Arran militants accused of criminal organization will be tried on December 17 in Barcelona

PalmIn early 2020, at least four officers of the National Police Corps infiltrated several social movements linked to Catalan independence. Using false identities, Maria Perelló infiltrated Girona; Ramon Martínez, Valencia; and Daniel Hernández and Marc Hernández, Barcelona. All of them were part of the 33rd graduating class of the Ávila Police Academy and operated under the orders of the General Information Commissariat (CGI). For more than two years, the four officers shared assemblies, debates, demonstrations, friendships, and also sexual and physical relationships with people committed to Catalan independence, the right to housing, or environmentalism.

Police espionage, under the orders of what was then the top brass of the Interior Ministry; the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the then Secretary of State for the Interior, Rafael Pérez Ruiz (who resigned in May of this year), and Eugenio Pereiro Blanco, who was head of the CGI until his retirement in 2024; comes to a halt when The Direct and TV3 with the special report 'Infiltrats' from '30 minuts' brings to light the modus operandi, the profiles and, above all, the mistakes made by the moles that were key to their discovery.

Just two days after this information was made public (January 12), a group of six Arran militants traveled to Menorca from Barcelona, ​​where the young people carried out two actions. The first was graffiti on a property visible from the Me-1 main road, "Infiltration is torture, we'll give them all back."accompanied by the police officer's initials. The second was throwing the object against a wall of the National Police Station in Mahón, where they were identified by officers shortly afterward.

Aside from the actions of the youth organization against the recently discovered police infiltrations, political parties, associations, and civil society took to the streets of Barcelona, ​​Girona, Valencia, and Palma to protest against these police practices carried out without a court order. Likewise, since 2022, several parliamentary groups have submitted more than 200 questions to the Congress of Deputies, which have gone unanswered.

The Ministry of the Interior's response to date to the avalanche of questions has been to defend the National Police's actions within the framework of Spanish law and the Constitution, arguing that they are not undercover agents, for whom a court order is necessary, but rather intelligence agents on duty. Recently, the Catalan Parliament's governing board also reported to the Public Prosecutor's Office the failure of National Police officials to appear before the commission investigating infiltration cases.

The Supreme Court sends the case to Barcelona

The courts have repeatedly rejected requests from victims and associations to investigate the undercover agents. The lawsuit filed by Girona-based activist Òscar Camps, along with five associations, was dismissed. The judge denied the request despite Camps having had a months-long romantic relationship with one of the undercover officers. The same occurred with the lawsuit filed by five activists in a Barcelona court regarding a National Police officer with whom they had had sexual relations, as the court ruled that the encounters "were consensual at the time they took place." However, the six members of Arran who protested the officers' practices with graffiti were not so fortunate, as a Barcelona court is investigating them as a "criminal group." According to the Supreme Court ruling accessed by ARA Baleares, the young people initially investigated by the court in Mahón, where the graffiti appeared and where the officer targeted by the graffiti gave his statement, will be summoned to Barcelona. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Barcelona court has jurisdiction, understanding that, as stated in the police report on which the investigation is based, the acts carried out by the young people were organized in Barcelona. "The Mahón court considered that the police report concludes that the six individuals identified as alleged perpetrators are part of a criminal group with sufficient structure and a division of roles, and also concludes that they all organized the acts committed in Mahón from Barcelona, ​​where they also published the National Police officer's personal social media profiles and incited hatred," the Supreme Court ruling states. With this ruling on the jurisdictional dispute filed by the Mahón court regarding who is responsible for trying the six young men, the High Court passes the buck (as also requested by the Public Prosecutor's Office) to the Barcelona court, where the most serious of the three charges against them—membership in a "group"—allegedly took place.

Summoned on December 17

The six Arran activists have been given a date to testify: December 17th at Barcelona's Court of Instruction Number 28. They will have to testify regarding charges of property damage, harassment, and, above all, "belonging to a criminal group." They consider this accusation completely disproportionate and politically motivated. The young people explain that they learned of the proceedings "suddenly and without any prior information," although they maintain that police surveillance and control of the organization "is known and constant." "The police files created on our members are a known and illegal practice," they assert. Currently, the case is in the preliminary investigation phase, and the activists acknowledge their unease about "not knowing where this might all lead." However, they say they feel protected by the legal support of Alerta Solidaria and, above all, by internal political support.

For its part, the defense argues that transferring the case to Barcelona was not "a simple matter of judicial jurisdiction or geography." This is how the defense team for the young people under investigation, led by Alerta Solidaria, interprets it, seeing the Supreme Court's decision as a new expression of the State's "political and repressive" response to the Catalan independence movement. "The message is the same as always: crack down on the independence movement," the defense summarizes.

"The Supreme Court's ruling closes a silent battle between the courts of Maó and Barcelona, ​​neither of which wanted to take on the investigation for opposing reasons: the former because it maintained the theory of a criminal organization, and the latter because it saw no evidence and wanted to return the case to Menorca," the defense explains. The final decision, adopted by the Supreme Court, keeps the case in Barcelona and now opens a new judicial phase in which the six young people will testify on December 17 at the City of Justice.

Nevertheless, the defense acknowledges that it is unaware of the scope of the proceedings carried out so far and that all available information is deduced solely from the content of the Supreme Court's ruling.

However, the lawyer warns that, in the defense's view, the judicial approach resembles "a prospective investigation," based on the presumption of a criminal network without any substantial evidence. "Excessive zeal in politicized cases has been the norm for many years," he maintains. However, the defense will not reveal its strategy until it has full access to the police and judicial conclusions: "First, we'll have to see what they have. We won't give them any more information than they already obtain through legal or illegal means."

No investigation into the undercover agents

However, they denounce the fact that while activists face criminal charges, the courts have not opened any investigation into police infiltration of social movements. "The State protects its own, especially since these infiltrators operated under the PSOE government and Minister Marlaska." The courts, they recall, first denied the existence of these operations and are now blocking the lawsuits filed. Nevertheless, the defense celebrates that journalistic investigation and public dissemination have exposed the agents' identities: "They'll be ashamed to walk down the street. Now they're aware that people can see they're monsters."

Constitutional Limits

Sebastià Rubí, a lawyer and professor of Constitutional Law at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), believes these practices can clash with fundamental rights such as freedom of association, opinion, and expression, and warns that, without safeguards, they approach the logic of a "police state." From a constitutional perspective, he explains that the limitation of a fundamental right can only be carried out through an organic law that determines its conditions or with prior judicial authorization. And the infiltration of an agent into an association is only admissible if there is evidence that it operates as a criminal organization, as defined by the Penal Code. Without judicial oversight, he warns, the practice would be unconstitutional and could lead to the dynamics of a "patriotic police force." This, he says, does not mean denying the possibility of infiltration: it means demanding that it be carried out with safeguards and within constitutional limits. Otherwise, the State should open disciplinary proceedings or assume responsibility for the orders given, although he admits that proving this is often complicated and the Public Prosecutor's Office may be reluctant to act against the police. However, Rubí points out that the basis of this crime is recognizing the right to protection of minority and vulnerable groups, not that of institutions or authorities. Therefore, he notes that labeling messages critical of the police as hate speech directly conflicts with the freedom of expression recognized by the Constitution.