There are stories that cannot possibly be summed up in the thousand-plus words of a newspaper page or the minutes of a radio broadcast. Sub-Inspector José Ranea’s is one of them. It is linked to the Macedonia case, which evolved from what appeared to be a major Mossos d’Esquadra corruption scandal into a handful of acquittals and minimum sentences. Judge Joaquín Aguirre’s theses promised to end police corruption linked to drug trafficking, but the case was gradually dismantled until it came to nothing in 2022. It was the accused himself, Ranea, who became the chief investigator in the case to prove his innocence. The account of what happened in those 13 years forms an informative podcast Macedonia Case: History of a Persecution, in which Aimar Bretos and Víctor Olazábal, director and deputy director of Cadena SER’s Hora 25, respectively, report on this matter.
“It was such a complex case, so confused, with so many people and police forces involved, that it was impossible to tell it in a shorter format,” Olazábal commented by phone this Thursday from the broadcaster’s headquarters in Madrid. The statement of his protagonist in his most extensive interview to date shows a “devastated but liberated person who has to justify himself,” comments Bretos.
This in-depth report, divided into three episodes of 15 to 30 minutes each, has the testimonies of other protagonists in the investigation and those who followed them closely. All content will be broadcast this Thursday from 22:00 on Cadena SER’s Hora 25 program. The three episodes can then be heard on SER Podcast, on audio platforms and on cadenaser.com. The statements of specialized journalists close to the case, such as Andrea Villoria of Cadena SER, Jesús García Bueno, editor of EL PAÍS, and Carlos Quílez help build the story.
A 2009 intercepted car blew up the action. Inside, the Civil Guard found 40 packs, each weighing one kilo, believed to be cocaine. Only one was. The rest turned out to be sugar and plaster. The judge didn’t believe it and thought the agents made the change. The macro case he initiated was directed against Josep Luis Trapero, the Mossos d’Esquadra’s chief investigator at the time. The investigation dismantles Aguirre’s weak theories.
Judge Joaquín Aguirre (left) during a 2012 search he ordered in the ‘Macedonia case’ CARLES RIBAS
After thousands of hours of wiretapping, the name of one police officer remained under investigation: José Ranea, a Mossos deputy inspector who had links to informants. The case of Macedonia became the story of the persecution of a man who faced the examination of his life: his own case. He tells it himself in the second part. He speaks of illegal detention, five days in isolation in October 2010, treated like a terrorist, he defines himself. He fell into the prison module where he spent two months with people he himself put in prison. He suddenly lost years of life and more than 30 kilos. And almost the profession of policeman, which finally helped him to freedom.
But during his time in prison, he began drafting his own defense based on the same phone records that worked with his prosecution. When he was released, he spent a year and a half listening to the audio recordings. Why weren’t the calls that weakened the judge’s theory included in the Internal Affairs reports? he wondered. “The journalists who intervened know very well what happened and why it happened,” says Bretos.
In September 2022, the Barcelona court published the verdict in the case, which resulted in acquittals for the majority of the 17 accused and minimum sentences for the rest on drug trafficking charges. For Olazábal, “The first thing Ranea triggers in you is a visual impact, when you see a guy who is so physically big that when he starts to remember, you realize that he’s clearly hurt.” The sentence is not fixed and there is still a point of tension in it. The tone conveys the emotion perfectly. In a different format, many nuances would have been lost in this interview,” defends Bretos.
In addition to Judge Aguirre, the podcast commemorates other great characters, such as confidant Manuel Carbajo. “This story goes beyond Ramea and tells how the investigating police had to deal with the whistleblowers. It is a problem that no longer exists because now it is already regulated and recorded,” explains the director of Hora 25.
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