It had been a long time, too long, since a Security Board in Barcelona had not ended with the general feeling of having done its homework and in a real and unimposed climate of coordination and collaboration. The mayor of Barcelona, ??Jaume Collboni, called yesterday’s extraordinary meeting to learn first-hand what each of the police forces operating in the Catalan capital was preparing for the Copa del América, which starts on August 22. .
The appointment had a specific and closed agenda. Three points: the Copa del América, the drought and the presentation of the new Barcelona Security Plan, a kind of roadmap for the next four years.
The preparations for the Copa del América have not been exempt in the last year from the competition debate between administrations. At the time, the Ministry of the Interior announced that the Mossos d’Esquadra would be responsible for the security of the event. It didn’t take even twenty-four hours for the Ministry of the Interior to warn that powers at sea correspond to the Civil Guard and that it, and not the Catalan police, would be in charge of monitoring the evidence.
In the end, common sense and responsibility have prevailed, and in recent weeks they have managed to overcome institutional friction and even isolate themselves from the tensions of the debate over who will assume responsibility for public security in Catalonia with the new Government at the head of the Generalitat.
The climate of harmony in which the Security Board was held had a lot to do with the fact that the Mossos leadership delegated the master plan for the event to Commissioner Carles Anfruns and that Commissioner Montse is increasingly established at the head of Barcelona. Estruch, which is the one that on a day-to-day basis, together with Mayor Rafael Tello, strives to work in coordination with the Urban Police.
With great discretion, Anfruns has achieved in recent months that all those involved in the security of the Copa del América felt that they had their space in the master plan that he has directed and that he presented at the meeting. A security plan for the Copa del América that the Mossos d’Esquadra has taken care of and whose leadership yesterday no one questioned.
The plan has ten specific programs that develop what will be done and how in matters such as citizen security, mobility, information… and so on up to ten sections.
Carles Anfruns for the Mossos; Mayor Pedro Velázquez for the Urban Guard; General Pedro Pizarro, responsible for the Civil Guard in Catalonia; the senior head of the National Police headquarters, Commissioner Manuel Rodríguez Jiménez, and Bernat Baró, for the port police, outlined the work carried out so far. And none of them went into detail about who would be in charge of doing what, among other things because it is yet to be determined in a Security Board of Catalonia, with the presence of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the current head of the Catalan department how the security management in the port area and on the high seas.
Nobody disputes that the Urban Guard will be in charge of patrolling with its two inflatable boats, and a third that will arrive these days, the first hundred meters from the beach line. And they will have a job, because they will have to prevent jet skis, surfboards or small boats from trying to sneak into the space next to the competition.
In Vilanova i la Geltrú, which last year hosted a preliminary round of the regattas, the Mossos d’Esquadra maritime police vessels were in charge of security in the port waters, guarding the teams on the way to the testing ground and all the security in that area.
For the event there are two possibilities on the table. One, that the Mossos are in charge of the port and the Civil Guard of the sea or that there is a connection and the devices in both spaces are joint. This issue will depend a lot on the political negotiations, more than on the criteria of the operational commanders, who yesterday made it clear at the Security Board that there is no one left over and that the will is to work in a coordinated manner.
The event will affect the entire city, and the master plan incorporates, at the request of the Urban Police, a section dedicated to coexistence. For the municipal police, it is essential to “take care” of the residents of the Barceloneta and Vila Olímpica neighborhoods so that during the 60 days that the competition lasts they suffer as little as possible.
In terms of citizen security, the plan has been designed by four hands between the Mossos and the Urban Police. The spaces in the city with the most incidence have been sectored and distributed.
Analysts do not believe that the competition implies a massive arrival of criminals with the desire to make a killing by taking advantage of the high purchasing power of the public that brings together the America’s Cup, beyond the groups of thieves who usually, with regattas or not, choose Barcelona to operate in the summer months.
