El Diario publishes an article revealing the existence of a Spanish police unit that tracks compromised information from pro-independence politicians

The Spanish National Police has allegedly kept operative since 2012 a group of agents whose pracatically sole purpose is to look into signs of corruption presented by Catalan political leaders of members of their entourage in order to discredit the pro-independence movement. The Ministry of the Interior, led by Jorge Fernández Díaz, denies its existence. The agents were supposedly divided in two structures that are part of a single unit (the Internal Affairs Unit and the Strategic Planning and Coordination Unit), the latter created by Ignacio Cosidó, and which respond to the Deputy Operational Directorate, headed by commissioner Eugenio Pino, a man with close ties to Fernández Díaz. These structures would act outside their jurisdiction and without judicial control. On 15 October, El Confidencial also published a news story about it. In July 2016, Commissioner Villarejo, who was part of the Deputy Operational Directorate, confesses in the framework of a procedure being overseen by the National Court to the existence of an operation against pro-independence movements in the Spanish National Police known as Operation Catalonia.