What is happening in the dome of the Mossos d’Esquadra?

The major Josep Lluís Trapero is dismissed in December 2021. Months before, Esquerra has assumed the direction of the Conselleria d’Interior for the first time. In the previous stages in which he had been part of Tripartit governments or with Junts, he had delegated that responsibility to other coalition parties. In the spring of 2021, however, he decides to take on a challenge that involves commanding the Mossos d’Esquadra. Esquerra considers that Trapero prevents him from controlling the police force and prepares his replacement, which he announces days before Christmas and which he justifies as a transition towards a more choral operation. For this purpose, he designed a prefecture made up of three people: Josep Maria Estela, Eduard Sallent and Rosa Bosch.

One of the first decisions made by the prefecture is to remove Mayor Toni Rodríguez from the General Criminal Investigation Police Station (CGIC). The decision coincides with the version that comes from Trapero’s environment that denounces that what Esquerra really wants to control are the investigations of the Catalan body, which for the first time in its history has delved with Rodríguez into the corruption of the Government with cases against Laura Borràs or Miquel Buch. This version of events also points to Eduard Sallent as the instrument that allows Esquerra to have more access to the ongoing investigations. Toni Rodríguez appeals his dismissal and argues that Sallent came to ask Buch for a report of the judicial investigation.

In June Josep Maria Estela meets with the ‘conseller’ Joan Ignasi Elena and informs him that he cannot continue working with Sallent. He considers that Sallent commands more than him because together with the general director of the Catalan police, Pere Ferrer, they make decisions that they do not even inform him about. Estela’s sit-in is an unexpected slap in the face that breaks down the plan to succeed Trapero. What Estela is saying is what Interior had publicly denied and that Trapero’s entourage, whom Estela has approached in recent months, denounced after his dismissal. Elena tells Estela that Sallent doesn’t move from where he is because he enjoys the maximum confidence of the Interior.

The relationship between Estela and Sallent is broken and continues to deteriorate. The newspaper El País reports on the situation and EL PERIÓDICO reveals that the majority of Mossos commanders support Estela. The information raises the tension to a limit that is difficult to manage for the ‘minister’ Elena, who also suffers from a health problem from which she is recovering little by little. Estela intervenes to put out the fire and sends a letter to the agents in which he intends to seal a peace with Elena, but not with Sallent, whom she still wants out of the prefecture.

In the body there is discomfort because there is a suspicion that Elena has already decided that four of the six new commissioners are women before the process ends. She laments that this will leave men with long careers who also deserve it without appointment. Last Friday, Elena confirmed that the four women are promoted to commissioners and that mayors valued by the body remain outside. Estela, aware of the internal discomfort that it will provoke, wants to negotiate that there be three women and three men. But Elena does not give in. Estela feels unauthorized again and, during the discussion, she remembers that she cannot continue working with Sallent. Elena repeats that Sallent is not touched. Estela tells the ‘conseller’ that if they don’t trust his leadership, they should dismiss him and send him to Lleida.

This Monday, Elena summons Estela and informs her that she must cease her duties and that, following her suggestion, she becomes the new chief of the Ponent police region. Sallent is appointed the new chief commissioner of the Mossos, a position he already held until he was replaced by Trapero when he was declared innocent by the National High Court, in autumn 2020. Estela’s replacement, the sixth change at the head of the body in five years, it has further distanced the Ministry and Mossos. The unions and the political opposition interpret what happened as the umpteenth political interference in the Catalan police. Interior, for its part, speaks of legitimate “political orientation” and defends the substitution of Estela because it covered up “the feminization” of the body.