BarcelonaOne of the main announcements by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, after the last Security Council of Catalonia, on December 5, was the integration of the Civil Guard and the National Police into 112. “From from tomorrow any call for help for an emergency will have a much faster response,” said the minister. This agreement has raised a lot of dust: the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, will appear in Parliament on Wednesday to discuss it at the request of Junts, ERC, the commons and the CUP. The Republicans have even said that if it gets implemented they endanger the budgets. However, this is an announcement that is not new; in fact, it is an agreement that has been worked on between the two governments for eight years.
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The minutes of the Security Council since 2017, to which the ARA has had access, show that this integration began that year under the presidency of Carles Puigdemont, continued with Quim Torra, progressed with Pere Aragonès and it has now culminated with Salvador Illa. The minutes corresponding to the meeting of July 10, 2017, with the then Minister of the Interior, Jordi Jané, reads as follows: “The Security Council agrees on the integration of the capabilities of the security forces and bodies of the “Status in CAT112”. And in 2021, with Joan Ignasi Elena as head of the department, he assures: “The integration work can be considered satisfactorily completed”. He says this in relation to a working group that was launched in 2018 to do this, with the then councillor, Miquel Buch.
Let’s go to Pams. What does this integration entail? Despite Marlaska’s generic announcement – which alarmed pro-independence supporters –, according to 112 sources there is no substantial change from now on. Currently, when the managers of the emergency telephone – who are operators and not police officers – receive an alert that is the responsibility of the Spanish police, they refer it to them through a telephone call. In other words, it is the 112 that decides, in accordance with the distribution of competences, to whom it is sent. This has been happening since 2017, when there was the first agreement in this regard. With the integration agreed by Illa, this call will be eliminated and they will receive a telematic warning, as is the case with most local police, such as the Urban Guard, or even the Port Police. Now, despite the fact that the minutes of the Security Board of December 5, 2024 say that the change will be implemented after 24 hours, sources in the 112 admit that it has not yet been possible to put it into practice.
In the latest agreement, unlike the previous ones, it is not specified that the integration of the Civil Guard and the National Police will be within the scope of their powers, which makes some former Interior officials suspicious. However, consulted on this issue, sources from both the Generalitat and Moncloa confirm that the integration of the Spanish police will only be in their areas of competence, which represents a very small percentage of notices: between January and November of 2024, 112 has resulted in 989,000 notices to the Mossos; 181 in the Spanish police, and 57 in the Civil Guard. These are the data on interventions given by the same 112, whose director general is Irene Fornós, who comes from the Aragonese government. From ERC they criticized that the announcement of the integration was accompanied by the postponement of new powers for the Mossos.
The literalness of the acts
According to the minutes of the 2017 Board, at that time the “integration of the capacities” of the Spanish police in the 112 was already agreed, although last week in plenary Josep Rius (JxCat), then no of Puigdemont’s cabinet, assured that only “the possibility was put on the table”. In fact, it is what Junts maintains: that nothing came of the 2017 agreement for practical purposes, and the proof, they say, is that working groups have subsequently been held and that “integration” produce now
Interior leaders from 2017 consulted by the ARA and present at that first Security Council that had not met since 2009 explain that the issue of 112 was a transfer of the Catalan executive in exchange for other more relevant ones: they refer to the recognition of the debt by the State for the transfers of the Mossos up to that time and the integration of the Catalan police into the Center for Intelligence against Organized Crime (CITCO). However, nothing was immediate.
This is demonstrated by the fact that later on the two topics are recurrent in these meetings. In the minutes of September 6, 2018, it is said that a “working group is set up to analyze and implement the mechanisms for integrating the capabilities of the forces and security forces of the State, in their areas of competence, in CAT112”. It is specified that it is at the request of the Spanish government. And, in relation to the CITCO, it is on September 8, 2018, two days after the Board, that the Interior announces the integration of the Mossos into this body within a period of 30 days.
The evolution of work groups
These working groups on the 112, of a technical nature, therefore, were launched, but “it was slow, very slow”, recalls a leader at the time. The main problem, according to several sources, was technological: it was very difficult to integrate the telematics system of the Spanish police with that of 112, which works differently from those of the rest of the State. There were visits by Spanish politicians and police to the emergency service facilities and tests have been carried out. According to the sources consulted, these working groups met several times in the summer of 2019 and January 2020, when Joan Delort, then head of the 112, was given the responsibility of piloting these works.
It wasn’t until the minutes of the 2021 Security Council that everything was finalized. “The integration work can be said to be satisfactorily completed,” he says, although it was agreed to create a new working group to deal with how all police forces could receive developments in incidents. Be that as it may, despite this 2021 agreement, the Civil Guard and the National Police still do not have the electronic letter and the information is transmitted through calls. “The ministry was extremely slow, technological integration did not take place”, say leaders of the Generalitat at the time.
And how does it all end? The 2024 Security Council agreement, already with Illa, concludes: “It is agreed that the two police forces will be integrated into this system from zero hours of the day following the meeting”. Therefore, now yes: has integration been achieved yet? Sources of the 112 admit that not completely to achieve telematic integration.