A police demonstration against the Government includes for the first time criticism of Feijóo and the PP

Criticism of President Pedro Sánchez and the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, but also of the PP with direct reference to its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

The demonstration called by Police Salary Justice (Jusapol, the platform of agents born in 2017) and the two organizations that emerged from it, the Police Justice union (Jupol) and the Civil Guard Justice professional association (Jucil), majority in both bodies, has toured the center of Madrid this Saturday without the face-to-face support, for the first time, of the two main parties of the right, PP and Vox.

Only Ciudadanos, with the deputy Miguel Gutiérrez, has testimonially attended the mobilization, called to demand improvements in the salary and retirement of the agents and in which reproaches have been slipped against the PP.

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The distance between the PP and the three union organizations, characterized by maintaining a strong confrontation with the Government of Sánchez since they emerged, has also been reflected in various banners in which Feijóo was demanded a different policy from the one that at the time applied by the Executive of Mariano Rajoy, with Juan Ignacio Zoido as Minister of the Interior, before the salary claims of the agents, and which concluded in 2018 with an agreement with other union organizations that Jusapol has since rejected as insufficient.

“Real equalization already.

Feijóo do not make a Zoido ”, several posters read with a photograph of both PP leaders.

PP sources already told EL PAÍS a few days ago that they would not attend the police protest this Saturday, contrary to what they had done on previous occasions.

They argued that they did not want their presence to be misinterpreted as the demonstration coincided with the electoral pre-campaign on May 28.

In the previous demonstration, held on March 4 against the reform of the citizen security law, known as the

, the PP was represented by the deputy secretary general of the popular, Esteban González Pons, and Javier Ortega attended by Vox Smith.

In the first, in November 2021, also against the changes in the

, Pablo Casado, then president of the popular, and the leader of the far-right party, Santiago Abascal, had participated.

Demonstration of the National Police, Jupol, and the Civil Guard, this Saturday in Madrid.

FERNANDO VILLAR (EFE)

The demonstration began its march at the Puerta de Alcalá in Madrid at noon to end, two hours later, in front of the Congress of Deputies.

The convening organizations have estimated the attendees at 80,000 and the Government Delegation has reduced them to 7,500.

The figures are higher, in any case, than those of the March protest, when Jusapol spoke of 30,000 demonstrators and the official figures of 4,000.

However, they are far from the data of the November 2021 concentration, when the unions calculated 150,000 participants and the Government Delegation admitted 20,000 attendees.

The banner that led the march, with the slogan "retire with dignity now", was held by the main leaders of Jusapol, Jupol and Jucil, as well as the CSIF, an organization whose section of prison officers has joined the protest.

Right behind, a protester held a sign with the phrase "Sánchez, vote for you Txapote", which the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, pronounced in February at the Madrid Assembly - taking it from a video broadcast on the networks - and that outraged the PSOE and the victims of terrorism in equal measure.

A moment of the demonstration, this Saturday in Madrid.

FERNANDO VILLAR (EFE)

The national secretary of Jucil, Ernesto Vilariño, had verbalized shortly before the start of the demonstration those misgivings towards the PP leader, which he extended to Vox, when asking both formations that, now that a long period of elections begins, they will they are going to formally commit “with their Security Forces to equalize the retirements [of police officers and civil guards] with the rest of [the] police officers”, in reference to the autonomous bodies.

Recently, Jusapol leaders have met with members of these two parties and Ciudadanos to demand their support for their demands.

Although the protest has put the main focus on equalizing the retirement conditions of the police and civil guards with those of the autonomous bodies ―the organizations criticize that they go into retirement later and, in addition, with lower pensions―, the request for equalization salary that led to the creation of Jusapol and, later, Jupol and Jucil has also been very present.

The police organizations insist that the 2018 agreement has left the salaries of the agents still far from those of the

, the agents of the Catalan autonomous police.

However, government sources insist that the application of that agreement (which was made in three tranches) has resulted in "the largest salary increase" in history for agents, with a total increase of 33.3%.

"A newly incorporated policeman earns 743 gross euros more per month than one who did it before the agreement," they detail as an example.

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