Catalonia's Mossos d'Esquadra police force have investigated and penalised an officer from the Mossos' citizen security unit in Girona who coordinated the security for events held by the political party Vox when they took place in the Girona counties. After learning from the police force that the officer had made management arrangements in which he signed off as a security team member of the far-right party, without having asked for permission from the force, the case was brought to the attention of the police body's internal affairs division (DAI), which investigated it, as El País reported.
Under investigation since 2021
The internal investigation began in March 2021, after the officer had started his activity as Vox's event security coordinator in November of the previous year. His role, as a member of the party, was to communicate to the Catalan police the details of public events and trips of Vox leaders in Girona, an activity he carried out when he was not on duty, but which, according to the DAI, is incompatible with his police work.
The Catalan interior ministry communicated in April 2023 that the officer had been punished with a one-year suspension from both salary and work, and at that point the man had taken leave. However, the officer defends that what he did was volunteering in non-working hours and that he did not need any permission and has described his punishment as "political persecution" and has appealed against it, a matter which will be settled in a court in December.
The officer, whose return from leave is awaited in order to be able to apply the administrative sanction imposed, has also defended that he has been treated differently from other Mossos officers who, also off duty, accompanied exiled Catalan president Puigdemont during the electoral campaign, this May, in Argelers, in Northern Catalonia.
The Mossos will not punish the officers who accompanied Puigdemont
Sources from the Mossos d'Esquadra affirm that the officers who accompanied the president-in-exile and Junts+ candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat, also did so off duty, during their days off, but, unlike the officer who belongs to Vox, those working in security in Argelers did not interact with police forces, Catalan or foreign, nor did they accredit themselves as police to carry out their escort tasks. The same sources assert that the DAI has not opened, and does not plan to open, any investigation against the Mossos d'Esquadra officers who accompanied Carles Puigdemont in Northern Catalonia during the electoral campaign.
It should be remembered that other Catalan police officers who gave protection to Puigdemont in his Belgian exile after the October 1st, 2017 referendum were indeed disciplined by the Mossos d'Esquadra. The former Catalan interior minister Miquel Buch was also convicted of having hired an officer falsely as an adviser, when the court found that, in fact, he helped to coordinate Puigdemont's protection in Belgium.