The fact that the Civil Guard and the Spanish National Police have been absent during the last few tragic days in Catalonia and that the role of the Spanish government has been that of a simple spectator take off in a number of complaints being made recently. The joint press release from the main Spanish police unions implicitly accepted that their absence had not stopped the dismantling of the terrorist cell and even insinuated that the same Spanish police corps had not correctly passed on all the information they had about the Ripoll imam to the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police).
Another person who recognises this is Agustín Linares, former operational vice-director of the National Corps of Police, who, in an article published in the newspaper ABC, acknowledges the absence of the Spanish police forces although he blames the Catalan government for having "closed the door" in their faces. At the same time he says the Spanish government has been "a simple spectator".
Reserved funds not declared to the Tax Office
However, for this former police official -who in 1996 admitted to having received six million pesetas (a little over 36,000 euros) from reserved funds that he didn't declare to the Tax Office- the solution is to reduce the powers of the Mossos.
In the article ‘Sin Seguridad not hay estado’ ("Without Security, there is no state", in Spanish) Linares argues that to avoid it becoming evident again that the Civil Guard and the National Corps of Police have been inoperative in Catalonia in recent days, it's necessary to remove the Mossos' powers in the area of anti-terrorism.
In fact, the columnist believes that "outside our borders, nobody understands that the National Police and the Civil Guard have been absent due to a decision by the Mossos and that the government of the Nation itself has been a simple spectator.” Based on this he concludes that "if the [Spanish] government doesn't have the security of the State in its hands, the State disappears."
Here, Linares develops the political reading of the question. He believes that the situation in Catalonia is that "of a [Catalan] government that declares itself hostile to the Spanish state" and that at the same time "has in its hands the security of this State in Catalonia".
The solution for Linares does not involve promoting the transmission of information between the security forces and the admission of the Catalan police to Europol, rather precisely the opposite. He argues that "the security of the State can only be in the hands of the Government of the Nation" and that, as such, "a deep rectification of the legislation over policies towards autonomous communities" is needed. Specifically, removing powers from the Catalan police.