The one between Spain and Morocco will be a high-risk match tomorrow. This is how the Ministry of the Interior and the Department of the Interior of the Generalitat understand it, which have sent circulars to the police officers of the police stations with the greatest presence of the Moroccan community so that they design a device that guarantees security after the meeting.
Whoever wins, the incidents that occurred in Belgium on the second day of the World Cup could be transferred to capitals such as Barcelona or Madrid. Some totally unexpected images that caught security managers in Brussels off guard.
Fans of the North African team took to the streets to celebrate the feat, leaving behind a large amount of damage to shops, cars and street furniture. The police ended up intervening in the streets in what ended up being a pitched battle. Cars were vandalized, containers burned, scooters and garbage cans set on fire. The uniformed men used water cannons, tear gas and armored vehicles. Two hours later the balance was almost twenty detainees.
The truth is that that same day, here in Barcelona, more than a thousand followers of the Moroccan team gathered in the Plaza de Catalunya to celebrate without any incidents being recorded. In any case, last week the headquarters asked each region manager for a device in the cities with the greatest presence of Moroccans, as is the case of Barcelona.
The device will have a strong presence of the Mobile Brigade and the Arro, concentrated mainly in the center of the city, but with an eye on the Artòs de Sarrià square, the scene of the calls of the extreme right.
The worst scenario at the security level, in any case. It would be the victory of Morocco and that among the thousands of people who take to the streets to celebrate it, take advantage of small groups to generate incidents. The device also has dozens of plainclothes agents, the so-called fura, who will be incorporated into the device.
The day in Barcelona will be followed from Cecor, the police coordination center, which will be installed in the police offices on Calle Bolívia and in which there will be those responsible for all the emergency services that will intervene during the device, from ambulances to firefighters.
The National Police has not prepared a special device for the Morocco-Spain match in the World Cup in Qatar. Although the agents of several of its units have been placed on preventive alert, including the Police Intervention Unit (UIP), better known as riot police, given the possibility of altercations in some communities, such as the Community of Madrid, the Valencian Community, the Region of Murcia and some parts of Andalusia, reports Conchi Lafraya.
In the more specific case of the city of Madrid, one of the city's security spokespersons, Mario Díaz, points out that the capital "is already within a municipal campaign for the Christmas holidays, which started on the 24th November and will last until after Christmas Eve, for this reason, there is already a special municipal police device made up of some 750 reinforcement agents on the busiest Christmas days, as it will be this Tuesday". To which he adds: "the municipal police will be in any case in preventive, and in constant contact with the national police (main competent in citizen security) and if movements or concentrations of fans are observed, they would intervene for that purpose."
These days, the city of Madrid is full of visitors and every effort will be made to avoid incidents after 6:00 p.m., the critical time after the game, which coincides with the start time of the Christmas lighting in the center of the city.
