The Canadian research laboratory Citizen Lab, responsible of many detections, analyses and reports of cases occurring worldwide, has confirmed in a report that attacks, infections and hacking were carried out against at least 65 Catalan elected representatives, civil society leaders, activists, lawyers, journalists, high-tech specialists, and their relatives, during five consecutive years (2017-2021). This information has been confirmed by the US weekly magazine The New Yorker story, and by Amnesty International, international NGO that called on EU authorities to act to put and end on Spain’s spyware abuse.

Spain was interested in ascertaining the steps to be taken by the pro-independence movement during and after the 2017 Catalan independence referendum and the crackdown, i.e., how the Catalan pro-independence movement would reorganize, how to prevent it, and what the exiles were planning on doing at the international level, among others.

To date, Spain, Poland and Hungary are the only EU state members known to have conducted political espionage with the Pegasus spyware, with Spain being the country that perpetrated most confirmed attacks, not only in the European Union but also in the world.

The Pegasus Spyware, created by the Israeli cyber intelligence firm NSO Group, is designed to hack computers or mobile devices to gain access to the device and retrieve the data from it without the user’s consent and then deliver it to the third party who is spying on you. However, the parent organization of this Pegasus Spyware claims that it is intended to help government authorities to be used against terrorists and criminals by spying on them.

The Pegasus Spyware attacks the devices so seamlessly that even the device owner might not have any idea about it. Even a WhatsApp missed call can make the Pegasus Spyware hack your device. Once the Pegasus gets into a smartphone, text messages & emails, contacts, photos, passwords, and other files can be accessed by the other party.

In fact, the access is given to such an extent that even your device mic or camera can also be operated by the one who’s spying on you very conveniently. The Pegasus Spyware can even access the end-to-end encrypted messages or files as it can now steal them before the encryption or after the decryption.

The main difference between the #CatalanGate and other Pegasus cases is the number of espionage cases confirmed: 65 hacks, proven by forensic examinations conducted by the research laboratory Citizen Lab; and of course, the fact that these attacks targeted the main actors of a democratic movement, the Catalan pro-independence movement. This is an all-out dirty war that threatens fundamental rights of the Catalan people.

This is a blatant case of political espionage in the heart of Europe. These spyware attacks had a clear political motivation: obtaining private information to know, in advance, every step of the Catalan pro-independence movement in order to weaken this democratic movement. Proof of that is that most of the attacks, infections and hackings took place in pivotal decision-making periods of the movement such as political agreements, presidency investments or strategy.

The Pegasus spyware can only be acquired by states, and a former employee of NSO group confirmed that Spain has been using the Pegasus spyware since 2015. These attacks had to be conducted by CNI (Intelligence National Center) or Law Enforcement (Police or Guardia Civil), so the Home Ministry had to be informed of these actions. Two different Spanish governments are accountable for this espionage scandal, whether they were aware of it or not.

This scandal adds to more than 3000 Catalan pro-independence representatives and activists that have suffered political repression by Spanish authorities since 2017. Nine of them –seven Catalan government members and two civil society leaders– were sentenced to up to 13 years for organizing the 2017 referendum or calling peaceful protests, and spent almost 4 years in prison. These repressive actions constitute a massive breach of human rights of the Catalan people, which during the last years have been denounced by several UN human rights bodies, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and international NGOs such as Amnesty International and the World Organization Against Torture.