The demonstration of police and civil guards called this Saturday by the Police Salary Justice platform (Jusapol, the platform of agents that emerged in 2018 to demand salary equalization with Squad officers) to protest against the policies of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has gathered 4,500 protesters in the center of Madrid, according to data from the Government Delegation. It is a figure very far from the 20,000 people who participated in, known as gag law. Even the number of protesters provided by the organizers, who at the end spoke of “more than 15,000” and described this figure as a “resounding success”, is far from what they gave in that massive protest more than five years ago, when they claimed to have gathered 150,000 protesters. The decrease in the number of participants has, in fact, been a constant in recent years in a group that is close to 160,000. agents.
The failure of this latest call has also been noted in the political support for it. Although there have been charges from PP and Vox, the two parties that usually come to support police protests, on this occasion the number and public relevance of their representatives has been much lower. Thus, if Pablo Casado, at that time leader of the popular party, participated in the 2021 demonstration; Santiago Abascal (Vox) and Inés Arrimadas, then at the head of a Ciudadanos that still had parliamentary representation, this Saturday the deputy Pedro Muñoz Abrines, spokesperson for the Constitutional Commission in Congress, attended for the PP, and for the far-right party, the national spokesperson for Security and Immigration, the police officer Samuel Vázquez ―recently convicted of an electoral crime―, and the councilor in the Pozuelo City Council (Madrid) Ainhoa García Flórez.
Furthermore, on this occasion the demonstration has not had the support of other police unions and civil guard associations, as it did in 2021. These organizations have mostly chosen to join another platform that, although it broadly shares Jusapol’s claims, disagrees on the forms and strategies. For this reason, they have refused to join the protest this Saturday and call for another one for May that will also have a very different aspect: they intend to .
The demonstration started from Puerta del Sol and, after walking part of Alcalá Street and Paseo de Recoletos, concluded two hours later in the vicinity of the Congress of Deputies. It was headed by a banner that read “Risk profession, now”, one of the three demands that both Jusapol and the two organizations that arose from it that participated, the union and the professional association, have put forward to call the protest, which has had the support of the Independent Trade Union Center and Civil Servants (CSIF) and the Association of Spanish Troops and Sailors (ATME). Behind them, other banners raised the other two major demands: salary equalization with the regional police forces and better retirement conditions.
Both in the manifesto read at the end of the protest and in the statements to the press by the leaders of the organizing organizations and the slogans chanted by the participants in the protest, they have insisted on blaming the Government and the Minister of the Interior for listening to their claims in the last eight years. “It’s enough to tease us. If they want war, they are going to have it,” proclaimed Aaron Rivero, general secretary of Jupol, who has assured that police and civil guards earn “between 20 and 30% less” than their colleagues in the autonomous bodies. “This government is hiding,” criticized Miguel Gómez, from Jusapol.
