The great signing of Salvador Illa who does not get along with politicians
Barcelona"If I preside over the Generalitat, the Minister of Interior will be Núria Parlon, who has been excellent in security policies, and, since I want to professionalize management in Catalonia, the Director General of the Police will be Josep Lluís Trapero, who is an example of a public servant". The star announcement of the then candidate Salvador Illa in the last debate of the 2024 election campaign was to place the Parlon-Trapero tandem at the forefront of security decisions. Illa (and also Trapero) were warned of the drawbacks of putting a policeman to act as a politician, but, already as president, the message he wanted to convey was one of full confidence in a decorated expert – a media and, today also cinematic, protagonist of the pursuit of the Rambla terrorists – and, incidentally, to repair the injustice he perceived that the Aragonès government had committed by dismissing him as head of the Mossos.
The experiment has not worked. Trapero and Parlon have not seen eye to eye for some time. Neither on fundamental decisions nor in day-to-day matters. The coexistence of the two at the head of the Interior Department became increasingly complicated to manage, even though the minister explained this Wednesday in a press conference that she would have liked Trapero to remain in his position. In a few days, the Director General of the Police and also the Secretary General of Interior, Tomás Carrión, with whom Parlon had also cooled the relationship, have resigned. Trapero reported directly to Illa, his great advocate in the Government, in addition to doing so with the minister, and this direct relationship with the president has also generated many suspicions within the department.
Sources from the executive explain that the main reason for the rift between Parlon and Trapero were the unilateral decisions attributed to the until-now director general. A thesis that the major's circle disputes, citing as an example the appointment of the new head of the Mossos, Sílvia Catà: a personal choice of the minister, which Trapero did not share. They add other clashes, such as the department's desire, they claim, to place Illa in media ostracism, putting Parlon in his place in some interviews. The major acted as a politician, but continued to act as a police officer.
A tense relationship with political power
Trapero's relationship with politicians has never been simple. In fact, one of the Government's main partners, ERC, had long been calling for changes in the Interior Department. A few days ago, the president of the republicans, Oriol Junqueras, insisted on Catalunya Ràdio on the need to dismiss the director general, among other reasons, due to the controversial infiltration of two plainclothes officers into a teachers' assembly in May and due to Trapero's "lies" regarding the police operation during King Felipe VI's visit to Montserrat in February – the Mossos attributed an assault to a protester, which the images refuted and which the judge eventually dismissed.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Junqueras did not like Trapero's statements during the Procés trial at all, which brought to light the Mossos' plan to arrest the Government leadership if the judicial authority had requested it. Not only because of the plan, but above all because of the tone he used and the fact that he had drafted the plan without anyone having asked him to. The ERC president also did not like at all that Trapero denied him an escort when he left prison to participate in the 2021 electoral campaign, a decision that was later reversed. With these precedents, it was foreseeable to think that ERC would end up dismissing Trapero when it took over the Interior Department, but it did not do so immediately. Minister Joan Ignasi Elena dismissed him seven months after Pere Aragonès' inauguration as president. A decision that, despite the animosity between Junts and ERC, the Junts members not only accepted but internally applauded.
The seven months of professional relationship between Elena and Trapero were not good. ERC intended to introduce changes to the force, which clashed with Trapero's ideas. Republican sources criticized at the time the internal power that the major had accumulated and said that his dismissal was essential to modernize the Mossos.
The threat of prison
With Carles Puigdemont, Trapero never had a close relationship either, although newspaper archives will always remember the photograph of the most famous paella of the summer: in 2016, at Pilar Rahola's house in Cadaqués, with Puigdemont, Joan Laporta, Dr. Bonaventura Clotet and the journalist Helena Garcia Melero, among others. Trapero was, according to Rahola, the cook, and it was not the first time.
During the 'Procés', Trapero and Puigdemont clashed on several occasions, but that did not prevent the president from saying that, despite knowing that Trapero was not a pro-independence supporter, it was enough that he was a "democrat". In fact, it was a minister from Junts, Miquel Sàmper (now in the PSC government), who reinstated Trapero as head of the police (he had been removed when Catalan autonomy was intervened via article 155 of the Constitution) when he was acquitted by the National Court.
At the exceptional court, Trapero and other police commanders were tried for sedition, facing prison sentences similar to those to which the political leaders of the 'Procés' were sentenced. He was exonerated due to his "political neutrality" during the autumn of 2017 and the plan drawn up to arrest Puigdemont and Junqueras, but, above all, due to the fact that the main judge of that proceeding was Ramon Sáez, a progressive, who rejected collusion between the Mossos and the Government to hold the 1-O [referendum] and endorsed the contemplative position of the Catalan police, in comparison with the police charges opted for by the National Police and the Civil Guard that same day. What saved Trapero then was acting as a policeman and not as a politician.