National Police officers demand the immediate freezing of the agreement reached by the Ministry of the Interior and the Generalitat of Catalonia in the Security Board of November 5, 2021, by which the State gave the green light to the progressive increase in the number of Mossos d’Esquadra officers until reaching 22,006 agents in the coming years, which represents an increase of 20% compared to the maximum limit set in 2006.
According to the CEP, the arrest in recent hours of two agents of the autonomous body for their connection with the escape of the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont, who is subject to an arrest warrant issued by the Supreme Court, as well as The shameful inaction of the police operation aimed at his arrest, requires putting into quarantine that agreement and its financing, agreed in December 2023 by both governments and which implies an expense for the State of more than 1.3 billion euros..
“If anything is clear after what happened yesterday, it is that the top brass of the Mossos d’Esquadra have not been able to fulfil one of their fundamental missions. And that this inaction, justified with arguments as bizarre as the application of a criterion of proportionality or opportunity, has allowed Puigdemont to evade the national arrest warrant for the crime of misappropriation of public funds, ratified by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court on 1 July.”
“This is already serious, because the failure of the police device designed by the Mossos command has been evident and has caused embarrassment among quite a few members of that Force, the most significant thing is that there has been a new and very serious breach of confidence in a public service essential for the security of the citizens of Catalonia,” they underline.
If the Mossos have not been able to arrest Puigemont, who has moved around Barcelona with insulting impunity, even in urban areas where there was no presence of people who could put an arrest at risk, the State cannot continue to encourage the growth of a Force and its financing – paid for by all Spaniards – when it has not lived up to expectations at a crucial moment. If the Generalitat wants more police officers, it should pay for them. Because the priority of the Ministry of the Interior “The 1.3 billion euros should be allocated to improving the living and working conditions of the national police in Catalonia, which has become a temporary staff in which every year more than 20% of the agents request other positions in the rest of Spain, having to be replaced by new police officers.”
The CEP insists that “Interior must dedicate the money of all Spaniards to improve and dignify the conditions of service of the national police and civil guards. Increasing our salaries, dignifying our pensions, considering us a risky profession and promoting physical and legal protection against the increase in aggressions. But also applying salary and professional improvements for colleagues assigned to Catalonia, in attention to the difficult circumstances in which they serve in those four provinces. In short, we maintain that not a single euro can be spent on paying for the increase in personnel of a body, financing the cost of more than 3,400 new agents and ceding police powers that harm the unitary scheme of provision of the police service in Spain. Not when what happened yesterday, added to other previous episodes such as the actions of that body during the celebration of the illegal referendum of 2017 or the escort of Puigdemont by off-duty mossos while he was fleeing from Justice, shows that a total replacement must be imposed in the command levels to restore institutional confidence and that of many agents who do not agree with all these scandals,” they conclude.