La Razón publishes the article ‘The conspiracy of the 33 sovereignist judges’ based on personal data obtained from police databases

The newspaper publishes this article with the personal data obtained from police databases (names and surnames, photographs, courts where they worked and comments on their political views) of 33 judges who had signed a manifesto, in the context of the 9 November consultation, supporting Catalonia’s right to decide. The judges file a complaint against the newspaper for crimes of disclosure of secrets and disloyalty in the custody of documents, but the investigation ends up being shelved by the Provincial Court of Madrid and the Spanish Data Protection Agency also ends up closing an investigation in this regard. In addition, the Manos Limpias union denounces the 33 judges before the General Council of the Judiciary and asks for their suspension. The General Council of the Judiciary opens a disciplinary procedure but ends up closing it without imposing any sanctions on them. 20 of the 33 judges ended up filing a lawsuit before the European Court of Human Rights. On 31 May 2022, the newspaper El País published some audio recordings of Operation Catalonia revealing, among other things, a conversation between Marcelino Martín Blas, Eugenio Pino, Villarejo and the Commissioner of Information of Catalonia Pedro Esteban in which they spoke about deleting the records of the events, the day after the publication of the article.