On the 19th at five in the afternoon, the minister of the interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, and the mayor Jaume Collboni will preside over the Barcelona Security Board. An appointment that the top political leaders of the Mossos d’Esquadra and the Urban Guard of the Catalan capital hope to reach with a minimum agreement that will allow them to appear before the media, approaching positions after the serious institutional crisis they are going through and what La Vanguardia reported this week.
An information that no one has denied and that precisely forced the calling of yesterday’s appointment. The venue for the meeting was Barcelona City Hall in the afternoon.
For Interior, the director of the Catalan police, Pere Ferrer, the commissioner and head of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Eduard Sallent, and the commissioner responsible for Barcelona, ??Montserrat Estruch, presented themselves. At the Consistory, the manager of Security and Mobility, Maite Casado, the mayor and head of the Urban Guard, Pedro Velázquez, and the mayor and head of communication of the municipal police, Jordi Oliveras, were waiting for them.
The meeting was “cordial”, as confirmed yesterday by sources from the two delegations, who agreed to meet again, perhaps not these same six responsible, before the Security Council to continue moving forward and smoothing over the differences.
The starting point was not easy, and more so after the institutional crisis that was beginning to affect the operational field was revealed by this newspaper.
In the end, the Interior and the City Council have agreed that neither institution is interested in maintaining a situation that directly harms the safety of the city of Barcelona and the people of Barcelona.
All this, even less at the doors of a Security Council that will not be simple, because the figures that will be exposed are very bad, as several sources have confirmed.
The first semester of 2023 is much worse than the second, which recovered a little in relation to the previous year, but even so, the trend of increase in almost all criminal chapters is general and worrisome. Hence the shared desire of the political leaders of Barcelona’s security not to present themselves to the media with bad figures and, moreover, without being able to maintain institutional cooperation. The six attendees at the meeting are confident that joint research teams can be maintained in subjects such as public health.
