After almost six hours answering questions in the trial for the ‘Operation Kitchen’ held at the National Court, National Police Chief Inspector Manuel Morocho was eager to speak more. During the two sessions that his testimony lasted, the officer who led investigations such as Gürtel or the Bárcenas Papers recounted how he corroborated the existence of “a police operation without judicial authorization” targeting the former treasurer of the Popular Party Luis Bárcenas, how he suffered pressure not to include the name of former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in one of his reports, how the Ministry of the Interior at the time deployed “a strategy to dismantle” his police group, and how he found “indications” that his office and vehicle were monitored to conduct surveillance on him. “I don’t know if I can say something,” he asked the court president, Teresa Palacios, as she was dismissing him. At that moment, a nearly unanimous “no” was heard from the defendants’ bench, almost entirely. “The PP’s black beast,” as he recalled they called him yesterday, left without revealing that “thing” he still had to say. Although what he did say, exposing Kitchen, was not few.
