Read Catalan version
Next Thursday, September 14, all smart mobile phones with coverage in the Barcelona district will receive a test message from the Generalitat’s Civil Protection alert system. The test will take place between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. in the regions of Barcelonès, Vallès Occidental, Vallès Oriental, Maresme and Baix Llobregat, and will be the largest population outreach that has been done so far in Catalonia.
The objective of sending massive messages is to test the alert system and familiarize the population. The text will be the following: “CIVIL PROTECTION ALERT TEST OF THE GENERALITAT OF CATALONIA. IT’S A DRILL. “Do not call 112. In a real emergency you would receive instructions to protect yourself.”
The tests will be carried out at different times:
• At 10 a.m. in the municipalities of Vallès Oriental, Maresme, Sant Adrià del Besòs, Badalona and Santa Coloma de Gramenet
• At 11 a.m. on mobile phones in Barcelona
• At 12 pm in the municipalities of Vallès Occidental
• At 1 pm in Baix Llobregat and Hospitalet de Llobregat
All smart mobile phones in the area, and also all those of people passing through by road or rail, will receive the alert on their mobile phone.
The messages are clearly identified because they are headed by the text “Civil Protection Alert”, or by the text “Presidential Alert”, depending on the mobile phone’s configuration, and remain on the screen until the “accept” button is pressed. .
The sound is loud and strident, different from the rest of the device sounds, and the notification is also accompanied by vibration. At the time of the test, all mobile phones will ring and vibrate simultaneously, even if they are silent.
People who, for work reasons or because they have a high sensitivity to certain sounds, do not want to receive it, will have to put the phone in airplane mode or turn it off.
The latest generation mobile devices have alert reception activated by default. They are Android version 11 or higher and iOS version 15.6 or higher. In the case of older cell phones, it is necessary to configure them to receive alerts following these instructions.
The system of mass mailings to mobile phones is very useful, since it allows massive dissemination in a very short space of time. It will be used only in serious emergency situations and where Civil Protection determines that it is necessary to give instructions to the population, such as, for example, confinement in the event of a chemical accident or floods, among others.
To evaluate the alert system, the Generalitat will enable, as has also been done in the four previous tests, a survey for citizens to report whether or not they have received the message, in what language, what company they are from, etc. It is an anonymous survey that does not collect any personal data.
So far, Civil Protection has carried out four tests of the alert system on the population’s mobile phones to test the tool and familiarize the population. The first, on February 28 in Lleida, Alt Pirineu and Aran; the second, on April 12 in the veguerías of Tarragona, Terres de l’Ebre and Penedès, in which an error occurred in the sending that meant that many telephones did not receive the message; the third, on April 27 in the veguerías of Central Catalonia and Girona, and the fourth, on June 13 to repeat the test in the veguerías of Tarragona, Terres de l’Ebre and Penedès.
Likewise, the system has already been used in various real emergencies such as fires or the recent downpours in Alcanar.