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Comment by narag | Hacker News Reader

Context: prime minister revealed that he had been spied upon, also defense minister and others. A few days later he published a letter to the king of Morocco reversing decades of Spain's position on Western Sahara. That's a competence of the parliament, not his, but that doesn's seem to matter.

A common belief is that he's being blackmailed.

Oh and Morocco is now in very good relations with Israel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Morocco_relatio...

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The simple explanation is that it improves the relation with USA, Israel, and Morocco. Killing 3 birds with one stone, especially since Morocco has been pressuring by facilitating irregular immigration waves just prior.

The move would have been hailed as Expert Global Politics if done by the opposition itself. Instead we got a shallow conspiracy theory of "blackmail" that's not even entertaining because nobody can provide any substance whatsoever.

Precisely this. Other commenters are pointing out that the Spanish government doesn't want to lose the option to investigate secessionist leaders, but given the current good relationships between the socialist party and Puigdemont's, that makes no sense. More likely they're trying to gloss over the obvious blackmailing incident at the first opportunity to blame someone else for the lack of success of any investigation.

Is there any kind of evidence? Or is it a "popular" idea?

It's always Citizen Lab of University of Toronto who blows the whistle

https://left.eu/pegasus-inquiry-delegation-from-the-left-in-...

While that is Pegasus and involves Spanish government, it's not related. The incident in that article would be the previous government (now opposition) spying on Catalan independence parties.

The other option that was rapidly silenced was that the blackmail was to the Spanish royal Family.

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