El Prat airport will soon have a Mossos d’Esquadra police station. It will not be open to the public, but it will be key to the development of the work of this body, which does not have its own dependencies in this critical infrastructure. Aena and the Department of the Interior have signed an agreement whereby the airport company will transfer to the Generalitat police a 4,200-square-meter building located very close to Terminal T2, where the agents and vehicles that currently operate will be located. They serve there, mainly dedicated to citizen security and traffic management tasks. Initially, 273 troops will be assigned to it. The forecast is that the installation will be ready in a few months and can be put into service since the adaptation works that have to be done are of little volume.
The agreement, to which La Vanguardia has had access, has been signed by the president of Aena, Maurici Lucena (he did so on June 22); the Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena (June 16) and the general director of Patrimoni de la Generalitat, Josep Maria Aguirre (June 15). The text recalls that the assignment made by the airport manager to the Generalitat is in compliance with the law, which obliges him to do so, free of charge and for an indefinite period of time, as these are “spaces necessary for the provision of services non-airport public entities, such as customs, people control and identification, external and internal security, meteorological information and external health”.
The Mossos have been carrying out comprehensive police functions at the Barcelona airport since 2006, and they do so in coordination with the National Police, with which they share citizen security powers, and the Civil Guard, mainly dedicated to border control. These last two bodies have spaces; not so that of the Generalitat, which since it arrived at the airport is in precarious condition. It does have offices for complaints and attention to citizens in the billing halls of T1 and T2.
The assigned property is known as Nave A and is near building C of T2 and the old control tower. It has a ground floor plus two floors and a third level of small dimensions. On one side it has offices and on the other a vehicle entrance. It is in very good condition since reforms were recently carried out, so that the adaptation works for police uses, which will affect a part of the block, will be small and their cost will also be cheap.
The police station will have operational and command functions but not for the public since the intention is that, at least initially, it will not have a citizen service office or complaints office, which already exist in the terminals. It will host troops from the regional areas of Airport Security and Operational Resources (Traffic) of the South Metropolitan Police Region. For later, the possibility of it also having ARRO units, destined for public order, has been raised.
In addition, it is planned that space in the building will be reserved for other uses of the Mossos while protection functions are carried out in the airport infrastructure. And also to guarantee the safety of people and property in the airport infrastructure in extraordinary situations, due to risks or emergencies, in collaboration with other institutions and public and private organizations.
Having these units will also facilitate a greater presence of the Catalan police force at the Barcelona airport, which is an infrastructure with very intensive use that, after the stoppage and the slowdown of the pandemic, once again registers very high traffic figures (see box). The forecast is that the number of Mossos troops will grow within the framework of the expected growth throughout the territory thanks to the new 850 posts that must leave the Public Security Institute of Catalonia every year. The reinforcement, in fact, is already taking place. A recent example is the control of rental vehicles with driver (VTC) so that they comply with the regulations, to which extra agents have been dedicated.
