Raúl achieved his dream of being a national police officer on May 20. However, the satisfaction that day, in which he was sworn in in an act presided over by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, was not complete because then he already knew that his first destination was the one he least wanted: Catalonia. “I had assumed it because, by the note, he was one of the last to choose, but he annoyed me. He wanted to go to Madrid”, says Raúl, a fictitious name like that of the rest of the agents interviewed in this report. At 22 years old, this rookie police officer admits that his rejection is the result of the fear of encountering “a hostile environment.” For this reason, he is clear that, when the two years that he must inevitably be in this destination have passed, he will request the transfer. To which? “Anyone else, whoever he is,” he says.
He is one of the 2,523 policemen of the last class to leave the Ávila Police Academy. Of these, 750 have been assigned to Catalonia. Most are those with the worst grades and, therefore, were the last to choose their destination. Of the 624 agents with the lowest qualifications, 610 will necessarily go to this community and the remaining 14, to Ibiza, another place that is not much in demand, in this case due to the high cost of housing. On the contrary, among the half a thousand students with the best grades —and who, therefore, had preference to choose a destination— only eight have requested Catalonia. You have to go down to post 104 to find the first one. He has asked to go to Tarragona.
The situation goes back a long way, but it worsened after the outbreak of the process in 2017. Since then, Interior has had to send a significant part of the police officers from the new promotions to Catalonia. It is, in fact, the second community that receives the most, only behind Madrid, to which this year 1,453 will arrive. However, the reasons for these high figures in both communities are very different.
In Madrid, the workforce is the largest in Spain, with nearly 15,000 agents, since, in addition to the territorial deployment necessary to guarantee citizen security in its cities, it concentrates the body’s central services, which is why reinforcements are always required. On the contrary, in Catalonia, where the Mossos d’Esquadra are a comprehensive police force and, therefore, the functions of the National Police are reduced, the official workforce is 3,650 agents, one fifth. In this case, rookie officers are also sent to replace the many policemen who ask for and get their transfer to other places every year.
María studied engineering and has two master’s degrees, but in the end a relative who was a police officer convinced her to follow in his footsteps. This thirtysomething will also go to Catalonia. “I knew that possibility existed, but when I found out, I was left in shock“, He says. On June 20 he has to appear at the Superior Headquarters, in Barcelona. “During practices, the veterans warned me to avoid Catalonia and if I didn’t, to ask for a transfer as soon as I could,” he adds. Despite this advice, he does not rule out staying. “It depends on whether I like the job I get,” he says. However, he admits that those comments have influenced him and that he will take precautions to avoid the problems that those colleagues predicted for him: “I will avoid saying what I do for a living.”
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The police unions denounce that the political tension caused by the processwhich had its culminating moments in the illegal referendum of October 1, 2017 and the subsequent events, as well as in the serious altercations after the sentence against the sovereignist leaders in 2019, is one of the causes of the scarce roots of the police stationed there .
Carlos Morales, spokesman for the Unified Police Union (SUP), speaks of “maximum hostility and social suffocation” despite the improvement in the political situation, and assures that the agents “are victims of daily harassment from the most radical sectors with the open complicity of some Catalan institutions”. Pablo Pérez, from Police Justice (Jupol, the majority union), emphasizes this idea: “It not only affects the professional level, but also the family.”
However, this is not the only reason for the flight of agents from Catalonia. The unions admit that there is one that comes from afar: a high cost of living that is not compensated by the supplement of territoriality that they receive. The police officers who work in the city of Barcelona earn a bonus of 58 euros per month (44 in the rest of Catalonia). This amount is much lower than what an agent in Madrid charges for the same concept (194 euros in the capital and 188 in the rest of the community), in the Canary Islands (154) in the Balearic Islands (153) or in the Basque Country and Navarra. (716 euros).
The unions have been demanding for years that Catalonia be declared a Special Singularity Zone (ZES), like these last two communities, in order to increase the amount of this supplement. Morales, from SUP, is convinced that this “would make this destination more attractive.” Pérez, from Jupol, also advocates giving “more vacation days.”
Despite his regret, Antonio was assigned to Catalonia when he was sworn in as a police officer in 2007. Now, 14 years later, he has a few days left to “finally” change his place of work. “I wanted to leave since I arrived, but I decided to wait until I had a secure place in Galicia, where my family is from,” he adds. Resident in the Barcelona region of El Maresme, an area that he defines as “not as conflictive” for the police as others, he affirms that he has lived “comfortably” because of the proximity of the sea and the good weather. Antonio assures that, not even in the worst moments of the process he had problems with his social environment, but when asked if he would ask to return to Catalonia, he answered. “I do not close that door, but I find it difficult to do so.”
The unions also criticize the lack of an attractive police career in Catalonia, since the powers of the mossos The functions of the National Police have been curtailed. David is from Asturias and has been in Barcelona since 2006, where he asked to be posted after getting one of the best grades in his class. The reason: his partner was from there. He assures that he does not consider requesting the transfer. However, he believes that the situation of him and his colleagues could be improved and regrets that they lost their citizen security functions, which, in his opinion, prevents normalizing the presence of the National Police in uniform in the Catalan streets on the day a day. “It seems that we only dedicate ourselves to repressing demonstrations, when we do a lot of investigative work against crime,” he says. Despite what other veterans say, he is convinced that going to Catalonia “is not a punishment. I tell the rookies when they arrive.”
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