He former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo He boasted this Monday, in an interview with Jordi Basté on Rac-1, that he reported in October 2017 “where the ballot boxes could be.” [del referéndum del 1-10-2017] “but they ignored it,” in reference to the National Intelligence Center (CNI). The apparent news, without evidence, indications or any type of support, comes face to face with reality.
Neither the CNI knew of the existence of the ballot boxes, nor the most relevant thing, Villarejo He lacked any type of relationship with the National Police or the CNI since at that time he was a pest who dedicated his energies to finding out where the shots were going in a criminal complaint that was being prepared against him. A complaint was filed on November 2, 2017 in the National Court’s duty court, which led to Villarejo’s arrest a day later, on November 3, by order of prosecutors. Ignacio Stampa and Michael Serrano, members of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, sent directly to the National Police without going through the court, and executed by the Internal Affairs Unit (UAI). Therefore, Villarejo was offside.
His other response was that CNI “he knew at all times” where those ballot boxes were. “I sent reports where they could be, but they ignored them.” Villarejo immediately added: “They knew where the ballot boxes were. Absolutely.” They were?
All this seasoned with arguments that “the CNI was looking for a controlled blast” and “the ineffectiveness of Sanz Roldan [director del CNI], [la vicepresidenta] Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, and an alleged “paripé”. Villarejo accuses one of his betes noires of the repression, Commissioner Florentino Villabona, deputy operational director of the Police at that time.
Villarejo had persuaded María Dolores de CospedalMinister of Defense and Secretary General of the Popular Party that the man for that position was her friend the commissioner José Luis Oli Oliverabut Cospedal was unable to place it.
Villabona testified in the first trial of the ‘Tándem case’ in which Villarejo has been sentenced to 19 years in prison. It was April 22, 2022. “Villarejo never, ever participated in the operation of the information and intelligence services of 1-O.” Villabona, who went to Barcelona on October 1, added: “I was responsible for the National Police Corps and I assume all responsibility for October 1 in terms of operational services.”
The inability and incompetence of the Spanish intelligence service to track and know if there would be ballot boxes to hold the referendum has been one of the great mysteries of the actions of the Government of Mariano Rajoy.
Recognition of errors in a Council of Ministers
The then Minister of Justice, Rafael Catalatold me in a conversation for my book ‘Catalunya Year Zero’ (Editorial Espasa, 2019) that his intervention in the Council of Ministers after 1-O highlighted this issue: “We must assume that things have been done wrong. We said that there were not going to be ballot boxes. And there were ballot boxes. We assured that the referendum was not going to be held. And it has been held. We said that in any case there would not be a security problem. And the intervention of the Civil Guard and the National Police and the Clashes with voters have gone around the world. We said that we were going to dominate the story. And the story has been controlled by the independentists. It has been done very badly. And we must accept it.”
To understand the matter more precisely, it was necessary to speak with the personality in charge of the entire 1-O operation from the Ministry of the Interior, a man who had traveled to Catalonia in the days before to monitor the latest movements.
Here is the version that he offered me – I think the only time he has spoken without restrictions – for my book ‘Cap de turc’ (Editorial Ara, 2020) about the greatest Josep Lluis Traperoon April 25, 2020, Secretary of State for Security José Antonio Nieto: “The control of the ballot boxes was a matter that was assigned to the National Intelligence Center (CNI). It is still not clear today. It seems that they were manufactured in China and the distribution was carried out by sending small batches of boxes on one side and lids on the other. Logistics platforms today allow transportation not to be done in a certain number of trucks as in other times. I have not yet managed to Can someone give me a clear explanation of what happened with the ballot boxes. The version that I have heard and that seems most credible to me is that thousands of volunteers with simple instructions received the boxes by mail at their homes and left the lids with their neighbor. And the link of Cultural Omnium receives instructions to take them on that day to that place. It’s not that complex. How many shipments does Amazon make in a day. And it could be distributed over months. Or weeks.”
Villarejo has boasted, according to the audios with some of his interlocutors, about the success of one of the operations that years later would be baptized as Operation Catalunya: the apocryphal draft of the UDEF (Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit) of November 2012. That draft mentioned non-existent accounts of Jordi Pujol i Soley in Switzerland and the then president Artur Mas in Liechtenstein. On November 16, nine days before the regional elections brought forward by President Mas to November 25, 2012, Villarejo ordered the firing of what he called his Bertha cannon, a German siege howitzer, that is, the front page of the newspaper directed by Pedro J. Ramírez, ‘The World’.
On August 22, 2014, in an office meeting that Villarejo held with the number two of the Ministry of the Interior, Secretary of State Francisco Martínez, he recalled the history of the draft. “What bothers me is that everyone is scoring the goal,” says Villarejo. “Everyone,” says Martínez.
“I’m hallucinating. Fortunately, you and I have memories and we know how it all came about… In the middle of the month, two friends from the CNI came to my house in Malaga who said they were there. I’m so envious… Paco, you were responsible for it changing Spain. That was the beginning of the end for them,” recalls the then commissioner. “One day you have to invite me to your house, but to have a whiskey,” Martínez jokes. “We had a bad time then,” Villarejo laments. “Don’t tell me,” Martínez agrees.
Villarejo has considered it a success of his ‘know how’ to such an extent that in his conversations with potential clients of his conglomerate Cenyt, located at that time in the Torre Picasso in Madrid, he presents the operation as one of his feats.
In one of the audios that I contribute in my book ‘Operation Checkmate. How they ended up with the prosecutor in the Villarejo case’ (Editorial Bruguera, June 2023) that evidence jumps out. It is a working lunch between Villarejo, his friend and work partner, Adrian de la Joya and the lawyer Manuel Medinaformer member of the National Police Corps and alma mater of one of the great influential law firms in Madrid, Medina Cuadros Abogados.
It was on November 5, 2014, on the occasion of proposing to Medina to form a ‘joint venture’ – a shared risk association – to hunt down debtors with assets hidden in tax havens when the still active commissioner explained:
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“The design of the famous eraser [el de la UDEF] What we did in Catalonia cost us six months of work and I directly sent it to the top because of course I was trying to save the issue of Catalonia. Remember the one who messed up with the elections [25 de noviembre de 2012]. What if the draft, who wrote it. There was, as always, some idiots, Villarejo, mmm, there is always a fool, but, well, fortunately, except for some half-Catalan. It’s what you have to do: not exist.” Medina nodded: “Not exist.”
Now in his new appearance, it turns out that Villarejo suggests that he only dealt with Pujol. Faced with a Mas vis a vis, the former commissioner, who called him “president” at all times, even made himself “at his disposal” when his victim left the studio.