later dismissal they had to serve close the controversy over attacks with Pegasus software to the phones of various members of the Government, the Generalitat and the pro-independence parties pending the investigation of the courts. But it has not been that way. We are still mired in Pegasus with continuous controversies between the coalition partners, their allies in Parliament and their respective oppositions. The last thing is that, as could be expected, the explanations given behind closed doors in Congress are made public slowly, in a biased way and at the service of partisan interests that take away the prestige of the institutions. The defense of freedom of information obliges us to defend the publication of as many facts as are relevant to the political debate, but it should not be done in an advantageous way for one or another political formation or its media terminals.
The most radicalized world of independence insists on using this complaint, which implies serious injuries to individual and political rights, for discredit Spanish democracy. And a part of constitutionalism answer back justifying everything without questioning anything. It is evident that among the missions that the State entrusts to the CNI is that of protecting it from those who want to alter its composition without following the legally established paths. Independence as a political idea does not constitute a crime, but the leaders who tried get it unilaterally they are under suspicion, which does not leave them outside the protection of the rule of law. And that is the core of the matter that is above the partisan use that is wanted to be made in one way or another.
Accepted that the CNI can have among its missions the surveillance of the independence movement, the question is under what conditions. Obviously, under judicial protection in the event that it is necessary to intercept communications and that authorization must detail the persons and matters that are the object of investigation. If that is the case for any citizen, the CNI must be even more careful when the spies are political leaders protected by the right of representation whose owners are the citizens. So instead of self-servingly leaking the contents of the secrets commission session, the honorable deputies would do well to ask themselves whether the CNI’s judicial protection mechanisms need to be changed. It does not seem like good practice that the same judge, Pablo Lucas, has been holding that responsibility for 13 years, so that he is more the magistrate of the CNI than the magistrate who controls the CNI. Nor does it seem prudent that, contrary to what happens in police investigations, the prosecutor does not intervene in that authorization, which would strengthen the defense of legality. And it does not seem reasonable either that in the era of transparency it is still considered that citizens are minors and cannot know certain things that deputies can hear to filter at their convenience.
Spain is a full democracy. But for even more citizens to feel this way, it is necessary discuss improvements that can be made, not only in this case that affects the political groups that approve the laws, but in all those in which fundamental rights may be compromised or suspended, of which political representation and the secrecy of communications are two fundamental pillars.