A decade before Watergate taught us to add “gate” to every scandal under the sun, President John Kennedy and his brother Robert, who served as US attorney-general, were up to some dubious antics of their own. Apart from monitoring White House officials and guests by means of a secret taping system, the Kennedys conducted extensive electronic surveillance against political opponents, critical journalists and even their own staff. After the details became public, Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post editor and friend of the Kennedys who helped uncover Watergate, exclaimed: “My God, they wiretapped practically everybody?.?.?.?in this town.”

Sixty years after the Kennedy administration merrily bugged its way around Washington, Spanish politics is in turmoil after revelations that its intelligence service spied on Catalan separatist leaders. To add fuel to the flames, someone — it’s not yet clear who — used the same Israeli-made spyware to get inside the phones of Pedro Sánchez, prime minister, and Margarita Robles, defence minister. The government this week sacked Paz Esteban as director of the National Intelligence Centre, Spain’s espionage agency, presumably in connection with spying on Catalan politicians, to which she admitted.

These disclosures are serious. Democracies depend on trust, accountability and respect for the law. Still, it is an established fact that domestic political espionage has carried on, in democracies as in authoritarian states, ever since the invention of recording systems. It is reprehensible but new examples keep popping up.