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Spain: Intelligence chief resigns

01 May 1995

The head of the Spanish intelligence services, Lieutenant General Emilio Alonso Manglano, resigned on 15 June after revelations that the intelligence services had tapped the telephones of leading figures, including King Juan Carlos. The newspaper El Mundo revealed that agents of the state security service intercepted and recorded mobile phone conversations by a number of leading figures from 1984 to 1991 without any legal authorisation. In addition to the monarch and other Spanish figures, various foreign dignitaries, including King Hassan II of Morocco, are reported to have had their phones tapped. The intelligence service, known as the CESID, has admitted that calls were recorded, but argued that the activity was not illegal when it happened, that the calls were only picked up by chance and that the resulting recordings were never used. The use of scanning devices to record phone conversations was only made illegal last year. But legal experts point to the constitution that sets out safeguards for: "the secrecy of communications, especially postal, telegraphic and telephonic, except by judicial decision". Manglano, 69, had been the head of the intelligence services for more than 14 years, taking on the job before the Socialists came to power in September 1982. Agence France-Presse, 15.6.95.