After the Sánchez government, on Monday, set public opinion and the media alight with their warnings to the Catalan government, bringing together in a single headline president Quim Torra, Slovenia, violence, deaths, the CDRs, the block of the AP-7 motorway and the opening of Catalan toll barriers, with the sole objective of making a change in public opinion of politics with Catalonia, the Spanish executive is starting to show its cards: the Mossos d'Esquadra are the piece to take. The fierce criticism of the Catalan police by Spanish parties has been more or less continuous since their exemplary actions during the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils last August. With article 155, the Mossos came under the control of the Spanish interior ministry and, more specifically, minister Juan Ignacio Zoido.
Well, during those months and depending directly on the Spanish ministry, the Mossos acted exactly the same as in the current protests, for example on 8th November, during the so-called countrywide standstill which saw, in Catalan infrastructure, some 60 roads, motorways and railways blocked. Then it was a PP minister in command of the Mossos and for the sake of proportionality the autonomous community's police watched over safety, the absence of violence and guaranteed the maximum possible movement. Zoido commanded the operation and took not a single disciplinary measure. Obviously, prosecutors themselves, unlike now, took no legal action against the minister for having, supposedly, abandoned his functions.
So where does such disproportionate action by Sánchez and Marlaska come from then? It can only be explained by strictly political reasons and the wish to not be left out of the currently dominant narrative in Spain of open war in the independence movement, the president and the government and of the Mossos as being the only structure of a state the Catalan executive has. President Torra would do well to recognise his mistakes: the call for resignations in the Mossos wasn't his responsibility and if he'd lost confidence in them, there were other ways to express it; his words about Slovenia, taken out of context by much of the media based on a few ill-considered sentences. But he'd also do well to not accept threats and blackmail.
There's no reason at all to apply article 155 again, nor is there to take back powers in terms of public safety and control of the Mossos. Only on the basis of a permanent attack on Catalan autonomy can such a regressive measure be considered.