BROADCASTS.com

The wave of scandals that would engulf Spain began with a police raid on a wooded property outside Madrid. It was Nov. 3, 2017, and the target was Jos\xe9 Manuel Villarejo P\xe9rez, a former government spy. Villarejo\u2019s name had been circulating in the Spanish press for years. He was rumored to have had powerful friends and to have kept dirt on them all. The impressive variety of allegations against him \u2014 forgery, bribery, extortion, influence peddling \u2014 had earned him the nickname \u201cking of the sewers.\u201d\n\nFor many decades, Villarejo\u2019s face had been known to almost no one. He was, after all, a spy \u2014 and not just any spy, but one who had started his career in the secret police of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. In those years, he would dress in overalls from Telef\xf3nica, the national telephone company, as he conducted surveillance operations in the mountains, and on several occasions he even wore a priest\u2019s collar in order to infiltrate the Basque separatist group ETA. More recently, Villarejo had taken to simply introducing himself as a lawyer who ran a private-investigation firm, offering those he met to dig up compromising material on their enemies. His formal connection to the government was increasingly ambiguous. Of all of the identities he assumed over the years, this was perhaps the most powerful one. It made him rich through the hefty fees he charged, and it opened a door into the worlds of business tycoons, government ministers, aristocrats, judges, newspaper editors and arms traffickers \u2014 all of whose trust he gained, all of whose private words he taped.\n\nVillarejo was handcuffed and taken to Madrid. But as he sat in jail awaiting trial, the question left hanging over Spain was this: What happens to a country\u2019s secrets when they have all been recorded by one man? And what happens when that man finds himself suddenly backed into a corner?