Christmas 2017. Julian Assange has lived as a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for five years when he was welcomed by former President Rafael Correa.
His lawyer, Baltasar Garzón, is negotiating with the Ecuadorian government for his imminent departure.
But someone is watching these negotiations: workers from the embassy security company, the Spanish company UC Global, and US agents spy on the diplomatic legation day and night.
This is the story of how the CIA thwarted the release plan of the WikiLeaks founder, with interviews, videos, audios and reports exclusively for this newspaper.
Assange's defense lawyers, Baltasar Garzón and Aitor Martínez, together with the Ecuadorian consul, Fidel Narváez, recount in the documentary the tension experienced those December days to turn the Australian ex-hacker into a diplomatic agent.
A former employee of the security company UC Global, tells for the first time to a media outlet, the espionage techniques that were carried out inside and outside the diplomatic legation.
They watched all the cyberactivist's visitors, including his partner, Stella Moris, also present in this short documentary.
"The environment was increasingly sinister, I feared for Julian's life," says his partner and the mother of his two children.
Tomorrow in EL PAÍS, discover the secret story of a CIA operation against the founder of WikiLeaks in "Assange: four days in which he grazed freedom".
An exclusive short documentary from EL PAÍS now available at elpais.com