Catalan regional police have admitted that they stole personal objects -such as toothbrushes- from political activists, in order to extract their DNA. The use of this method by the police in Catalonia to increase control over social movements was just a rumour until it was corroborated in the trial against Lisa, a German anarchist accused of a bank robbery. According to her lawyers, genetic profiles were obtained potentially illegally and without the authorisation of a judge. But the testing ground for collecting DNA for political reasons has historically been the Basque country, where police began to use -in the early 2000’s- genetic testing to indict dozens of young people in court proceedings, which have resulted in some of these people still serving long prison sentences of 20 and 30 years.