The direct allusions that Mariano Rajoy, when he was president of the Popular Party and of the Spanish government, knew about Operation Catalunya and the police setup to cover up party corruption, the Kitchen case, are abundant in the diaries and recordings of the ex-policeman José Manuel Villarejo. Among which, the words of two government ministers. There are at least 31 references.
They were two of the main occupations of the so-called patriotic police, the group of agents and high-ranking officials of the Ministry of the Interior that was dedicated to solving the political problems of the PP, obstructing investigations for corruption or discrediting the Catalan independence movement with assemblies and false evidence.
Operation Catalunya began on September 12, 2012, after the massive demonstration of the previous day's Day, in a meeting at the Ministry of the Interior presided over by its head, Jorge Fernández Díaz, as explained to La Vanguardia and Cronicalibe .as one of those present. Fernández himself, in a recording from October 2014 (revealed by the newspaper Público in 2016), tells the then director of the Antifraud Office of Catalonia, Daniel de Alfonso, that the president "agrees" to investigate and bring to light murky issues of pro-independence politicians.
What do the diaries and audios of Villarejo that we know say? Rajoy, "Raj" or "Asturian" are the ways in which the ex-commissioner calls his later boss in the 2,304 pages that occupy his diaries from 2007 to 2017, the President of the Government. Villarejo refers to meetings held with Rajoy by third parties, of which someone informs him, or records information about him or his relatives. "Rajoy and Cospe, everything is ok", notes Villarejo as told by lawyer Javier Iglesias, one of the two people who, according to the ex-commissioner, have direct and frequent contact with both him and Rajoy. Iglesias was a lawyer for two defendants in the Gürtel case and negotiated with the leadership of the PP.
The other person is Francisco Martínez, Secretary of State for Security between 2013 and 2016, who on June 13, 2014 spoke with Villarejo, among other things, about "Barna data", "ADN Artur" and "Astur, CNI subject". La Vanguardia contacted Martínez to find out what his relationship with the president was during those years, but he declined to intervene in this report.
There are references to a single direct contact between Rajoy and Villarejo, although its veracity is highly dubious. It would have happened at the headquarters of the Popular Party and Villarejo himself is the only witness. One of his recordings is during a conversation with Francisco Martínez on March 14, 2014, in which the ex-commissioner explains an alleged visit to the headquarters of the PP in Carrer Génova, that same week:
-Villarejo: They passed me through the back (...) I met Capelles [Javier Iglesias], in the room where he always receives me... he, there inside the kind of glass bubble, in this room
-Francisco Martínez: Next to his office.
–Villarejo: Right next door. The policeman comes, so and so, "What's up, how are you?" "Look, just to greet him, so-and-so, and this and that"... "Let him know that my friend Javier Iglesias enjoys all the sympathy in the world, among other things, that is, to work."
It is not clear if the meeting between Rajoy and Villarejo really happened or if Villarejo lied to the Secretary of State to make him believe that he had a superior endorsement. There is no entry in his diary about the supposed meeting, although Villarejo points next to the name of Javier Iglesias: "Yesterday he saw Raj and Cospe and wants to comment".
In 2012 Villarejo had already brandished in front of Martínez the supposed support of Rajoy. The recording is from November 29, four days after the Catalan elections. The commissioner is very angry with the Minister of the Interior because they have given him orders to "put the Catalonia operation in the fridge for three months", while he wants to continue with the judicialization of the allegations against CiU and specifically against the family Pujol de Javier de la Rosa and Victoria Álvarez. The meeting with Martínez is very tense. Villarejo threatens to bring to light the evidence that "proves that you were all in this shit" and says that he has dirty clothes on Fernández Díaz. He also assures Martínez that he has spoken to an alleged link with the Prime Minister and that Rajoy does not want to freeze the operation. “[The link] tells me: This is not so. These are not the instructions I have from the president, I just spoke to him. The instructions are: go ahead with your plan, no CNI or dicks. You use this management. We trust you to death, you have never failed us and if someone says otherwise or does not agree with this, talk to the president", says Villarejo.
In another recording between Villarejo and Martínez that has come to light, on August 22, 2014, the policeman suggests to the Secretary of State that from then on only he should inform Mariano Rajoy about the affairs of the sewers, to whom calls "el Barbes": "I think that to avoid more and more tensions you must be the only channel of communication. It is very ugly that the information reaches Barbes for the party, for the Ministry, seriously. This is my concept, I think that many things have been misunderstood because of this double track and she [referring to María Dolores de Cospedal] takes advantage of this and the other too and on top of that they don't pay in the end.. ... they are very enterprising".
Villarejo is angry because he allegedly advanced money from his own pocket for certain jobs linked to the operation and claims it from the general secretary of the PP.
