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 property of 4,200 square meters located very close to the T2 terminal where the agents and vehicles will be located that currently serve there, mainly dedicated to public safety and traffic management tasks. Initially, 273 cash will be assigned to it. The forecast is that the installation will be ready and can be put into service in a few months, since the adaptation works that need to be done are of a small volume.
The agreement, to which La Vanguardia has had access, was signed by the president of Aena, Maurici Lucena (he signed it on June 22); the Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena (June 16), and the general director of Heritage of the Generalitat, Josep Maria Aguirre (June 15). The text reminds us that the transfer made by the airport manager to the Generalitat is in compliance with the law, which obliges it to do so, free of charge and for an indefinite period, since it is “spaces necessary for to the provision of non-airport public services such as customs, people control and identification, external and internal security, meteorological information and external health”.
The Mossos have carried out comprehensive police functions at Barcelona airport since 2006, and do so in coordination with the National Police, with whom it shares public security powers, and the Civil Guard, mainly dedicated to border control. These last two bodies have spaces; not that of the Generalitat, which has been in a precarious situation since it arrived at this macro-infrastructure. Yes, it has complaint offices and citizen assistance in the T1 and T2 billing lobbies.
The assigned building is known as Nau 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 the one hand, it has offices, and on the other, a vehicle entrance. It is in very good condition, as it recently underwent renovations, so the adaptation works for police use, which will affect only part of the block, will be small, and its economic cost, too.
The police station will have operational and command functions, but not in front of the public, since the intention is that, at least initially, it will not have a public assistance or complaints office, because they already exist in the terminals. It will host personnel from the regional areas of Airport Security and Operational Resources (Traffic) of the South Metropolitan Police Region. In the future, the possibility has been raised that it will also have ARRO units, intended for public order.
In addition, it is planned that space in the building will be reserved for other uses by the Mossos while protective functions are carried out at the airport infrastructure. And also to guarantee the safety of people and the goods of the airport infrastructure in extraordinary situations, due to risks or emergencies, in collaboration with other institutions and public and private bodies.
Having these dependencies will also facilitate a greater presence of the Catalan police force at Barcelona airport, which is an infrastructure with very intensive use that, after the stoppage and brake of the pandemic, is again registering extremely high attendance figures (see box). The forecast is that the number of Mossos employees will increase as part of the expected growth in the entire territory thanks to the new 850 places that must leave each year from the Public Security Institute of Catalonia. The reinforcement, in fact, is already taking place. A recent example is the control of rental vehicles with a driver (VTC) so that they comply with the regulations, to which extra agents have been dedicated.
