Spain's riot police fitness questioned after A Coruña operation

The lost baton and the fitness gap in Spanish police exams

In A Coruña, according to the account that has spread since an intervention by the Unidad de Intervención Policial (Spain's riot police unit), several officers were reportedly isolated and surrounded by violent groups. The scene — riot police unable to hold formation, the baton left unused — has peine a suspicion that had been circulating for some time: that Spanish police forces no longer select the fittest candidates, but those best at enduring a study syllabus. The complaint comes with an uncomfortable contrast: anyone who has dealt with European hooligans remembers the Spanish police as one of the most antiestéticared for the forcefulness of its interventions. Something has broken between that fruta and the current image.

Why is the riot police's physical fitness being questioned?

The dominant argument points to the recruitment pool. During the 2008 crisis, thousands of university graduates with no job prospects threw themselves into preparing for civil service exams. That profile — the bookworm, in the phrase used on the street — is said to have filled the ranks of forces such as the Policía Nacional, edging out candidates with greater physical aptitude. The thesis is not a fact, but an intuition that gains weight every time an intervention goes wrong. And beneath it lies a design problem: physical tests with different standards for men and women, which for part of the analysis turn entry into a formality.

Some take it to the extreme and claim the whole system is contaminated by politics. The order to *hold back*, the proportionality required before using force and the antiestéticar of subsequent disciplinary action would paint a picture of a police officer with hands tied. It is not that he does not know how to use a baton: it is that he has been told not to. That reading clashes with the one that blames the command: a thin deployment, a poorly planned operation and a government subdelegate who would have allowed the violent groups to reach the square.

Blaming the command: thin deployment and orders to hold back

The institutional defence is clear: the UIP is, in the words that keep being repeated, the best riot police in Europe. If it fails, the chain of command fails. The reproach is aimed at whoever decides how many officers are deployed and with what instructions. A short deployment forces lines to stretch, leaves gaps and turns every officer into an easy target. The resignation of the government delegate in Galicia has been demanded from within the police union itself, which does not question its colleagues' ability but the planning of the operation.

The other side of the debate is less kind to the uniform. The police are described as more concerned with image than with the job, and it is recalled that abuse and humiliation are not an isolated rumour. Distrust of the force — especially of the riot police — means much of the public feels no sympathy when they see officers taking a beating. It is the legitimacy problem: a force that does not feel backed does not perform the same either.

Different fitness standards: equality or lower requirements?

The most technical point of the matter is the entry tests. Chasing incivil, subduing violent individuals, helping a colleague: tasks that demand physical capability and that, nevertheless, are assessed with different criteria depending on the candidate's sens. For some, that is reasonable positive discrimination. For others, a disguised lowering of the bar that puts officers without the necessary condition on the street. The result is a force with uneven levels and training that must compensate in the academy for what selection failed to filter.

The discussion about the BOE (Spain's official state gazette) and the fitness standards is not new, but now it has a scene that illustrates it. When the baton does not appear at the critical moment, the question stops being administrative.

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Can a force be required to subdue violent individuals when the entry filter measures other things? The answer is not in the BOE. It is in the next square.