35,000 troops will shield the NATO summit in Madrid in the midst of the war in Ukraine

It will be the largest security deployment since the operations launched in 1992 to shield the Barcelona Olympic Games and the Seville Expo. And it will be very different from that mobilization of 30 years ago because the threats are more diverse. The Ministries of the Interior and Defense plan to activate more than 35,000 agents and soldiers in the tasks of surveillance of the air space and protection of the 30 Heads of State and Government who will meet on June 29 and 30 in Madrid at the NATO summit.

agents and military

total*

*We must add the escorts of the 30 delegations.

Citizen Security personnel, UPI, UPR, information services, Canine Guides, Tedax-NRBQ, Subsoil, Cavalry or GEO. Also

of escort units.

Municipal police

and Mobility Agents

Agents only from the Madrid City Council, plus a number to be defined from other adjacent municipalities.

Mainly members of the Traffic Association and the Information services.

29 planes

McDonnell Douglas F-18 Hornet (C.15)

Wing Unit-12

600 military

Squad 121, ‘Poker’ and Squad 122, ‘Tennis’.

Fighter Unit of Wing-12, Group 45 (transport authorities), 47 Mixed Group (Transport and Intelligence Unit), SatCen (Satellite Center of the European Union). In addition, troops from the General Headquarters of the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Command of the Army and members of the CNI will be mobilized.

agents and military

total*

*We must add the escorts of the 30 delegations.

Citizen Security personnel, UPI, UPR, information services, Canine Guides, Tedax-NRBQ, Subsoil, Cavalry or GEO. Also

of escort units.

Municipal police

and Mobility Agents

Agents only from the Madrid City Council, plus a number to be defined from other adjacent municipalities.

Mainly members of the Traffic Association and the Information services.

29 planes

McDonnell Douglas F-18 Hornet (C.15)

Wing Unit-12

600 military

Squad 121, ‘Poker’ and Squad 122, ‘Tennis’.

Fighter Unit of Wing-12, Group 45 (transport authorities), 47 Mixed Group (Transport and Intelligence Unit), SatCen (Satellite Center of the European Union). In addition, troops from the General Headquarters of the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Command of the Army and members of the CNI will be mobilized.

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agents and military

total*

Citizen Security personnel, UPI, UPR, information services, Canine Guides, Tedax-NRBQ, Subsoil, Cavalry or GEO. Also

of escort units.

*We must add the escorts of the 30 delegations.

Municipal police

and Mobility Agents

Mainly members of the Traffic Association and the Information services.

Agents only from the Madrid City Council, plus a number to be defined from other adjacent municipalities.

29 planes

McDonnell Douglas F-18 Hornet (C.15)

Fighter Unit of Wing-12, Group 45 (transport authorities), 47 Mixed Group (Transport and Intelligence Unit), SatCen (Satellite Center of the European Union). In addition, troops from the General Headquarters of the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Command of the Army and members of the CNI will be mobilized.

Wing Unit-12

600 military

Squad 121, ‘Poker’ and Squad 122, ‘Tennis’.

Municipal police

and Mobility Agents

Mainly members of the Traffic Association and the Information services.

agents and military

total*

Agents only from the Madrid City Council, plus a number to be defined from other adjacent municipalities.

Citizen Security personnel, UPI, UPR, information services, Canine Guides, Tedax-NRBQ, Subsoil, Cavalry or GEO. Also

of escort units.

*We must add the escorts of the 30 delegations.

Fighter Unit of Wing-12, Group 45 (transport authorities), 47 Mixed Group (Transport and Intelligence Unit), SatCen (Satellite Center of the European Union). In addition, troops from the General Headquarters of the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Command of the Army and members of the CNI will be mobilized.

29 planes

McDonnell Douglas F-18 Hornet (C.15)

Wing Unit-12

600 military

Squad 121, ‘Poker’ and Squad 122, ‘Tennis’.

As State security sources have revealed to this newspaper, the security device, which began to be designed just days after the Atlantic Alliance chose Madrid for its meeting in June of last year, will be much larger than the operation launched in July 1997 in the capital, the last time that Spain hosted a NATO summit. Then, the consulted media explain, the main and “almost exclusive” fear was that ETA would attack the conclave. But now the threats come from three different sides: a jihadist attack, possible protests by violent anti-system groups and hypothetical sabotage of Russia and its sphere given the international crisis caused by the invasion of Ukraine.

The operation, insist those responsible for the Interior, will “far exceed” other enormous deployments in recent years, particularly those at the wedding of the King and Queen in May 2004 in Madrid just a few weeks after 11-M; the proclamation of Felipe VI in June 2014; the meetings during the Spanish presidency of the EU in 2002; and Benedict XVI’s visit to Valencia in 2006. In other words, the four references to major security devices in Spain in this 21st century.

triple threat

This triple threat – jihadism, violent anti-globalization and sabotage by ‘hostile’ countries – has caused the Interior and Defense to focus since the beginning of January on three different plans aside from classic terrestrial security: counterintelligence tracking by the National Cryptologic Center ( CCN), the technological heart of the CNI, to try to neutralize espionage networks; investigations by the information services of the Police and the Civil Guard in order to monitor calls by violent anti-militarist movements; and airspace shielding.

In the Department of National Security they already decided in February, coinciding with the start of the war in Ukraine, that it will be essential to declare a no-fly zone over a large part of the Community of Madrid and neighboring provinces in order to have authorization to shoot down any aircraft ( drones, ultralights, balloons…) that violates the restrictions.

The fear of a drone attack appears in many of the working documents of the coordination meetings between the heads of the departments of Grande-Marlaska and Robles. In fact, Spain and its partners are studying, as has already happened in other major NATO meetings, mobilizing an Awacs radar plane from the Alliance itself. In any case, the almost thirty F-18s of the 12th Wing of the Torrejón de Ardoz air base will be in a state of continuous pre-alert, as will almost the entire base during the two days that the summit lasts. Defense also wants to mobilize the troops of the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Command of the Army within this plan against aerial threats.

On land, the bulk of the deployment will be carried out by the National Police, which plans to send no less than 13,000 agents to the capital (including nearly 3,000 members of the UIP, riot police), who will be added to 12,000 officials from the capital that will be allocated to deployment. The operation, which has already forced the suspension and postponement of warrants and vacations in the corps, will involve all kinds of specialties of the institution (Citizen Security, UIP, UPR, information services, Dog Guides, Tedax-NRBQ, Underground, Cavalry, Central Protection Unit or GEO).

Biden’s escorts

Also on the ground will be the security teams and escorts of the participating countries, whose data is kept in the greatest secrecy, although it is known that only the US delegation moves a hundred agents for the protection of the president, Joe Biden.

The epicenter of the security deployment will be Ifema, the Madrid convention center. Security will be extreme in the two pavilions reserved for the event (9 and 10). The 200,000 square meters of Ifema will be protected by a triple security ring and within this ‘fortress’, in pavilion 1, the Cecor will be established, the coordination center for the entire security device. It is very likely that Line 8 of Parque de las Naciones, where Ifema is located, will be partially suspended. In fact, Interior values ​​asking companies close to Ifema to implement teleworking on those days.

Beyond the fair space, Interior intends to shield other "strategic points" of the summit such as the Barajas airport, the Torrejón base, the Royal Palace (where there will be a reception), the Prado Museum (where a dinner will be held), the twenty hotels where the delegations will stay and the 40 kilometers of priority lanes for the delegations from their hotels to the fair or the airports.