Catalan president complains in Brussels of Spain ignoring Catalangate espionage affair

Catalan president Pere Aragonès was in Brussels on Thursday, where he met with EU Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders to express his concerns over Spain’s handling of the Catalangate espionage affair in which over 60 people with ties to the independence movement were targeted with government-grade phone spyware Pegasus and Candiru. Aragonès claimed that Brussels was interested in and concerned about the espionage cases.

Speaking to the press after his meeting with Didier, Aragonès celebrated the Spain-Portugal-France deal to create a green hydrogen pipeline between Barcelona and Marseille.

This is the first time a Catalan president meets with an EU Commissioner since 2015, before the heightened push for independence that culminated with the 2017 referendum deemed illegal by Spain: former president Carles Puigdemont traveled to Brussels five years ago to speak to MEPs about the vote but was not granted a meeting in the EU Commission, nor was his successor Quim Torra.

“We view the restoration of normalized relations very positively,” Aragonès said, while presidency ministry sources argued that this has much to do with the Catalan government’s strategy to pursue talks with Madrid about the independence issue.