The Spanish government has said the mobile phones of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the defence minister, Margarita Robles, were both infected last year with the Pegasus spyware that its manufacturers claim is available only to state agencies. In a hastily convened press conference on Monday morning, Félix Bolaños, the minister for the presidency, said Sánchez’s phone was targeted in May and June 2021, while Robles’s was targeted in June 2021. Data was extracted from both phones.
The allegations come as the Spanish government faces questions over how Pegasus – which is sold by the Israeli company NSO Group – allegedly came to be used to monitor dozens of members of the Catalan independence movement, including the president of the north-eastern Spanish region, Pere Aragonès, and three of his predecessors.
— source theguardian.com | 2 May 2022