New stage at the top of the Mossos d’Esquadra. The Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, confirmed that this Tuesday Major Josep Lluís Trapero will be appointed Director General of the Police and dismissed the Chief Commissioner of the Regional Police, Eduard Sallent. His replacement will be Miquel Esquius, who was already at the head of the body in 2019. “A stage has ended and a new era has begun with a new leadership,” Parlon said.
Parlon presented to the press on Monday the remodeling that affects both the political structure of the department and the leadership of the police. The changes to the secretary general of the department, which will be occupied by Tomàs Carrión, Parlon’s trusted man during his term in the Santa Coloma de Gramenet city hall, and to the general management, in which Josep Lluís Trapero will succeed Pere Ferrer, who held this position during the Junts and ERC governments.
The change in the police leadership was considered a given, since the differences between Sallent and Trapero were known and the appointment of the major to a political position had already been announced by Salvador Illa during the electoral campaign. Parlon thanked the previous leaders for their work and stressed that the changes were not related to the former president’s escape, although he acknowledged “errors” in the police force on August 8.
Security is one of the priority issues of the new government. Salvador Illa visited the Egara complex in Sabadell, headquarters of the Mossos d’Esquadra, in his first act as president. During his visit, Illa opted for Mossos “away from political confrontation”, which requires, he stressed, “generating mutual trust”.
For this purpose, Illa placed Parlon at the head of the Ministry of the Interior, one of the municipal pillars of the PSC that claims security (even a strong hand, if necessary), as a progressive policy, even if in recent times he has The State has favored punitive approaches and the hardening of the Penal Code with regard to certain crimes.
Parlon has made it a priority to “reverse the crime curve”, in coordination with the local police, as well as to reduce the “perception” that citizens can sometimes have of insecurity or certain criminal acts.
Getting the body out of the political controversies it has been embroiled in in recent years is a complex task. For example, the disastrous operation that culminated in the brief return and flight of Carles Puigdemont to Barcelona after seven years outside Spain. The Mossos were unable to arrest the former president despite his appearance at the Arc de Triomf in Barcelona. Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena and the High Court of Justice of Catalonia have asked the Catalan police for explanations about this fiasco.
In his previous stint at the head of the force, Esquius managed to reduce the pressure on the force compared to the turbulence experienced by the Mossos in September and October 2017, when the sovereignty process placed them at the center of the political debate. He was appointed after the dismissal of Trapero and the entire government under Article 155, but he only lasted eleven months in office because Junts appointed Sallent, historically linked to positions within the old Convergència and with several controversies during his term in power. head of the body.
The new head of the Catalan police is a graduate of the second promotion of the Mossos d’Esquadra and the first of the traffic. He is a veteran of the police force, with 39 years of public service behind him and has held various positions. Parlon also announced that Commissioner Alicia Moriana would replace Rosa Bosch as number 2 of the Mossos at the head of the regional police. Moriana challenged the process promoted by the previous Ministry of the Interior, when the government was already in place, to appoint Sallent major.
