Police Demonstration Over Pay Demands Wraps Up With Criticism Over Sedition Reform

Head of the demonstration held this Saturday in Madrid called by the police organizations SUP and AUGC.FERNANDO VILLAR (EFE)

What was announced as a police mobilization in Madrid to improve the professional and working conditions of police and civil guards has concluded this Saturday with speeches critical of the Government's proposal to reform the crime of sedition in the Penal Code.

The protest, which has toured the streets of the center of the capital, has brought together 6,000 people, according to the government delegation -20,000 according to the organizers-, and has had the presence of deputies Ana Belén Vázquez (PP), Miguel Gutiérrez (Citizens) and Javier Ortega Smith (Vox).

The latter has taken advantage of his participation to insist on his party's anti-immigration discourse and describe the controversy surrounding the tragedy in Melilla on June 24, in which at least 23 migrants and refugees died, as "a manipulation of the left ”.

The march, which started from Puerta del Sol and ended next to the Congress of Deputies, had been called by the Unified Police Union (SUP) and the Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC), the two organizations of majority agents in both bodies until the recent irruption of Police Justice (Jupol) and Justice for the Civil Guard (Jucil) with a tough speech against the government, relegated them to second place in the last union elections.

The demonstration this Saturday was led by a banner with the slogan

to demand the early retirement of the agents, the working day of 35 hours a week and compliance with the salary equalization agreement with the autonomous police forces, which was signed with the police organizations in 2018 by the then minister Juan Ignacio Zoido, of the PP.

The police organizations consider that the salary increases that that agreement has brought them in the last three years ―561 gross euros more per month for a national police officer and 720 for a civil guard― are insufficient.

In fact, the slogans launched during a large part of the protest have revolved around these labor demands, alternated with shouts calling for the resignation of Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska or charging against President Pedro Sánchez.

However, at the end of the protest, the professional and economic demands have been partly eclipsed by the criticism of the reform of the crime of sedition that, from a stage set up next to Congress, was launched by the leaders of SUP and AUGC.

The general secretary of the SUP, Mónica Gracia, accused the government of "turning its back on them" by stating that it had "eliminated" (in reality, the proposed reform proposes replacing it with a new one for public disorder with a reduction in sentences, not a repeal ) this criminal figure with which the leaders of the

were sentenced : "Take more care of criminals than of us [the police and civil guards]."

Gracia has justified the opposition of her organization to this reform in that, during the serious riots that occurred in Catalonia during the illegal referendum on October 1, 2017, "all the stones were thrown at us."

Along the same lines, Juan Fernández, general secretary of the AUGC, has criticized the Executive for a reform that, in his opinion, "negates all the work we [police and civil guards] did in Catalonia" those days.

Fernández has also taken advantage of his speech to denounce what he has called the "expulsion" of the Civil Guard of Navarra, due to the recent decision of the Government to transfer competence in traffic, which is now exercised by the armed institute, to the Foral Police.

This transfer was negotiated in the year 2000 by the Government of José María Aznar, but it had not been carried out until now.

The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, explained this Wednesday in Congress that there are 100 more civil guards in Navarra since Sánchez governed.

"It is false that they have been expelled," said Bolaños.

The two organizing organizations had already partly anticipated their criticism of the reform of the crime of sedition in a statement that they made public this Friday to encourage participation in the demonstration.

In this document, they claimed that the government's initiative caused a "sensation of institutional helplessness among civil guards and police officers, who suffered physical stoning to enforce the law that is now intended to be reformed, a new stoning that is harder to accept."

In that text,

The document also criticized the reform of the Citizen Security Law, known as the

, which in the opinion of SUP and AUGC, means that "the word of an agent is branded as a lie."

In reality, the reform that the PSOE negotiates with its investiture partners does not eliminate the presumption of veracity of the agents, but rather maintains it.

It only stresses that the statement of the facts that he makes in the minutes that he must fill out to impose the administrative sanction must record a story of the facts that is "coherent, logical and reasonable".

This reform project, which is stuck in Congress, already brought the police and guards to the streets a year ago, in mobilizations that ended with a much more crowded demonstration than the one this Saturday.

On that occasion, the protest had been called by the majority Jupol and Jucil.