7 May 2020
The pro-independence government of the Generalitat must be the only one of a democratic nature who make it possible, and a little more, destroy its own police: “The Mossos”.
The body of the Mossos is the integral police of Catalonia and has all the ordinary competences in matters of citizen security and public order, as well as the control of road safety. It is the most visible crystallization of a historical demand, which was not achieved with the Statute of Autonomy of the Second Republic, where although the President of the Generalitat was the first authority, also in police command, the Mossos were a small residual unit , and security was in charge of the police and the Civil Guard, called from 1936 “Republican National Guard”.
In fact, the Catalan police is one of the few “state structures”, a concept popularized by the pro-independence process, that really are available and work, and without a doubt the one with the greatest dimension and responsibility.
Despite all this, the clashes and contempt, if not contradictory indications by the Government of the Generalitat are continuous. The anomalous situation that, while on the one hand the street protests are encouraged, on the other the Catalan police were ordered to contain them, and then the government opens disciplinary proceedings against them in the perspective of possible sanctions for improper police actions. Normally, the political leadership of these bodies rather try to protect them, in the Catalan case tends to work in reverse. The result is that, for broad sectors of pro-independence movement, what they call “their” police, has become one more enemy of their long list.
But now this series of disagreements and conflicts have reached a zenith because it affects the health of the police themselves, and by extension their families. The absurd situation is experienced that 1,500 agents, including the mayor, are confined to quarantine as possible carriers of the coronavirus and for lack of evidence of contagion to confirm or deny it.
In the last three weeks the Mossos, exercising a task in the front line of contagion, have not been the subject of a single test. Not only that, but also their protective equipment is clearly insufficient, which represents a permanent risk for its members. The police that were in charge of monitoring the confinement of Igualada and four other municipalities in the de Odena Basin had to carry out their work with little more than a surgical mask, despite being a high risk area. The conflict has reached such a high level that it has brought together a meeting of all the high command of the body to establish a common demand before the government.
For more absurdity, the Interior regional minister Buch, head of the police of JuntsxCatalunya, accuses the Health regional minister Vergés of ERC, of the lack of diagnostic tests before the olympic disappearance of Torra. Can the public appearance of two regional ministers be conceived in a government without the intervention of the President? What and who is really in charge of Torra? Or is he really just a simple influencer just thinking about his tweets?
The crisis has multiplied because simultaneously there has been another abuse. When the government established an extra pay for the bodies that are in the front line of the fight against the virus, they “forgot” police, which is still an indicator of how far they keep it in mind.
The surprising thing about the case is that despite conflicts of this magnitude and terrible results in the management of the coronavirus, which makes Catalonia, together with Madrid, one of the territories with the most deaths per inhabitant in all of Europe, the pro-independence movement seems to continue registering good electoral supports. Of course there is also an explanation for this anomaly: the alternatives are not exactly for launching rockets. Could we call this a dead end?
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