During the years 2024 and 2025, several members of the National Police Corps (CNP) were discovered while performing undercover work as infiltrators in social movements in Catalonia. Catalan society reacted with incomprehension and astonishment to a practice that seemed structural and was apparently not framed within any criminal investigation. The whole situation smelled of mothballs and showed a certain apathy regarding the bad image of the police force among Catalan social movements.Surprisingly (or perhaps not so much), the ministry did not correct or dismiss anyone. Only a statement of support and the renewal of their confidence in the police.May 2026. Two female police officers hide their identity and participate in a teaching staff assembly, posing as teachers. This action by the Mossos d’Esquadra in an assembly of the education sector is a fact that is difficult to explain. It is an inopportune, disproportionate, and poorly executed initiative, and in turn, it has organizational and social consequences that are so easily predictable that they prevent a minimally rational understanding of the decision-making by those responsible. Despite the differences with the previous case of the CNP, it seems that instead of learning from the mistakes of others to consolidate a different model, what the Government has done is precisely to take the mistake as a model.The educational community is not a problem for the security of Catalonia and its activism in protest constitutes a right. Furthermore, their recent mobilizations have been free of incidents. On the other hand, the mediation units of the Mossos d’Esquadra have (or had, perhaps) a direct line with the unions and can forward demands, collect proposals, and establish measures to make their right to protest compatible with the free movement of the rest of the citizens. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that such an intrusive measure as infiltration in a protest context like the current one is necessary. This represents not only bad practice but also a change in a consolidated model, which denigrates the proximity work and conflict management of a modern force of which some of us were proud.
Perhaps nothing is coincidental, though. The distance between what is said and what is done by the Mossos d’Esquadra in recent years is only growing. While discourses speak of proximity, intelligence, or strategy, the actions we know are increasingly simpler. Fundamentally: more police on the street for surveillance, more identifications, and less specialization. It seems that strategic vision and a broad outlook have abandoned decision-making spaces, and instead, simplifying and self-congratulatory views of reality are promoted. Following the law, being obedient, not at all critical, and with little social perspective seem to characterize the new roadmap. Moving away from excellence. Once again, a change in the security model.The position that “the police can do anything and explain nothing” is not an option for a public service in an advanced democracy, nor is it a formula that can work in Catalonia. Opting in the 21st century for a lack of transparency and an assumed exercise of authority denotes a profound ignorance, if not a disinterest, regarding Catalan society, which is critical and demanding in matters of security. The citizens of Catalonia deserve to know what their police do, they need explanations, and they want a police force that is close, cooperative, and also effective.We recall that the Mossos d’Esquadra project was born as a modern and innovative police force, adapted to the society it served. The quiet strength of intelligence was one of the slogans displayed on the walls of its police academy. A slogan that implies adaptation, a broad perspective, calculation of consequences, proportionality. But as in any discourse, legitimacy will be sustained by the coherence between declared intentions and actions. At this point, placing two undercover female police officers at an assembly of the educational sector can be interpreted as another symptom of the gradual abandonment of those constitutive purposes of the Catalan police. Now, it rather seems like a police force of strength, no longer of the quiet strength of intelligence. Has a cost-benefit analysis been done? Proximity, mediation, and good social integration require abandoning certain practices contrary to this model forever.
Surely by now one is aware that the presence of the two policewomen was a mistake, for various reasons. But no one can now maintain that the decision of those responsible was correct. It is, therefore, the hour of truth, the one in which mature democracies initiate processes to correct certain dynamics and consider measures to regain lost confidence. They even apologize and show a willingness to rectify the situation.
The fact is, however, that we have no good news in this regard either. Those responsible for the Department of the Interior and Public Security have told us that they are basing their actions on current legislation and that the police are exercising their inherent competencies. Zero self-criticism.The modern, innovative, adaptive, and talented police we want must read society and constantly interpret its role in this society, looking at future challenges in coordination with social and academic agents. And only then will it be an effective public service, and only then will it gain legitimacy and authority. If the quality benchmark for the police is set only at complying with the law, it will be a police force that becomes dispensable and alien to the world it lives in, and will only make appearances – complying with the law – to enforce the law. And beware. When we get here, that project of a different kind of police will have vanished. We are facing a real risk that current decision-makers do not seem to value as such. As a promoter, between 2006 and 2010, of the Mossos' Mediation Unit, I would never have imagined that I would have to write this article.
