The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, yesterday accompanied the Mossos d'Esquadra in their day of celebration, the day of the Squads, in which the commands of the police force decorated the agents for the most outstanding actions. With his presence, Aragonès wanted to send a message of support to the new police leadership, with councilor Joan Ignasi Elena, the director of the police, Pere Ferrer, and the new head of the Mossos, chief commissioner Eduard Sallent, at the helm , whose appointment plunged the police into a period of upheaval. First, after the dismissal of commissioner Josep Lluís Trapero in December 2021, and after Josep Maria Estela, who was dismissed just ten months after being appointed.
The chief commissioner, Eduard Sallent, pledged to open a new stage for the Mossos with a change in "leadership styles" and in the body's management systems as well as implementing "a generational shift".
Both the president and the councilor concluded the controversy that had its climax when the discrepancies between Estela and Sallent, who was then his number two, were blown up, and they look to the future in order to consolidate a model that must 'face new realities such as cybercrime and improving the protection of victims of sexual crimes. Councilor Joan Ignasi Elena emphasized that the Mossos have recovered from the "difficult stage" experienced during the process, which had Trapero and the Interior's excupula investigated for sedition by 1-O and entrusted to turn the page and open a new stage of expansion and assumption of new competences, such as maritime. "It is necessary to continue consolidating the integral police by land, sea and air and also in the networks at the level of the best European police", he said.
The president of the Generalitat took up the gauntlet and pledged to provide the police force with more resources to be able to face the new challenges posed by crime. "We will give it an unprecedented boost", he promised. “Every modern and advanced country must provide welfare to its citizens and this can never be separated from security. Without security you cannot talk about well-being, progress and prosperity", he stressed.
The main lines on which the current Department of the Interior wants to build the Mossos of the future go through the modernization, rejuvenation, feminization and increase of the local police.
One of the axes that councilor Elena emphasized the most was the commitment to feminization, for which he has reserved 40% of the places for women in the calls for access to the police force. "It is the best way to have a police force that reflects the reality of today's society", he assured. The measure, warned Elena, "will not only affect new agents, but will also apply to all internal promotions". Another of the initiatives that the councilor congratulated was the increase in investment, which has tripled the budget granted seven years ago and which has made it possible to increase the workforce to 22,000 agents.
During the event, which lasted more than two hours, 289 officers were decorated and recognized for their professional career and for their meritorious actions. For example, an off-duty officer who saved a drowning family in the Garonne last August or the investigators who solved the brutal rape of a minor in Igualada.
