Spain has sacked the head of its national intelligence agency, as the government seeks to draw a line under a political crisis triggered by the use of Pegasus spyware against the prime minister and allegations that dozens of Catalan separatist politicians were also targeted.
Paz Esteban was fired as director of the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) on Tuesday, a week after the Madrid government disclosed that Israeli-made spyware had been used to breach the phones of prime minister Pedro Sánchez and defence minister Margarita Robles.
The use of Pegasus against Sánchez, the first confirmed case of a serving head of government being targeted, has fuelled controversy surrounding the surveillance software, which has been blacklisted by the US commerce department and is under investigation by a committee of the European parliament.
Pegasus spyware, made by Israel’s NSO Group, can be used to infiltrate smartphones and transmit their data to the attacker. It is licensed for sale on condition that it is used against terrorism and crime, but the US commerce department said last year it been used to “maliciously target” government officials, activists and others.
The spying revelations in Spain have undermined support for Sánchez’s fragile minority government and threatened to stall progress towards a lasting political settlement over the status of Catalonia, the country’s most divisive issue.
Esteban, the first woman to head the CNI, had been under pressure since April, when the Citizen Lab, a digital rights group based at the University of Toronto, alleged that Pegasus software had been used to spy on Catalan regional president Pere Aragonès and more than 60 other Catalan separatists.
Questioned by a parliamentary committee last week, Esteban said the CNI had tapped the phones of 18 Catalan independence leaders with court authority, according to lawmakers present at the closed hearing. The Madrid government said it had no knowledge of this surveillance.
Madrid has said Pegasus was used against government ministers by forces “outside the state”, but has not named any suspected attackers. The alleged use of the spyware against Catalan leaders has not been confirmed by any government body.
The government disclosure that the phones of cabinet ministers had been hacked has led to questions about why the spying was not prevented and took almost a year to be detected. The government revealed on Tuesday that Pegasus spyware had also been found on the phone of interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
“It is clear there are things we need to improve,” Robles told a news conference, denying that Esteban was removed because of the surveillance of Catalan leaders. She is to be replaced as CNI director by Esperanza Casteleiro, who currently serves as secretary of state for defence.
The Pegasus scandal has weakened Spain’s leftwing government coalition at a time when the conservative People’s party (PP), the main opposition group, is gaining popularity with poll ratings close to those of Sánchez’s Socialists.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP leader, on Tuesday accused Sánchez of “offering the head” of the CNI director to appease the Catalan independence parties, saying the prime minister was “weakening the state to secure his own survival”.
The Catalan regional government, however, said the dismissal of the spy chief would not resolve the problem. “Explanations must be given — who ordered the spying, who allowed it and who knew about it,” a spokesperson said.
“[The government] is trying to offer [the dismissal of] someone acceptable to the ERC [Catalan Republican Left], knowing it would be impossible for Sánchez to throw out the defence minister,” said Juan Rodríguez Teruel, a political-science professor at the University of Valencia. “In the next few days, we’ll see if that’s enough.”
Catalan parties had previously called for the resignation of Robles, one of the few ministers in Sánchez’s cabinet who is popular with moderate voters. But ERC president Oriol Junqueras stepped back from demanding her removal in an interview with the El País newspaper on Tuesday.
The spying affair has aggravated tensions within the ruling coalition. These were exposed in April when the government’s proposal for a €16bn economic package to mitigate the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine only narrowly escaped defeat, thanks to support from a small Basque separatist party.
Both the radical left Podemos party, which is in coalition with the Socialists, and the ERC, the Catalan pro-independence party that lends it crucial support in parliament, have both called for an inquiry into the Pegasus surveillance.
A withdrawal of support by the ERC could hold up planned legislation, including housing reforms intended to protect young and vulnerable tenants. Other important measures, including labour reforms, have been approved.
Esteban’s removal “shows [the Socialists’] desire to repeat the majority that brought them to power”, said Manuel Arias-Maldonado, a political-science professor at the University of Malaga.
“I think the issue is unlikely to trigger a severe political crisis that could lead to the collapse of the government,” said Antonio Barroso, deputy director of research at Teneo. “There’s no incentive for Sánchez to go to early elections given the PP’s current momentum in opinion polls.”