Margarita Robles qualifies the change at the head of the CNI as "pure continuity"

"An act of pure continuity."

This is how the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, described the replacement at the head of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) at the inauguration of the new director general, Esperanza Casteleiro this Thursday.

“This is an act of pure continuity, nothing is going to change”, she has insisted, “[but] it is going to change a lot, because we are going to continue working”.

Robles has not mentioned in his speech the previous director, Paz Esteban, who has attended in the first row the inauguration of his successor.

The minister has implicitly justified this silence by alleging that all those who work in her department are "pieces of a gear, that she does not know names and surnames" and that it would not work "without the effort of each and every one".

Who has referred to the dismissed director has been the new chief of spies, who has thanked her for her "effort and dedication" and has referred to her as a "colleague of many years" working in the secret service.

Upon meeting, they greeted each other with a long hug.

Casteleiro and Esteban entered the then-called Superior Information Center for Defense (Cesid) at the same time, in 1983, with the first promotions that included women, and they shared a career at the center for 35 years, until the first went to the Ministry of Defense as head of the Robles Cabinet.

Paz Esteban, Margarita Robles and Esperanza Casteleiro, at the inauguration of Casteleiro as the new director of the CNI. Claudio Alvarez (EL PAÍS)

The inauguration of Casteleiro was not attended by any senior official from La Moncloa or the Ministry of the Interior, as was usual, since the CNI functionally depends on the President of the Government.

In his speech, Casteleiro expressed his confidence that, after these turbulent weeks, the CNI will be able to carry out its work "with the least possible exposure" and that the different State agencies will collaborate to "guarantee the security of our communications".

Nobody has mentioned the reason why Esteban has supposedly been dismissed —the infection of the cell phone of the Prime Minister and several ministers with the Pegasus spy virus— but Robles has warned that those who “want to attack Spain in a sophisticated way, with hacks, they are going to find themselves in front of the CNI”.

Approached by the journalists, Paz Esteban did not want to make any statements and limited herself to commenting that "the past is the past" and what is important now is the new direction.

Sources close to her assure that she leaves office "with her head held high" and "a clear conscience."

Until now Secretary of State did not want to present her resignation because that meant acknowledging that the CNI had acted incorrectly.

In the same act, the new Secretary of State, Amparo Valcarce, until now Undersecretary, and the new Undersecretary, Adoración Mateos, until now Director of Personnel, took office.