The Professional Police Union (SPP), majority in the command scale, has denounced this Friday an "institutional humiliation" for the way in which the medals of the Order of Police Merit for 2026 have been distributed, considering that the Ministry of the Interior has "denied official recognition" to the command responsible.
"The Honor Board of the Patron leaves the Superior Scale in a statistical ostracism: they barely represent 0.8% of the white medals and suffer an absolute zero in silver and red crosses," the SPP has pointed out in a statement, emphasizing that this situation evidences a systematic marginalization of these positions.
According to the union, the leadership of the department directed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska has established an "unacceptable" practice: the higher the level of operational responsibility and the complexity of the decisions made under public scrutiny, the less official recognition those who assume them receive.
For this reason, the National Executive Committee of the SPP has criticized that the direction of international macrooperations, the response to major disasters, and the fight against global drug trafficking "is paid by the Ministry with contempt and administrative forgetfulness."
"The Command Scales do not ask for favors or medals as gifts, but we are not going to continue tolerating that the weight of the institution falls on our shoulders while the Ministry of the Interior pays its commanders with contempt, political cowardice, and forgetfulness on their own festivity," the SPP has warned, alerting to their growing discontent.
The union also demands a reform of the 1964 law that regulates these decorations, in order to replace it with a "modern, objective, and transparent" system that guarantees clear and verifiable criteria in the granting of recognitions.
In parallel, other police unions have positively valued that, in 2026, the Interior has renounced granting silver medals —pensioned with a lifelong salary increase of 15%— to already retired commanders, after several "judicial blows" that annulled this type of rewards.
Nevertheless, the SPP has recalled the jurisprudence of the Fifth Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court (Appeal 92/2024) and the ruling of the Supreme Court of July 15, 2026, where, according to this union, "it is made abundantly clear that extraordinary merit in the exercise of command in large operations is fully legal and justifiable if it is technically justified."