Interior finalizes a rule to prevent the stampede of agents harassed by the independence movement, but also by drug traffickers or the cost of housing
The differences between some situations and others are abysmal, but the recipes to try to avoid the stampede are similar. The Ministry of the Interior is drawing inspiration from the so-called Zocon, the ‘Conflict Zone Complement’ that the Government has paid since 1980 to national police and civil guards stationed in the Basque Country and Navarra, to try to encourage the arrival and, above all, the Permanence of Benemérita agents in the most hated areas today as a professional destination: Catalonia, due to the harassment of the independentistas, and the Campo de Gibraltar, due to the pressure of the drug traffickers.
Fernando Grande-Marlaska himself in recent weeks has promised before the representatives of the main professional groups to approve this 2022 a regulatory framework that allows the declaration of ‘Zones of Special Singularity’ (ZES). The creation of these areas has been a claim in the body since 2017, as recalled by Pedro Carmona, the national spokesman for the Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC), the group that for the first time, during the Catalan procés, claimed a similar plan, but not the same, to that of the hard years of ETA, after “the most radical independence movement and part of the Catalan political class put the civil guards and their families, and particularly the children, in their target”.
According to sources close to the development of the project, as in the Zocon, the declaration of the ZES will have as its main axis an economic plus for agents who agree to go to Catalonia or the areas most affected by crime in Campo de Gibraltar, such as La Línea. In the Government, for the moment, they do not believe that it is possible to extend these ZES to another of the destinations least desired by the agents, the Balearic Islands (particularly Ibiza and Menorca), due to the extremely high prices of housing.
43 million
The amount that these destinations will carry is yet to be determined and at the expense of the Treasury’s calculations clarifying whether it will be possible to reach the almost 700 euros gross per month that Interior officials charge for dangerousness in the Basque Country and the Autonomous Community. And it is that the disbursement is important: the plus for the agents ‘from the North’ exceeds 43 million euros per year.
But not everything will be money. There will be more days off and, as in the Basque Country and Navarra, the Interior experts are also studying giving points for the transfer to other areas to the guards who choose to pass through Catalonia or the Strait. However, the main professional group of the body, Jucil, does not fully share this last point because “in reality what is promoted with this preferential right to choose a destination as payment for the services provided is that areas such as Catalonia or the Campo de Gibraltar are only conceived as places of passage or punishment. And what we want is for the agents to have enough incentives to stay for at least a decade”, says Agustín Leal, communication secretary of Jucil.
This professional group has demanded from the minister that these SEZs carry housing aid, so that officials can settle in less conflictive places, and, especially in the case of Catalonia, scholarships for the children of uniformed men from outside the community can study in schools with teaching mostly in Spanish.
“Stick Situations”
The decision to give the green light to the SEZs, which had been suspected since last June, has been controversial, since the Marlaska team from the beginning did not look favorably on declaring the “uniqueness” of Catalonia or the Strait, since –they explain- was as much as recognizing that “there were entrenched situations, almost unsolvable”.
But the figures have finally forced to launch the project. According to Carmona, the data from an internal AUGC survey have revealed that 30% of the nearly 3,000 guards stationed in Catalonia want to leave. According to data from Jucil, in Campo de Gibraltar 7.5% of the workforce is missing according to the catalog of jobs which, in any case -explains Leal- «is well below an area overwhelmed by work due to drug trafficking and illegal immigration networks. The Jucil spokesman maintains that the situation in Catalonia is so dangerous that there are about 900 agents missing, which means that 21% of the workforce is uncovered.
AUGC, for its part, in its meetings with those responsible for the Interior, in addition to defending the ZES declaration of Catalonia and Campo de Gibraltar, has defended that the whole of the province of Cádiz and the Costa del Sol are also considered unique areas , since it considers that the social pressure of drug traffickers and their environment extends its tentacles to these demarcations.
.