EGN NEWS DESK
An indication of regional energy
The Mossos d’Esquadra (its full, official title is the Policia de la Generalitat de Catalunya) was created within the early Eighties, as a part of an association to grant Catalonia larger regional autonomy. Its powers have been broadened within the mid-Nineteen Nineties to tackle virtually all main policing duties in Catalonia apart from border and passport controls. Along with the Basque Country, it’s the solely area to have its personal pressure with such powers.
“Having the Mossos was extraordinarily vital for Catalonia, it was a possibility to have our personal trendy police,” Francesc-Marc Álvaro, a member of parliament for the pro-independence Catalan Republican Left (ERC), stated. He stated the pressure was an important component of the area’s distinct id, for each nationalists and unionists.
That standing was underlined in August 2017, when terrorists killed 16 folks in Barcelona and the city of Cambrils, thrusting the Mossos into the highlight. In the times after, officers shot dead six terrorists, and it turned a typical sight for folks to interrupt into applause when the police handed by. Some Catalans put flowers on patrol vehicles as a mark of gratitude.
The most senior officer on the time, Josep Lluís Trapero, turned a folks hero to many Catalans, who admired his confident method and insistence on talking in Catalan in press conferences. He was so standard that his face began showing on T-shirts.
Weeks after the terrorist assaults, Trapero and his pressure confronted a really completely different form of check when the Catalan authorities — led on the time by Puigdemont — organized a controversial independence referendum.
Officers from throughout Spain have been deployed to quell the revolt, usually by means of pressure. The Mossos, nevertheless, took a comparatively hands-off method, resulting in many nationalists seeing them because the potential foot troopers of an unbiased state. This inevitably drew the ire of Madrid, with accusations that the Mossos was conniving with the independence motion (a view compounded by an previous video displaying Trapero singing at a party with Puigdemont and different prime nationalist figures).
