The National Court has once again put a stop to the “tricks” of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. The Central Court of Instance, in a “harsh” ruling, charges against the granting of pensionable silver medals to retired senior officers of the National Police. And it is not the first time, two years ago, the high court annulled the granting of another seven silver medals to seven retired police officers, as well as 49 red crosses to active officers, all of them with a lifetime financial bonus.
Now, thanks to a lawsuit from the Spanish Confederation of Police (CEP), the court has annulled eight other medals “given” by Marlaska to senior officials of his trust. As explained by this police union, this judicial resolution not only fully upholds the lawsuit filed, but also describes the Administration’s actions with “extreme severity.” Thus, it determines that the Interior has used a discretionary power “designed to reward heroic merit” with the sole objective of “financially rewarding the retirement of senior officers”, which implies a “paradigmatic assumption of diversion of power.”
The judicial resolution closes the ministry headed by Grande Marlaska and accuses it of converting decorations reserved for extraordinary merit, risk and selflessness into a hidden remuneration system for certain senior police officers at the end of their professional careers.” And all of this, as established by the ruling itself, under the “fiction of a non-existent concrete fact” to justify the granting of this type of recognition. Specifically, it dismantles the Interior’s arguments one by one and concludes that there is not in the administrative file “not a single mention of a physical risk, singular intervention or extraordinary dedication” that would justify the award of silver medals that They carry with them a lifetime pension equivalent to 15% of the salaryas explained by the CEP.
Up to 4,000 euros more per year
“For too many years thousands of police officers have been given the message that the Corps’ most important rewards did not depend exclusively on sacrifice, risk assumed or merit operational but simply to occupy a position of maximum trust at the top of the police”, denounce from the Spanish Confederation of the Police. Now, this sentence makes it clear that the silver medals, which carry an amount of up to 4,000 euros more per year for lifecannot become automatic retirement awards for the leadership of the National Police. And more so, when the rest of the police officers face financial losses when they leave active life.
In this sense, the National Court insists that Retirement “is a mandatory statutory contingency, not an extraordinary event”which is why it rejects the use of these pension rewards as a covert remuneration supplement for certain members of the police leadership. Furthermore, according to the agents themselves, it dismantles in a “devastating” way the system used in recent years by Grande-Marlaska to convert these decorations into authentic “end of career awards”.
This judicial resolution represents, in the opinion of the CEP, a turning point compared to “years of degradation of the police decoration system” and confirms that the arbitrary use of pensioned medals to benefit certain senior officers “lacked legal coverage”. What’s more, the National Court itself warns that granting the Interior the “patent of marque” would allow “rude, arbitrary or deviant” actions to remain. shielded from judicial control. In short, he warns that assuming the thesis of the ministry led by Grande-Marlaska would create an “alarming zone of jurisdictional immunity.”
A “perverted” reward system
Silver medals cannot be converted into “rautomatic rewards linked to hierarchy or at the time of retirement,” the agents conclude, because this “empties” the reward system of the National Police and degrades the prestige of decorations legally reserved for truly exceptional actions. In this sense, they insist that “it is not an honorary decoration without more. It has permanent remuneration effects at the expense of the State coffers“.
The ruling of the National Court annuls the silver medals of five former senior chiefs (Eastern Andalusia, Navarra, Extremadura, Galicia and the Valencian Community), a former commissioner general of the Judicial Police, a former deputy director general of Logistics and Innovation and the former head of the Personnel Division. And, according to the agents, Interior has “perverted” the reward system in such a waythat a high command has come to be privileged for an event “as embarrassing” as achieving that a City Hall illuminates its façade in blue for the two hundredth anniversary of the National Police.