Spain

In July 2020, El País and The Guardian reported that the speaker of the Catalan regional parliament, Roger Torrent, as well as at least two other pro-independence supporters were targeted with Pegasus spyware in 2019. He is the first European politician to be publicly reported as a victim of the spyware.

In July 2021, the Pegasus Project disclosed another Spanish victim, freelance journalist Ignacio Cembrero, whose number was selected in 2019. The investigation also identified more than 200 Spanish numbers selected for potential surveillance with Pegasus.

In April 2022, Canadian research laboratory Citizen Lab revealed that the phones of 63 Catalan politicians and pro-independence activists were infected or targeted with Pegasus, with “strong circumstantial evidence” suggesting that the Spanish government was involved in the surveillance. It is, as of now, the largest revealed cluster of surveillance against one political entity using Pegasus.

In the wake of the revelations, the Spanish government declared in early May that the phones of Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, defense minister Margarita Robles and minister of the Interior Fernando Grande-Marlaska were infected or targeted with Pegasus in 2021, the first confirmation of the use of Pegasus against a head of state. The Spanish government did not specify which country or agency it suspected. The Moroccan state denied having used Pegasus.

Immediately after the revelations, a judge at the Audiencia Nacional announced the opening of an inquiry into the use of Pegasus against Sanchez’ and Robles’ phones. A Spanish intelligence agency (the CCN) also found that the phone of former Spanish foreign minister Arancha González Laya was targeted by spyware in 2021, although it could not detect which one.

The revelations provoked a crisis in Spanish parliament, with several parties (including Pedro Sánchez’s party) vetoing a parliamentary inquiry into the Pegasus scandal and Catalan independentists threatening to withdraw their parliamentary support of Sánchez’s minority government. The head of Spain’s secret services (CNI), Paz Esteban, reportedly finally admitted that her agency had spied on 18 Catalan independence leaders. Esteban was ousted a couple of days later.