The last televised debate on Canal Sur, with the backdrop of the upcoming Andalusian elections, has gone viral with a phrase: that of the PSOE candidate for the Junta, María Jesús Montero, who at one point in the program offered her condolences to the families of Jerónimo and Germán —the two civil guards who lost their lives last week on the coast of Huelva, pursuing a drug trafficking boat—. Without further ado, the former vice president of the Government added: “workplace accidents must be a priority”.
This phrase has spread like wildfire. Especially the response from police and Civil Guard unions, who have come out in droves to refute the number two of Pedro Sánchez's Executive. While it is true that the leading candidate for the PSOE of Andalusia has qualified this statement hours later, through social networks, emphasizing that it concerns "deaths that took place while they were on duty".
The issue is important. Because, beyond the fact that the socialist leader had a slip-up in the debate, sources from the PSOE collected by the newspaper La Razón. already point out that the Andalusian socialists "consider their campaign over from a situation of lethal, irreversible damage".
Montero's Loneliness
The absence of Government representatives at the funeral of these two civil guards, buried in Huelva, was already a turning point that María Jesús Montero had to endure at an event she attended alone, without any former Moncloa colleagues, without the presence of the President of the Government, nor that of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who traveled to the Canary Islands.
From Huelva, Montero had to endure the reproaches of the people and the odd shout from the balconies, letting her know that they do not want her in Andalusia.
And although Montero wanted to underline this Tuesday her "respect and affection for the families and colleagues of the two Civil Guard agents who died in Huelva" last Friday, and has emphasized that they died "in the line of duty", the controversy continues and the criticism does not stop intensifying.
Meanwhile, associations like JUCIL and JUPOL reproach the socialist candidate for having used an expression that, in the opinion of the agents, minimizes the operational and violent nature of the event. The organizations insist that the civil guards died “in the line of duty”, facing drug trafficking in a high-risk intervention, and not in a conventional work accident.
But the “fire” has not remained solely in the police sphere. From the Partido Popular and Vox, the PSOE is accused of trivializing the sacrifice of the agents and of projecting an image of institutional coldness in the face of a problem that has been straining southern Spain for years, especially due to the growing pressure of drug trafficking in the Strait and the Andalusian coasts.
The political spat
Political leaders from the conservative bloc have taken advantage of this situation to once again question the Ministry of the Interior's policy regarding media and reinforcements for the fight against drug trafficking, a demand to which police and Civil Guard unions are adding their voices.
Days before this verbal "slip," Montero accused the PP during the campaign of "cashing in on tragedies" after the death of two civil guards in Huelva.
And from that day until now, the snowball has not stopped growing. La Razón adds in this Tuesday's edition that, in this regard, this eventuality opens a crack in the Andalusian PSOE of much greater scope than the strictly political and electoral, because in Andalusia the Civil Guard is not just a police force: "It is an emotional, social and cultural institution deeply rooted in the territory. And Madrid —by Ferraz— has lost its sense of reality among so many whores, commissions and corrupt people," points out one of the great Andalusian barons who is today outside the triangle of power surrounding Montero.
The truth is that, with or without a slip of the tongue, the intervention occurs in an especially sensitive electoral context, with the PSOE seeking to regain positions in polls that, according to different surveys, show a tight electoral response in Andalusia.
What differentiates a work accident from death in the line of duty?
The expression “work accident” has opened a discussion that is not only semantic, but legal, institutional and also emotional, since it is not the same to “work” as to “be on the front line”.
And here is the core of the matter. Because in Spanish law not every death “at work” is classified equally. A work accident belongs to the scope of labor law and Social Security. It is, in essence, any harm or death that occurs on the occasion or as a direct consequence of an ordinary professional activity. The concept is broad, and applies to a bricklayer, an administrative worker, or a driver.
But when we talk about bodies like the Guardia Civil, legal language changes register. Here we talk about an act of service when the work is for the State.
The figure of death in the line of duty is a specific category of the regime of the security forces and bodies. It applies when an agent is in an operational intervention, acts under public authority or security functions, participates in risk operations (such as pursuits, controls, or confrontations) or is in the direct development of a police mission. Therefore, the key difference is this: it is not just about “being at work”, but about exercising the power and authority of the State in an operational risk situation.
So that the rating has real effects, especially for families:
If it is considered a work accident, there are:
• Benefits for professional contingency
• Widowhood and orphan pensions improved compared to common contingencies
• Indemnities according to labor regulations or applicable agreements
• Management through the Social Security system or mutual insurance companies
If it is considered an act of service, the compensations include:
• Possible extraordinary pension with more favorable conditions
• Institutional recognitions and posthumous decorations
• Specific aid from the civil servant regime or the Ministry of the Interior
• Greater legal protection of the "institutional" nature of the death
• In some cases, special procedures if aggravating circumstances concur
Subtitle: OCON-SUR, the unit that set a model against drug trafficking in the south
It has been in this controversial framework in which the action of an elite unit, called OCON-SUR, a specialized unit of the Guardia Civil, created in 2018 with the objective of reinforcing the fight against drug trafficking in the south of the country, has been recovered from memory.
Its deployment at the time represented a specific response to the increase in activity of hashish trafficking networks, with an operational model based on the centralized coordination of agents and continuous actions on the ground.
During its period of activity, the unit came to have around 150 personnel dedicated exclusively to the fight against drug trafficking, participating in surveillance, pursuit, and investigation operations of criminal organizations.
According to data released during its operational phase, OCON-SUR intervened in numerous high-impact operations, with arrests and seizures of large quantities of drugs in the Strait area, one of the main drug trafficking corridors towards Europe.
Coinciding in time with Spain's support for the Moroccan proposal of autonomy for Western Sahara, as "the most serious, credible and realistic basis", in 2022 the Ministry of the Interior decided to deactivate the structure as an independent unit, integrating its functions into the territorial commands of Judicial Police.
The Government then defended that it was a reorganization aimed at optimizing resources and reinforcing the permanent structure of the Civil Guard, while professional associations of the body interpreted it as a loss of specialization and coordinated response capacity.
Since its disappearance as a specific unit, different sectors of the Guardia Civil have expressed their concern about the growing pressure of drug trafficking in the southern zone, pointing to a perception of lower availability of specialized means and greater operational dispersion.
These complaints have reopened the debate about the model of the fight against narco on the Spanish coasts and about the need to reinforce, again, specific structures against increasingly professionalized and violent organizations.