The head of the Civil Guard in Catalonia, Ángel Gozalo, will, in the next few days, end his seven years in Barcelona, after the Spanish cabinet promoted him to the highest rank a member of the Spanish gendarmerie can aspire to. From divisional general, he is now promoted to lieutenant general. And that means a move to Madrid.
The decision, approved by the cabinet on 17th December, was proposed by the defence minister, María Dolores de Cospedal, only two months after the 1st October Catalan referendum and with the investigations into the events surrounding the organisation of the day in full swing. The Civil Guard intervened a number of times during the referendum, especially in small towns, and in Sant Andreu de la Barca, near Barcelona, which has less than 30,000 inhabitants, but also the force's main headquarters in Catalonia.
The Catalan Civil Guard's investigations have also been used as the basis of the original accusation of sedition which took Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart to prison and opened criminal proceedings against the head of the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan police force, Josep Lluís Trapero.
The Civil Guard continues working and producing reports both for the investigations into the referendum in a Barcelona court and those in the National Audience and Supreme Court in Madrid. The force also headed the investigations into the so-called 3% corruption scandal.
Gozalo was one of the police chiefs who, under the direction of Diego Pérez de los Cobos, took part in designing and implementing the police strategy during the referendum.
The replacement of the head of the Civil Guard in Catalonia is imminent as made clear today during one of the few public events held inside the Civil Guard building on Barcelona's Travessera de Gràcia. Gozalo took advantage of the event to say goodbye to the representatives of the judiciary and prosecution service present: "we want to continue being your reference point in the investigation and carrying out our mission to serve Spanish and, in this case, Catalan society".
Also present at the event, the 6th Conference of Procedural Law and Criminal Investigation, was the chief prosecutor of Catalonia, Francisco Bañeres, who thanked the force for inviting him to open the event and said that "we've all felt and experienced the support and feeling of proximity of the Civil Guard".