In June 1995, investigators uncovered massive wiretapping of Spain’s politicians by the CESID intelligence agency — leading to the resignation of then deputy prime minister Narcís Serra, then defense minister García Vargas, and Emilio Alonso Manglano, who had headed the secret service for fourteen years. The affair was a factor in the downfall of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), which ended up losing the elections the following year. That scandal had consequences because the people spied on were members of the Spanish political and business elite, including the king.

Yet other political espionage plots have had far fewer consequences — especially if the victims belonged to the Basque or Catalan pro-independence movements. Spain presents itself as an exemplary democracy, yet continuities with Francoism persist, especially in the police forces, the army, and the judiciary. The ’78 regime — so named after the institutional settlement following Franco’s death — was founded in a way that avoided any rupture, and this has transmitted an authoritarian political culture and strong nationalism in many areas of state power.

One of the pillars of this continuity was the monarchy, reestablished by Franco: Juan Carlos I once recounted that the dictator had ordered him, soon before death, that his priority must be the unity of Spain. So, anything goes to preserve that unity. The president of the General Council of the Judiciary himself made this clear back in 2017, on the eve of the Catalan independence referendum: the unity of the Spanish nation “is a direct mandate for judges.”