The dubious reports of the Spanish police
Catalonia’s police, schooling and the Broadcasting Corporation: the targets selected by the State
BarcelonaThe Mossos d’Esquadra [Catalonia’s police force], Catalan-language schooling and the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation. These are the three targets selected by the State: the three top hunting trophies Madrid seeks out. So far, they have evaded capture.
On February 28 [unionist Barcelona daily] La Vanguardia published a news item titled “Cesicat attempted to recruit Mossos to spy on politicians”. It told the story of how Catalonia’s Centre for Information Security (Cesicat) had allegedly approached a Catalan police officer and offered to bump up his salary with cash payments, provided he agreed to spy for them. The article explained that the document which detailed the case “was one of the files that the Spanish police seized from the Mossos as they were about to destroy them”.
On March 6, the same newspaper ran this story: “Two arrested for posing as Cesicat officers attempting to recruit spies”. Behind the alleged scandal were two individuals who sought to get an officer’s attention —according to the police report— with a view to making advances to him. Oh, well.
It is worth mentioning that La Vanguardia’s original headline was a factual statement when it would have been much more prudent to indicate that it was taken from a complaint. Furthermore, the arrests dated back to 2014, which proves that the original story had been published without first contacting the Catalan police for comment.
La Vanguardia simply bought —unwittingly, we can only assume— a story based on Spanish police reports following the seizure of Catalan police files which were going to be destroyed. Incidentally, news outlets often forget to point out that a copy of those documents is stored digitally: the paper files are incinerated, but the information is kept. Of course, bringing that up would detract from the story of shady police dealings under political instructions.
The Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalan-language schooling and the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation. Not one week goes by without an alleged story being leaked by Madrid on one of those three areas. And every one of them fails the litmus test. Dismally.
