The Guardia Civil tried to tap the phones of Elisabet Comín, sister of former Catalan city councilor Toni Comín, and journalist Lluna Baltasar, whom investigators describe in their reports as former President Carles Puigdemont's “secretary” in the so-called Consell de la República. , the independence organization that the leader of the Junts controls from Brussels. On March 12, 2020, the armed institute requested the National Court to intervene in the telephone conversations and data traffic of the mobile terminals of both in the Tsunamic Democràtic case, according to the summary documentation to which EL PAÍS had access. However, Judge Alejandro Abascal, then a reinforcement in the Central Investigative Court 6 headed by Manuel García-Castellón, stopped the agents' lawsuits after prosecutor Miguel Ángel Carballo raised objections about the lack of “clues”, “motivation” and “proportionality”. .
At that point, the Guardia Civil had already been investigating for almost half a year who was behind the “Tsunami Democràtic” platform, which promoted protests following the October 2019 Supreme Court ruling condemning the political litigants for the illegal referendum of January 1 -O 2017. The agents had promoted a large-scale mobile intervention – approved by the court in an open case for terrorist crimes – to try to get to the head of the movement in which the judge would later place Puigdemont and the secretary general of the ERC . Marta Rovira. These wiretaps occurred gradually, as new names appeared in the wiretaps, including politicians such as David Fernández and Quim Arrufat, former CUP MPs, and Albano Dante, former leader of Podemos in Catalonia.
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In this way, on March 12, 2020, the Civil Guard sent a comprehensive 208-page report to the court, where it put six new names on the table for surveillance: among them those of Elisabet Comín and Lluna Baltasar. In the police document, the investigators emphasized the closeness of both to the hard core of the secessionist leadership and told the judge that they had reached them through the “independence activist” Xavier Vidal, whom they described as the alleged “organizer of the acts of the tsunami”. But none of these three (Comín, Baltasar and Vidal) appear in the Armed Institute's final report, which was included in the summary last November. The judge also does not mention them in the order issued a few weeks ago to charge the dozen defendants in the summary with terrorism – an order that was appealed by the prosecution, which excludes this type of crime and considers that there is no evidence against it Puigdemont there and Rovira.
In trying to justify the interference with Elisabet Comín's cell phone, the Guardia Civil cited several facts that they considered to be evidence of her alleged connection to the tsunami. The agents explained that the suspect had “a series of conversations” with Vidal, whose terminal had already been tapped, in which she expressed her “concerns” about “security” and “logistics” at a series of organized events of the independence movement in France at the beginning of 2020, in which Puigdemont and Comín took part, both on the run from justice. In this sense, they emphasize that the sister had “confidence” in her interlocutor, who led a group of “volunteers” for the events, and made statements such as: “I want to have the guarantee that the President and Toni are protected.” ”
The agents added that Elisabet Comín shared “the theses of radical Catalan secessionism”; He spread news on Twitter about tsunami protests, such as the blockade of Barcelona airport; He demonstrated “a constant eagerness to take extreme security measures in communications,” as he claimed; and published messages on networks that “communicate with the theses of independence” and that “serve on many occasions as loudspeakers for the secessionist proclamations that emerge from the representation of the Consell of the Republic and of reference figures of Catalan secessionism such as Carles.” Puigdemont. , Toni Comín or Jordi Sànchez.”
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“With all of the above, the influential role played by Elisabet Comín in relation to the fugitive political leaders who currently form the leadership of the Consell de la República is evident,” the Guardia Civil added in its report, in which about her was emphasized: “[Tiene] direct relationship in the planning and organization of all projects developed within the framework of the Consell, whose ideological program has as its primary goal the separation from the central state through unilateral means. The person under investigation occupies a relevant position within the worthy Consell, since she is the sister of the former city councilor who, together with Puigdemont and Clara Ponsatí, heads the worthy company, which showed its support for the actions staged by the tsunami has.
In order to justify tapping the cell phone of journalist Lluna Baltasar, who according to them is “a very relevant person due to her position in the Consell de la República”, the armed institute argued that Vidal had referred to her in some conversations – “reason, from which the person under investigation would try to approach the matter” – and that he had spread messages on Twitter from Puigdemont, the Consell and the tsunami. “Lluna Baltasar would belong to Puigdemont's closest circle of trust and thus to the leadership of the Consell per la República,” the researchers note. They considered the intervention in their communications as an action “of the utmost importance and significance”: “Due to the direct relationship with the files that are being developed in the Consell.” And due to its proximity to all the relevant information about the Consell he has in the past “also demonstrated his support for the Tsunami platform in the pursuit of an independent Catalan state and supported his radical stance of social confrontation against the state and national sovereignty.”
However, the prosecutor rejected these stabs until further evidence was presented against Elisabet Comín and Lluna Baltasar. When Alejandro Abascal, then judge of the Central Court 6, granted the Guardia Civil's request, he did not allow their communication.
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