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Bolanos told a news conference Sanchez's phone was infected in
May 2021 and at least one data leak occurred then. He did not
say who could have been spying on the premier or whether foreign
or Spanish groups were suspected of being behind it.
"The interventions were illicit and external. External means
carried out by non-official bodies and without state
authorisation," he said, adding that the infections had been
reported to the justice ministry, and the High Court would be in
charge of the case.
The announcement followed intense pressure on the leftist
coalition government to explain itself after Canada's digital
rights group Citizen Lab said more than 60 people linked to the
Catalan separatist movement had been targets of "Pegasus"
spyware made by Israel's NSO Group.
After the allegations of spying on members of the Catalan
separatist movement, the minority government's key ally in
parliament, Catalonia's leftist pro-independence party ERC, said
it would not support the government until Madrid takes measures
to restore confidence.
Pere Aragones, the separatist Catalan regional president, said
on Monday in a statement: "When the mass surveillance is against
the Catalan independence movement, we only hear silence and
excuses. Today everything is done in a hurry.
"But the double standard here is clear. It seems that against
the independence movement anything is accepted."
The European Union's data watchdog has called for a ban on
Pegasus over allegations it has been abused by client
governments to spy on rights activists, journalists and
politicians.
(Reporting by Graham Keeley, additional reporting Andrei Khalip,
Belen Carreno; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Toby Chopra)
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