Villarejo to the head of the Catalan PP: “This battle we’re undertaking is to prevent these [independentist] people from attaining an absolute majority.”

The flash drive that former PSOE member Leire Díez handed to her party, which then forwarded it to the Attorney General’s Office, contains a recording from 2012 in which Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo details to Alicia Sánchez Camacho, then president of the Catalan PP, the plans to disseminate fake police reports with false accusations against Catalan independence leaders. “This war we are going to make,” Villarejo tells the Catalan popular leader, “is so these guys [CiU independence supporters] don’t achieve an absolute majority.”

The content of that meeting, recorded by Villarejo, confirms the initiation of the so-called Operation Catalonia, through which the Interior Ministry attempted to discredit Catalan independence leaders by spreading fabricated and often false news through specific media outlets, always the same ones. This recording is also part of the documentation provided by Marcelino Martín Blas, former Chief Commissioner of Internal Affairs, to report the illegal maneuvers of the patriotic police against Catalan independence movements in the Congressional investigation commission.

The meeting recorded by Villarejo took place on November 6, 2012, just 19 days before the regional elections called by Artur Mas’s government (CiU) as the beginning of its independence drift, leading to two illegal independence referendums in 2014 and 2017. According to the recording, the meeting was promoted by Dolores de Cospedal, then Secretary General of the PP.

Villarejo. The reason I’m here is that María Dolores de Cospedal completely trusts you.

Sánchez Camacho. María Dolores is like a sister to me.

The commissioner tells the head of the Catalan PP that he does work for the Interior and although he is “on the sidelines,” he remains “connected with the Ministry.” “I’ve worked my whole life for the Party [Popular]. I’m working here in Barcelona; I come and go.”

Villarejo claims that the Catalan government has been buying equipment to intercept phones for a year through the Mossos, “who go in a little van, with a computer and a minimal antenna.” Sánchez Camacho assures him that she has seen one of those vans near her house, and Villarejo asks her to note down the license plate. “If we detect them, we will arrest them,” he emphasizes.

The commissioner explains to Sánchez Camacho that they have people infiltrated in the independence parties but that Vice President Soraya Sáez de Santamaría has not allowed them to conduct phone taps.

Villarejo. We have people inside. We’re not listening. It’s a stupidity from your little friend [Vice President Soraya Sáez de Santamaría], who is in charge of the CNI and thinks it’s a ten-step game rule, and here’s one that takes five steps, turns back, and shoots you in the neck. But as of today, we are in process; we have infiltrators, and I manage them.

Alicia Sánchez Camacho is also worried that the plans against Catalan independence fall under the authority of Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, to whom she attributes certain complicities with “the convergents” governing in Catalonia.

Villarejo tells Sánchez Camacho that the strategy consists of discovering where the main independence leaders store their black money (“the Pujols, Artur Mas and his father, Felipe Puig, Durán i Lleida…). The commissioner emphasizes that they are “interested in focusing all attention on the Pujols” and claims they have detected up to 2.5 million belonging to Artur Mas in Switzerland.

Villarejo. The design we have is that almost all these actions are being done with the media, but outside of institutional matters so as not to embarrass the party. I have already told María Dolores de Cospedal that neither you nor anyone should provide nuclear information under any circumstances. And so my team is doing it appropriately little by little.

The strategy to attack the independence supporters by leaking supposed corruption scandals to certain media began just a few days after this conversation between Villarejo and Alicia Sánchez Camacho.

Villarejo. Starting on the 12th [of November], we will tighten the grip, and from the 15th to the 25th, it’ll be brutal tightening. I trust that the media won’t fail in some way.

Sánchez Camacho. If they don’t achieve an absolute majority, this Giró guy says he has a poll showing them at 72…

Villarejo. They have a poll showing them with an absolute majority; the only problem is that they are silent as prostitutes (…) This war we are going to make is to ensure these guys don’t achieve an absolute majority. But from the 26th on, we must continue working hard.

Sánchez Camacho. If they achieve an absolute majority, Spain is doomed.

Villarejo. The thing is that with all these corruptions, we need to imprison them, charge them, and that’s the end of the story.

During the two weeks of the electoral campaign, certain media outlets aired supposed police reports of unknown authorship, alleging various corrupt activities attributed to the family of former President Jordi Pujol, as well as to the main leaders of CiU and the Catalan government.

The published information, based on a “draft police report,” continued into the second week of the electoral campaign, alleging a supposed hidden fortune of 137 million euros belonging to Pujol in Geneva; millions of euros hidden by Artur Mas abroad from illegal commissions, and other alleged offenses committed by Catalan councilors. Many of these reports turned out to be false; the victims of this campaign filed lawsuits, but they were shelved.

The conversation between Villarejo and the president of the Catalan PP lasted nearly an hour and concluded with a commitment to collaborate.

Sánchez Camacho. How can I help you more?

Villarejo. Anything you hear about an operation where money was paid from an account abroad, any nuclear and precise information, I have a way to obtain that information later.

The president of the Catalan PP provided Villarejo with the phone numbers of the main independence leaders during that meeting.

CiU won the 2012 elections but lost 12 seats, leaving this party in the hands of ERC to secure the government and continue with its sovereignty plan. “Villarejo’s Operation Catalonia managed to alter the results of the Catalan elections on November 25, 2012,” emphasize the current Catalan independence leaders.