If the Government believed that with the dismissal of the director of the CNI it was going to calm its partners, it was wrong, despite the fact that it knew it, that both ERC and JxCat had warned them that they were aiming higher, the Minister of Defense , although judging by the words of their spokesmen in the Senate not even this would have been worth it, since what the case of espionage does is give them wings in their ultimate goal, independence.

The espionage of the independentistas through Pegasus was the subject of debate again in the Senate, in the control session, in which, in the absence of the presence of Pedro Sánchez, and the absence of the Defense Minister, those in charge of responding To the questions, four, from JxCat, ERC, PP and Cs, were the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, and the Spokesperson Minister, Isabel Rodríguez.

The spokesman for JxCat, Josep Lluis Cleries, was perhaps the harshest, although in many of his arguments he agreed with the PP and ERC, especially when speaking of the weakening of democracy that espionage entails in "a democracy that is not full" , with which he tries to reaffirm the budgets that the Catalan separatists usually take to the Council of Europe.

"They have made the director of the CNI pay the price, but there are others in charge of higher rank," said Cleries, in clear reference to Minister Margarita Robles, and who described the act as "a gesture towards the gallery, but warned the Government that "do not intend to close this massive espionage to the independence movement" with the resignation of Paz Esteban. And it is that the JxCat Spokesman does not believe that Moncloa did not know anything about this espionage, when it is the Government that tells the CNI that it should spy and the person in charge of the CNI "dispatches with the President of the Government and the Minister of Defense".

And there Cleries introduced a new element that until then the Catalan independence parties had not pointed out, King Felipe VI, because according to the JxCat spokesman, the CNI "also dispatches with the King" although in his opinion there is no article in any law to allow this to be done, and that is why he wondered if La Moncloa did not know him, if "could La Zarzuela know him?"

Cleries also took advantage of the situation to put the ERC and the president of the Generalitat in a bind, because in his opinion "you cannot talk to whoever is spying on you and also attacks the Catalan language", he took the opportunity to say, in Catalan, and then of the ruling that obliges Catalan centers to teach at least 25% of their teaching hours in Spanish.

The answer came from Minister Bolaños, who demanded Cleries "respect for Spanish democracy, its democratic institutions and the Government that is working to clarify what happened", and reproached JxCat for not being comfortable "in coexistence" and being better when they are against He sees them "nostalgic for another era", that of when Rajoy ruled, that of 2017 when 1-O occurred and there was tension, and not like now when "understanding and dialogue" prevail. A time, Bolaños stressed, in which he has become an "insignificant actor," but that, he said, "is his problem."

For ERC, Mirella Cortès emphasized the fact that Spain is not "a full democracy", and reiterated, as Cleries did, that "the dismissal of the director of the CNI is insufficient", because Europe is not going to accept what is happening that in his opinion is summed up in "a dirty war of the State against the independence movement", which places the Government in a situation of weakness, because Spain, he said, is already up to what is happening in Hungary, in Poland or in Turkey, and not in the behavior of the rest of the countries of the Union.

The ERC was answered, however, by the Spokesperson Minister, Isabel Rodríguez, who replied to Mirella Cortès that "Spain is a full democracy", in which the institutions act in accordance with the law, for which she considers her accusations "out of reality". Rodríguez also warned the ERC spokeswoman that "when rights and freedoms are violated, they go to court", as the government has done, but the independentistas who have been singled out as being spied on have not done so.

For the PP, José Antonio Monago reproached the PP for the dismissal of the director of the CNI, who at the gates of the NATO summit "leaves the intelligence services at the feet of the horses" in addition to making a great international ridicule, At the same time, he reproached the government for "guillotining" Paz Esteban to replace her with the right hand of Minister Robles, when "what happens is not about collegiality, it's about democracy."

Félix Bolaños' response did not refer so much to espionage, but instead used the case to proclaim that the PP "has not changed", "they are comfortable in the opposition that seeks confrontation. They are the same as before" and ended up defending what It is happening now, putting it in contrast to what happened before, and there he cited from Operation Kitchen, that some computers were "broken with a hammer" and even the sentence in which he referred to the fact that the PP had built "an institutionalized system of corruption ".

Finally, Cs senator Miguel Sánchez López withdrew his support for the only minister they supported because, "with the dismissal of the director of the CNI, Margarita Robles had to choose between her dignity or the chair, and she has chosen the couch".