CNI (Centro Nacional de Inteligencia)

Status and tasks

The CNI provides the Prime Minister and the Government with information, analyses and proposals intended to prevent threats to Spain's independence, territorial integrity, national interests and the rule of law (Article 1). It is attached to the Ministry of Defence, has functional autonomy and legal personality (Article 7). The Law abolishes the CESID; the CNI took over its tasks, assets and archive (second additional provision).¹

Its tasks (Article 4) include obtaining and evaluating information to protect Spain's political, economic, industrial, commercial and strategic interests, detecting and neutralising the activities of foreign services, cooperating with foreign services, analysing strategic signals traffic, coordinating cryptography across the administration and protecting classified information.¹

The CNI's activities, structure, personnel and sources are secret; its officers may use cover identities and are, as a rule, not law-enforcement officers (Article 5). The director, with the rank of Secretary of State, is appointed by royal decree on the proposal of the Minister of Defence for five years (Article 9).¹

Parliamentary and judicial oversight

The CNI reports to the Congress through the committee that controls reserved funds, chaired by the President of the Congress; its sittings are secret. The committee has access to classified material except information on sources, means and material received from foreign services; it is told the government's intelligence objectives and receives the CNI's annual report (Article 11).¹

Measures that affect the inviolability of the home or the secrecy of communications require the prior authorisation of a Supreme Court judge, who decides within 72 hours (24 in urgent cases). Entry into a home may be authorised for 24 hours, interception of communications for three months with the possibility of extension; material unrelated to the purpose must be destroyed (Organic Law 2/2002).²

Rulings and reviews

In judgment 110/2021 of 13 May 2021 the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional a provision of Royal Decree-Law 8/2020 that had changed the composition of the Government Delegated Committee for Intelligence Affairs (Article 6(2) of the CNI Law), because there was no extraordinary and urgent need.^1,3

On 18 May 2022 the Ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo), having examined classified documents, announced that in the cases examined – the interception of the communications of 18 people – the CNI had acted in accordance with the Constitution and the law, after obtaining authorisation from a Supreme Court judge.⁴