We've just learnt that Josep Lluís Trapero, major of the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) and until recently its highest-ranking official, has just been sent by Spain's Interior ministry to do administrative tasks. They don't specify what, but we can easily imagine and none of the hypotheses are functions in keeping with his rank, his experience or his record. Let's say it clearly: the person who led the most important police success in the terrorist attacks last August in Barcelona and Cambrils had to disappear from the front line. The Spanish government never got over those days in which the Catalan regional police dismantled the terrorist cell by themselves in just four days and did so showing the world a modern police force, capable of informing in real time on what was happening and all this in the middle of great international concern.
It's worth remembering: the Catalan Interior ministry and the Catalan police behaved like a true structure of state and the Spanish government stayed on the sidelines for many hours. In practice, it was missing in action whilst Catalan minister Joaquim Forn and major Trapero were lauded by the international media. Within weeks, the major received the Catalan Parliament's Medal of Honour on behalf of the Mossos and a previously unseen wave of sympathy came from the public towards the Catalan police. Everything changed for Trapero in the 1st October referendum, when the Mossos distanced themselves from the violent repression against the populace making a different interpretation of risk to the public to the state's police forces. The thousand people injured on that day, none by the Mossos, clearly reflect two different ways of guaranteeing public safety. But they showed that it was possible to fulfil the legal order to remove ballot boxes from the polling stations without violent incidents and the result, at the end of the day, was that the Catalan police had removed more ballot boxes.
Today, Trapero has no operational responsibility and is being investigated for the crime of sedition by the National Audience court. In fact, judge Carmen Lamela has dictated cautionary measures against him and taken away his passport. His experience is being wasted in an office carrying out administrative tasks. In the past, I suppose that meant something like... putting stamps on envelopes. Now, when nobody sends letters, I have no idea what his job might consist of. And, meanwhile, one reads horrified in another media outlet that the Ripoll imam set up the jihadi cell behind the slaughter on the Rambla whilst he was a confident of the Spanish intelligence services. And one sees how they want to humiliate Trapero and blotch his record. And one doesn't stop thinking about the collateral damage who always have names and surnames.