Judge Manuel García Castellón detailed more than a year ago, in the order to open the abbreviated procedure of the so-called Kitchen case, all the evidence accumulated during four years of investigation on this supposed dirty war operation carried out by the political and police leadership of the Ministry of the Interior —under the Government of Mariano Rajoy— to hinder the judicial investigations into the b box of the PP. According to this investigation, for at least two years (from June 2013 to June 2015) the Interior launched an operation, paid for with reserved funds and in which half a dozen commissioners participated, to spy on the former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas and his family, with the intention of stealing documentation that could compromise the Rajoy government in relation to the illegal financing of the party that was being investigated by a court of the National Court. In addition, in the last year, EL PAÍS has provided new data on this alleged police operation through the publication of the secret audios of corruption (conversations recorded for years by the commissioner José Manuel Villarejo to senior officials of the PP). The judge has considered them irrelevant or insufficient to expand the list of defendants, although both the Prosecutor’s Office and the popular accusations appealed that decision, without success, to try to get the case reopened, pointing especially to the role played by María Dolores de Cospedal, former secretary general of the PP.Special | Espionage on Bárcenas, from within The judicial investigation has proven, through various evidence included in the indictment and the testimonies of the police leadership, the plan to spy on Bárcenas without judicial control
