The first chained detonations of shots from a long blank weapon caused the effect that was sought: a generalized awe, imagining for a moment that the simulation could have been real. At half past one in the morning this Friday, with Barcelona’s Sants station completely empty of passengers after the arrival and departure of the last trains, half a dozen suspected terrorists broke into various points of the railway infrastructure simulating a stroke. The drill, designed by the Mossos d’Esquadra, and with the participation of all actors linked to public and private security, served to stage a response not only of the police, but also of medical emergencies and civil protection, to an assault organized with firearms, knives, hostages and one of the escaped assailants who managed to avoid the cage device and leave the city of Barcelona.
Half a thousand people participated in the drill, of which about 200 were public services. The rest were extras, from the security ranks and health technicians, who pretended to be users of the station. To give greater realism to the scene, a group of professional makeup artists were in charge of characterizing the users who were injured or directly killed during the assault. A young woman had a knife stabbed next to her neck, others had several bullet entry and exit holes… a long list of wounds that allowed testing the sequence of screening of injured people by the Emergències Health Service. Doctors (SEM).
The effectiveness of the drill meant that none of the police operatives participating had to know the movements of the terrorists inside the station. Some information was leaked, but that did not stop the scene’s councilor from setting the tone with which the different services that were activated accessed and acted.
The first to act after the first shots and the runs and screams of the passengers who were caught in the assault in the lobby were the private security personnel who work at the station hired by Adif. They were in charge of starting the device by alerting 112. The first to act were the police stationed at the Sants station itself, where they have a small unit, then citizen security from the district and the Urban Guard joined in. From that moment on it was a parade of practically all the central services of the Mossos d’Esquadra, from the Tedax to the canine, underground, passing through technical means, telecommunications, Arro, Mobile Brigade and the GEI that acted on the platforms of the station, where the terrorists had managed to detain several passengers of an AVE.
The drill began to take shape before the pandemic. In fact, it had been too long since Adif had requested Civil Protection to carry out the annual drill required by law, to put into practice the self-protection plan (PAU) for critical infrastructure. Nine months ago, Civil Protection proposed to the Mossos to design a maximum simulation, involving as many services as possible. The conflict in the Middle East came later and although the connotations it could have were valued due to the widespread awareness of the international context and its derivatives, it was decided to continue with the experiment.
Barcelona’s social emergencies, the Red Cross, the CAT112 emergency telephone number and the Rescat network, as well as the Barcelona Bombers, TMB and Renfe, also participated in the drill.
