Spain's CNI, the infiltrators and the paranoia that shut down dissent

The CNI and pandemic dissent: when nobody trusts anybody

At the height of the elbichito passport era, a meetup called in a park on the outskirts of Madrid was cancelled just as it was taking shape. The official reason: a remote chance of rain. For those who had organised it, the explanation never added up; the suspicion that someone was infiltrating the dissident movement had already done its work. There is no public evidence that Spain's CNI (the National Intelligence Centre) had agents there, but distrust has become the norm.

An organiser who asked too many questions

In central Spain, some gatherings of dissidents were marked by the behaviour of their organiser. According to one attendee, the man was not looking for friends, he was looking for information: constant questions about contacts and plans, without contributing anything of his own. The person telling the story came away burned, and he was not the only one. In 2022, the man in question vanished from the scene. For some, that was the proof; for others, it simply showed he never fit in.

The Basque exception

In Bilbao, the Bizitza marches lived a different reality: thousands of people without masks, from every social background, outside the courts. There, suspicion focuses on the names that led the movement, among them Alfonso Longo, a commentator who disappeared from the internet after the pandemic. The theory of "controlled dissent" links him to Adrián Zelaia, and his Galician origins are even used to exclude him from the "Basque people" according to the tenets of Sabino Arana that the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) still upholds in softened form. With no data to confirm anything, of course. The contrast is telling: thousands in Bilbao, a meetup in Madrid cancelled in case it rained. The paranoia had done its work before any agent did.