Officers of the bodyguard department of the Mossos d'Esquadra They protect Carles Puigdemont in France, from where he is running the election campaign for the next Catalan elections. They are unarmed off-duty police officers, who take advantage of holidays and vacations to ensure the safety of the former Catalan president, as they previously did in Belgium. In 2019, and after the unrest in the Ministry of the Interior, Mossos' leadership increased forbade the accumulation of days off to protect the leader of the Junts. Sources from the Catalan police headquarters assure that they will analyze the images of the events to identify the displaced police officers, that they will study the situation they found themselves in in Argelès and that they will investigate whether the behavior constitutes a disciplinary violation. Junts does not want to comment.

Puigdemont's safety since he fled to Belgium has been a source of tension among Catalan police. Two officers were tried and acquitted for assisting the president while he was detained in Germany. “We also don't have many arguments to prevent them from leaving,” police sources argue about the possible crime committed by the police. But they admit the anomaly: if Puigdemont were to enter Spain, the same police officers who protect him would have to arrest him. The Ministry of the Interior assures that they have no control over what happens mosses in their free time, but they emphasize that no specific practice is favored that allows them to collect days off or holidays to travel with Puigdemont.

Others mosses of the bodyguard division also traveled to France during the election campaign to protect 'VIP' people, political officials, who attended meetings of the Junts candidate. In this case, the police officers worked abroad with the permission of the Ministry of the Interior, which is the one who must authorize the Catalan police to carry out these types of interventions outside Spain. Sources from the Ministry of the Interior recall that they have been waiting for half a year for a response to the commitment of the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, to “process” the escort to Puigdemont, a protection enjoyed by all former presidents.

Since 2017, Puigdemont's protection has led to political and police tensions and even prison sentences. The former Minister of the Interior Miquel Buch was sentenced to four and a half years in prison and twenty years of disqualification. for pretending to have hired former Mossos sergeant Lluís Escolà as an advisor so that he would actually protect Puigdemont abroad. Escolà, who is no longer a police officer, is one of the people in the former president's entourage to whom he provides a kind of private security. The intention is that both Escolà and Buch can benefit from the amnesty law.

Former President Puigdemont's security has also led to a constant dance within the Catalan police structure of one division, the bodyguards, which became a hot potato. To circumvent the police veto imposed on officers in 2019, which prevented them from collecting days to travel with Puigdemont, former President Quim Torra created a kind of praetorian guard, with a few officers, who would report directly to the presidency report, and have the mission to provide security only to presidents and former presidents. When ERC landed inland, it retook the escort territory and made it dependent on the Director of the Catalan Police. Finally, in a final restructuring, the division became dependent on police headquarters.

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