The great signing of Salvador Illa who does not get along with politicians

Barcelona"If I preside over the Generalitat, the Minister of the 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 electoral campaign was to place the Parlon-Trapero tandem at the head of security decisions. Illa (and also Trapero) was warned of the contraindications of placing a police officer 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 protagonist and, today also a cinematic one, of the pursuit of the La 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 in substantive decisions nor in the day-to-day. The coexistence of the two at the top of the Interior Department was becoming 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 the Interior, Tomás Carrión, with whom Parlon had also cooled the relationship, have resigned. Trapero dealt directly with Illa, his great backer 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.

Executive sources explain that the main reason for the rift between Parlon and Trapero were the unilateral decisions they attribute to the outgoing director general. A thesis that the major's circle refutes, citing as an example the appointment of the new head of the Mossos, Sílvia Catà: a personal choice by the minister, which Trapero did not share. They add other clashes, such as the department's desire, they claim, to place Trapero 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 demanding changes at 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, because of the controversial infiltration of two plainclothes officers into a teachers' assembly in May and because of 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 disproved and which the judge ended up archiving.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Junqueras did not like at all Trapero's statements during the 'Procés' trial, which brought to light the Mossos' plan to arrest the Government's leadership if the judicial authority had requested it. Not just because of the plan, but above all because of the tone he used and the fact that he had drawn up the plan without anyone having asked him to. The president of ERC also did not like at all that Trapero denied him a security escort when he left prison to participate in the 2021 election campaign, a decision that was later reversed. With these precedents, it was foreseeable to think that ERC would end up dismissing Trapero when it reached the Interior Department, but it did not do so immediately. Minister Joan Ignasi Elena dismissed him seven months after Pere Aragonès' investiture as president. A decision that, despite the animosity between Junts and ERC, the 'juntaires' 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 corps, which clashed with Trapero's ideas. Republican sources criticized at the time the internal power 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 journalist Helena Garcia Melero, among others. Trapero was, according to Rahola, the cook, and it was by no means the first time.

During the 'Procés', Trapero and Puigdemont clashed on several occasions, but that did not stop 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 for which the political leaders of the 'Procés' were convicted. 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 any 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 back then was acting like a policeman and not like a politician.