Barcelona Not all the victims of Operation Catalunya were leaders of pro-independence parties, but false evidence or dirty rags were also sought among people close to the movement. One of them would be the former president of Barça Sandro Rosell: “Even if he is not a politician, there are three types of enemy in politics: the furious, the bloodthirsty and the fellow party”, he pointed out in an interview with Rac 1 José Manuel Villarejo, where he has made a statement that will draw attention: “In the case of Mr. Rosell, it was Laporta who gave us that information.”
The ex-commissioner of the National Police has pointed directly at the current Barcelona president in relation to the cause that led Rosell to spend two years in preventive prison for alleged corruption with the purchase and sale of the rights of the Brazilian national team. An accusation that, like the rest that have been made against him, ended in acquittal. The information to incriminate him, Villarejo assured, was provided by “people from the president’s environment [Laporta]”. Official Barça sources consulted by ARA are already saying that, if there is no rectification of these words, “legal actions” will be initiated against the ex-commissioner. “It is inadmissible for this gentleman to tell these lies”, they say .
The CNI proposed sending tanks to Catalonia in 2012
The accusation against Laporta was not the only striking headline that Villarejo left in the interview, in which he had a face to face with the former president of the Generalitat Artur Mas. Thus, in the political field, he has referred to an image that, since the beginning of the Process, has fattened various theories, speculations and jokes about the state’s reaction to curb independence, that of the tanks entering through the Diagonal Avenue in Barcelona. The ex-commissioner has assured that in 2012 it became a real possibility: as he has assured, the CNI considered sending “battle tanks to Catalonia” after the first major demonstration of the Day, now 11 years ago.
Villarejo explained that after that show of strength for independence, when Mas decided to advance the elections, there were several “crisis meetings” within the Spanish secret services in which a military intervention in Catalonia. “The CNI officials who went to the meetings were in favor of positioning combat tanks in strategic places, like television.” According to him, he proposed that they opt for “police vans” first. “They consume less fuel, they spend less,” he said he argued to them.
Rajoy “congratulated” him for the Catalonia operation
Throughout the interview, Villarejo insisted that former Spanish president Mariano Rajoy knew “without a doubt” the existence of the so-called operation Catalonia, which aimed to fabricate evidence and remove dirty linen from pro-independence leaders. “An operation of this magnitude, without the president of the government [espanyol] has no place”, he said, going as far as to state that Rajoy “congratulated” him personally by phone after CiU lost the absolute majority in 2012. At the same time, however, he added that “probably” the “protagonist” of the operation it was its Spanish vice-president, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, as well as the director of the CNI.
As already transpired in an advance of the interview this Sunday, and already in reference to the events of 2017, Villarejo also assures that the CNI knew the location of the referendum ballot boxes because he had transferred information about it, but that it was not they requisitioned before the vote to “justify” some further movement. In this sense, the former commissioner assures that the then Minister of the Interior, José Ignacio Zoido, was the one who ordered the police charges against the voters. “The minister, without a doubt. I imagine he should have consulted the president,” he said, again pointing to Rajoy.
2023-10-02 08:00:53
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