The prestigious America's Cup yachting competition, coming to Barcelona in 2024, is about which boat is fastest. But before the sailing races begin, there are some who want to stage another contest: which police force will rule the waves with regard to the event's security. On Thursday, Catalan interior minister Joan Ignasi Elena announced to all the institutional representatives of the Barcelona City Council, as well as to the Catalonia commands of the Civil Guard and the Spanish National Police, that it would be the Catalan police force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, that will lead the security arrangements for the 2024 America's Cup to be held in the Catalan capital, Barcelona. It was a statement that followed a prior agreement, but it activated mayday signals across the Spanish state, where questions of who has the competence and jurisdiction to do what to whom can reach high voltages. Especially when the word Catalonia is part of the debate, or certain police forces are involved, or worst of all, both of these options together.
Police bodies put pressure on the Spanish ministry
After the announcement made by Joan Ignasi Elena, the Spanish interior ministry began to receive pressure, above all, from the groups of the Spanish paramilitary corps, the Civil Guard, accusing the ministry of having ceded its competence over the sea to Catalonia's Mossos in the decision-making over leadership of the security plan for next year's America's Cup. This Friday morning the Spanish government's delegation in Catalonia made a statement denying that any agreement had been made between the Mossos and the central government's security secretariat, in an attempt to lower the tension among their officers and above all, trying to assure that there was no intention of "ceding" any powers to the Mossos d'Esquadra, making a clear reference to the war for the control of maritime waters around the Catalan coast, which, they say, is the exclusive competence of the Civil Guard.
In the same statement, the Spanish government delegation in Barcelona assured that the security master plan is yet to be drawn up and that work will have to begin in the coming months, although it did not deny the facts that the Catalan minister Elena had announced on Thursday about who would be the leader in the drafting and execution of the America's Cup security plan.
Interior confirms: the Mossos will lead
This Friday afternoon the Spanish interior ministry confirmed that the press release from the delegation in Catalonia does not contradict that it will be the Mossos who, under commissioner Eduard Sallent, head of the body, as director, and commissioner Carles Anfruns, as coordinator, will lead the security of this event with international implications. The Mossos d'Esquadra are Catalonia's integrated police force, with full responsibilities over almost all policing areas within Catalonia except in relation to the control of borders and immigration - where the Spanish bodies, the Civil Guard and the National Police have competence - and in relation to many local policing matters which municipal police usually handle. The Catalan independence process in the autumn of 2017, for which the central government sent thousands of Civil Guards and National Police officers to disrupt the October 1st referendum, led some to question this, and the then-head of the Mossos, Josep Lluís Trapero, was put on trial for rebellion - and acquitted.
However, in the months ahead, the Mossos will be in charge of designing the plan that defines the security of the 2024 yachting contest, to be held between August and late autumn off the Barcelona coast in the Mediterranean, and will identify the responsibilities of each of the security operators, be it their own police corps, the Civil Guard, the National Police, the Guardia Urbana or city police, the Port Police and even, among others, the Catalan Fire Service.
The war at sea, the nerves of the Spanish state
It is the fact that this is a marine event that has fed into the nervousness of the central government in Madrid, and raised the eyebrows of some police groups, who accused their political masters of selling them down the river, given that one of the powers at stake between the Civil Guard and the Mossos d'Esquadra is control over the sea, and spokespeople were pressured to step in and deny an agreement that had been signed between all parties.
Although the security plan will be led by the Mossos, none of the sources consulted by ElNacional.cat denied that the Civil Guard will have a significant role in the security of a competition that takes place almost entirely at sea. Quite apart from the technical decision on the powers of criminal investigations at sea - which now belong to the Civil Guard due to a political agreement - the resources of the Maritime Police of the Mossos d'Esquadra, with its current armada of just three vessels, would make it impossible to guarantee the entire 2024 Copa America on its own.