In another conversation, in this case with his (theoretical) ally María Dolores de Cospedal, at that time Minister of Defense, as well as number two of the party, on May 5, 2017, Villarejo asked her for protection against harassment which according to him is suffering from the National Intelligence Center (CNI), which organically depends on Vice President Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, Cospedal's political rival. Villarejo, who was arrested in November, was already being investigated by the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office and in that conversation Cospedal promised him that he was making arrangements to solve his problems. It makes him understand that the president is aware of everything, given the measures he is asking for the police:
-Cospedal: The best for your protection and for him, I think that maybe it is better that you talk to me than to Ignacio [López del Hierro, husband of Cospedal].
-José Manuel Villarejo: I did it so as not to burn you.
-MDC: I already smoke a cigar".
-JMV: If I remember when we were in public and I was delighted. If what I don't want is to bother you. And I, María Dolores, only trust you, as you have seen.
-MDC: I told the president [Mariano Rajoy] that if I stay with this gentleman [Villarejo], if I see him, that the CNI does not come to me with the murga. Not even him. Just so you know...
The contacts between Villarejo and Iglesias have been frequent since 2012. Iglesias, alias el Llarg or el Capelles, was the lawyer of two defendants in the Gürtel operation, which tried the illegal financing of the party and a parallel accounting. Iglesias was in permanent contact with the leadership of the PP, negotiating on behalf of his clients, and kept Villarejo informed of developments. The lawyer is in all the messes. Operation Catalunya, the Kitchen case - in which the police orchestrated the theft of compromising documentation for the PP from its ex-treasurer Luis Bárcenas - or the case of the Banca Privada d'Andorra, which the patriotic police extorted because the give details of alleged bank accounts in Andorra of Artur Mas, Oriol Junqueras and Jordi Pujol. Iglesias is also the lawyer for Ramon and Higini Cierco, owners of BPA and its subsidiary, Banco Madrid.
On October 10, 2014, a few weeks before the 9-N consultation, Villarejo notes a conversation with Iglesias, who "called him to see how things were going with Marcelino [ Marcelino Martín-Blas, head of Internal Affairs ]. I gave him the one of LB-dona [ Luis Bárcenas and his wife] and PJ [perhaps Pedro J. Ramírez, already former director of El Mundo ]. Also topics Barna. It remained that I would pass it on to Raj".
This annotation suggests that Iglesias informs Rajoy of all these affairs, on behalf of the controversial ex-commissioner. Iglesias explained to La Vanguardia that Rajoy "was president of the Popular Party. This party was a procedural party in the Gürtel case. I was a lawyer in Gürtel, so I can't talk about anything that affects professional secrecy."
The ex-commissioner's notes also show that Martínez skips the chain of command and goes without his minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, to see the president. In a note dated July 27, 2015, Iglesias sends him "several positive messages, he says that last Thursday he was with Chisco seeing Rajoy. Wait for it to start acting. Chisco spoke very well of me." But Martínez denied to this newspaper that this supposed meeting between Rajoy, Iglesias and him had taken place.
Although Fernández Díaz also appears as part of the intrigue. On July 6, 2013, for example, Villarejo points out: "Iglesias: he says that the minister spoke with Raj and everything is OK"; in his notes, the "minister" is always Fernández Díaz.
On March 24, 2019, with the Popular Party government outlawed by Pedro Sánchez's motion of censure, Martínez writes a WhatsApp directly to Rajoy, which appears in the summary of the Kitchen case and to which this newspaper had access, in which asks for your help to be part of some electoral list. Possibly, to achieve the capacity granted by the status of deputy or senator due to a possible judicial horizon that is expected to be stormy.
Martínez writes: “Dear President: Good afternoon, I am Paco Martínez, I hope you are very well. Forgive me for daring to write to you, I just wanted to tell you that, as things stand these days, it seems that I will not be going on any lists. I'm very sorry to bother you, but for a few months now, for reasons you know, I've gone from being someone valuable to the party to being shunned as a kind of nuisance. I think it's not fair and I don't deserve it. Both your Government and the party have only had loyalty and commitment on my part, in very difficult times. I don't think I deserve to be thrown away, under these conditions. No one has called me and I only ask that the party help me at this moment, with whatever formula (if it can't be in Congress, let it be in the Senate, in the Assembly of Madrid, etc.). I think you know that I have only been loyal and worked at enormous personal cost. I am well aware that it is not your decision, but I wanted to share it with you and ask you for help, to the extent of your possibilities and with my thanks in advance”.
Martínez did not manage to be part of any list.
Last February 24, the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office announced that it was asking for him, as well as for Fernández Díaz and ex-commissioner Eugenio Pino, up to 15 years in prison for their involvement in the Kitchen operation.
