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More police officers, more doctors, more teachers. This is the maxim of the Government of the Generalitat and that is why, in relation to the security forces, the Catalan executive has put all its efforts into increasing the number of police men and women during the last legislature. Specifically, the police force of the Generalitat de Catalunya currently has a staff ceiling of 22,006 agents agreed with the State Government in the last Security Board of Catalonia.
More mossos to be closer to the people and the reality of the country. So far in this legislature, a total of 2,540 new positions have been announced in three calls, two of them this year. Likewise, in 2021 there were 16,916 agents in the Mossos d'E squadra, and currently, in October 2023, there are 18,643 officers. Thus, today, there are another 1,727 mossos and the force grew by 10.21%.
Likewise, the Department of the Interior has seen how the total budgets that the Generalitat of Catalonia has, in regards to the Department of the Interior, have increased by almost 400 million euros since last 2020.
In 2021, the Generalitat of Catalonia faced its challenges with budgets carried over from 2020. Then the budget of the Ministry of the Interior was 1,430 million euros of the total available to the Generalitat. In the last 2023 budget, the amount allocated to security policies was 1,814 million euros, another 383 million, an increase of 26.8%.
These numbers of Mossos d'Esquadra agents have also been achieved thanks to the early retirement process of many of the active force of the force. Something that makes possible, firstly, a good sizing of the workforce and, secondly, the generational change to update the police force of Catalonia with the 2030 horizon.
In the same way that security policies and updating the human resources of the police forces is one of the priorities of the Government of the Generalitat, so is resolving the disinvestment and cuts in the Fire Department of the Generalitat and Rural Agents. For this reason, between last year and this year, more than 700 new access positions for the fire department have been announced.
This year 2023 alone, the Government of the Generalitat has called for 540 positions for firefighters and 300 for volunteer firefighters. And to reverse the cutback policies, the Department of the Interior will maintain the current pace of recruiting 250 new positions per year with the aim of reaching 3,300 troops in the Generalitat Firefighters Corps next year 2026.
With the same objective of solving the years of disinvestment, the Generalitat has called for 200 positions for new Rural Agents.
The Department of the Interior has reinforced the technical means available to the Mossos d'Esquadra force: with more vehicles, with the renewal of the force's mobile fleet, with a new uniformity and with more technological resources at the disposal of the police, such as drones, vehicle access to images of all vehicles, aerial means and the modernization of scientific police.
Similarly, this effort has been made with the Fire Department with 18.3 million euros that will allow the incorporation of 40 new vehicles. During 2024 and 2025, the Department of the Interior will invest more than 37 million euros that will allow the incorporation of 170 new vehicles of various types.
