Against all odds, the Ministry of the Interior officially opened this Tuesday, just before the Government came into office due to early elections, the process to elect and appoint a new major in the Mossos d’Esquara. A call open to all commissioners of the Catalan police, but tailored to the current chief commissioner, Eduard Sallent, whom the team of Minister Joan Ignasi Elena and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) want to protect in case the Interior portfolio falls after the elections in the hands of another police formation.
The Official Gazette of the Generalitat (DOGG) publishes this Tuesday a resolution dated last Friday, March 15 – before President Pere Aragonès signed precisely yesterday the decree dissolving the Parliament of Catalonia and the call for the Catalan elections on May 12, to open the process to appoint, through the free designation system, a second major in the Mossos.
The announcement of the Interior’s willingness to call for this second senior vacancy was announced by La Vanguardia two weeks ago. After a meeting of Catalan police officers in the assembly hall of the Egara police complex, in Sabadell, the general director of the police, Pere Ferrer, made the announcement. A news that, despite being predictable, caught the vast majority of Mossos officials by surprise, except for the most interested one, Chief Commissioner Sallent. At that time and later in official conversations with journalists, the Interior justified the call to, they stated, “correct the anomaly of having a person in charge of the body who does not hold the highest professional category.” At the moment, Sallent is the head of the Mossos, but Major Josep Lluís Trapero is the highest-ranking police officer, despite the fact that in recent months his presence has been avoided in many official events, as he is not even summoned. Trapero is in charge of the Services Analysis Division (DAS).
Last week, rumors circulated of a consultation that the police management had made to the Interior’s legal services to confirm whether they could go ahead with the call. And it was at that moment that the deputy in the socialist group of the Parliament, Ramon Espadaler, who warned that Elena “should reflect on whether it is democratically neat to call the mayor’s seat in injury time” and that “forcing the machine” was doing a disservice. both to the police organization and to the interested party. This Tuesday, Espadaler raised the tone: “Desperate government, without any type of respect or institutional sense.”
Although the square is designed solely and exclusively for Eduard Sallent, at the time, there was more than one police station of the eight women who hold that stripe in the Mossos, who communicated to their trusted circles that they did not rule out the possibility of presenting themselves.
In December 2021, Major Josep Lluís Trapero, who was then in charge of the Mossos, was dismissed by Minister Joan Igansi Elena. In the arguments used for his dismissal and the appointment of Commissioner Josep Maria Estela, the Government made reference to a need to propose a new style of leadership in the police that is more “transversal, choral, rejuvenated, feminine and without so much protagonism of one person.” .
