The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, will chair his second Local Security Board in February. It will not be easy. It will be held in the midst of a serious institutional crisis between the Mossos d'Esquadra and the Barcelona Urban Police, as official sources from both institutions admit to La Vanguardia.
The deterioration of relations has been going on for a long time and coincides with the arrival of Commissioner Eduard Sallent to the police headquarters and his project, shared with director Pere Ferrer, and the current Interior leadership, to “homogenize” relations with all municipal police. Treat them all equally. A kind of coffee for everyone without going into singularities. In Barcelona, the objective is to “recover” and “organize” powers, such as investigation, which by law do not correspond to the municipal police, but the scarcity of police forces and the growth of the Urban Police has meant that de facto the assume in very specific cases.
At first the situation was tricked, but in recent months relations have deteriorated until reaching a serious crisis that was staged in a meeting that was held in the Interior on November 27. Jaume Collboni and Minister Joan Ignasi Elena participated, with their respective teams, among which were Commissioner Sallent; the chief commissioner of Barcelona, Montserrat Estruch; the mayor of the Urban Guard Pedro Velázquez; the director of the police, and the deputy mayor for Security, Albert Batlle. “The meeting was a disaster,” attendees from both delegations agree.
The appointment started well. It was necessary to catch up on security issues and reflect on the 2023 statistics, which were not good despite the enormous police activity of both forces. And also discuss this generalized idea of the perception of insecurity that is rooted inside and outside of Barcelona and that no longer depends on whether complaints rise or fall at the end of the year. It was at the end when the councilor warned the mayor that the Urban Guard was acting with “disloyalty” towards the Mossos and that operational coordination on the street “does not work.” Batlle, Velázquez and the Security Manager, Maite Casado, did not hide their perplexity and replied to some harsh accusations that Sallent and Ferrer verbalized. That night, Collboni phoned his team to convey his confidence and promise that he will work to redirect the situation with Elena.
Since that day things have gone from bad to worse, but not at the operational level, where uniformed officers and commanders, from the last patrol to Velázquez and Estruch, have managed, for the moment, to avoid the crisis and save that coordination.
But what has happened? This crisis can be explained in many ways. Each party has arguments to defend its position, but there are objective elements. In recent years, the Urban Police has grown, and not only in numbers, and has been reinforced and specialized at a rate that has allowed it to allocate police officers to essential problems for the city and to those who offered to work with the Mossos. The fight against small-scale drug trafficking was his first big bet, and the setting was Ciutat Vella. The then head of the Nou de la Rambla police station created a joint investigation team to fight against drug trafficking in which he incorporated four urban guards who worked hand in hand with the police. They had their locker at the Mossos police station. They were one more. That first joint investigation team, with a sub-inspector, a corporal and half a dozen agents, began the great never-ending battle against the drug dealers. And the results were spectacular.
The following Mossos commanders decided to break up that group, not its functioning. The urban guards had to return to their police station, but maintain the joint equipment. And that is how a protocol was systematized by which each case generated the creation of a joint investigation team in which the urban guards could act as secretaries in the proceedings.
This month, the Mossos informed the Urban Police that the time had come to put an end to the joint teams, that the Catalan police regained investigative powers and that local police officers would no longer appear as secretaries.
The announcement fell like a bomb on the Barcelona police, whose officials felt “belittled” and “ignored.” They warned the Mossos that they alone would not be able to maintain the current pace of work. In the last four years, these joint teams have intervened in 400 public health actions and have closed an average of almost one drug house a week.
The Mossos defend their position. “Nothing has changed or should change,” they say. The new project to “order” the actions of the municipal police comes directly from Egara, headquarters of the headquarters, and the person in charge of executing it is the mayor Sònia Rius. A fully trusted command of Sallent, the mayor met on Wednesday in the Free Zone with those responsible for investigation of the Urban Police to specify the new plan.
The Catalan police warn that “giving the Urban Police powers that it does not have puts investigations at risk,” and hence they want to offer them “legal protection.” They add to their reproaches that the Urban Police do not respond favorably to requests to help the Mossos in the transfer of detainees to the courts or the repeated refusal to provide automated access to municipal data and images from City Hall cameras.
It has been difficult for the Urban Police to accept the setback. It ranged from working with the National Police on public health cases to going to the court on duty to try to judicialize their investigations. It would not be the first municipal police force to do so. Nor did he rule out giving up the fight against drugs and leaving the Mossos alone, even knowing that many of those first pieces of information that warn of the presence of a narco-piso come from neighbors who transfer them as nuisances to the Urban Police.
How the model will work remains to be seen. To begin with, the Urban Police will transfer the data it obtains on drug-related conflicts to the Mossos. And in each case it will be assessed whether they work together despite not appearing in the proceedings.
For the moment, this plan to recover powers does not affect the urban guards who appear daily as secretaries in the reports, mostly for theft, that are drawn up by the specialized unit, in which they coexist with the police. In fact, there are prosecutors in Barcelona, such as the Immigration Prosecutor, Pilar Izaguirre, who strengthens joint teams with the Mossos, the National Police and the Urban Police in her investigations against human trafficking.
It is difficult to predict the evolution of the problem. At a time when statistics are not good, touching a work system that was working in a matter as complex as drugs could have its consequences.
Public health is not the only element of distortion. Last year, the Urban Police took a giant step in terms of preventing sexist violence by opening offices to collect complaints. Welcoming spaces that offer various services and have an excellent rating from victims. A bet that has stressed the Mossos leadership, which rejected the invitation to share those offices in Ciutat Vella and Nou Barris. They have also declined to be in the new coordination room of the Urban Police that is being built in Paral·lel.
Relations between the Urban Police and the Mossos date back to an agreement in 2004. 20 years have passed and neither the city nor the police are the same as they were then. Today no one dares to open the melon of a new agreement that defines what each person has to do. Although the city deserves it.
