Well, what can you say? I was stunned by both articles, the one from Android Authority (although I see they’ve since backtracked significantly from the original version) and the original piece on Xataka Android. Still, I can't say I'm surprised.
Given their recent history, the Catalan police, along with other Spanish entities, have developed a pattern of associating privacy with criminality, especially when faced with tools that limit their ability to conduct mass surveillance.
In 2017, Spain responded to the Catalan independence referendum with violent crackdowns, arrests of elected officials, and the suppression of civil liberties. It later emerged that Pegasus spyware was used to monitor Catalan politicians, journalists, and lawyers, as confirmed by Citizen Lab. That tells you everything you need to know about their comfort with surveillance, and their intolerance for secure, private communication.
So when a police force like the Mossos d’Esquadra starts raising red flags over citizens using Pixel phones with GrapheneOS, it says far more about their agenda than it does about the technology. They’re upset because these tools work. They can’t be easily wiretapped, tracked, or backdoored.
Labeling these phones as “criminal tools” is wrong. The real issue isn’t crime, it’s that the police can’t control what they can’t access. And that’s a dangerous mindset, because it turns privacy into suspicion, and that should concern everyone.