Christmas brings signs of peace and harmony, the opposite of the relationship – broken – between the mayor of Seville, José Antonio Sanz, and the local police, who have opened a war at the gates of these dates, where events and crowds of people accumulate, and where security and order have become more necessary than ever. Last Thursday the Chancellor decreed an emergency plan to ensure a police presence of between 400 and 500 officers over the weekend in three shifts, after the opposition overturned the Christmas plan, which was also opposed by unions, but only a third of staff showed up for work, having already expressed their dissatisfaction with events such as the lights being switched on on Saturday or the Sevilla and Betis derby being treated as an emergency on Sunday. Sanz warned that the city council is considering taking “legal action” against police officers who did not report to work and labor representatives have already appealed the emergency plan decree and are considering convicting him for evasion.
The plan scheduled for the end of this week included the deployment of 682 soldiers between Friday night and Sunday afternoon. Only 233 went to their jobs, one in three. “There were many casualties this weekend, and the cause and its justifications are being analyzed this morning,” the mayor of Seville said on Monday. “There are several meetings planned to see if it is possible to implement some kind of judicial action, apart from opening disciplinary files for those whose withdrawal is not well justified,” Sanz warned.
The local police unions were informed of the order of the popular advisor. “Any public employee who is absent from work and does not explain his absence must be issued a report; the mayor is not doing anything unusual, he is complying with the law,” says Louis Fall, president of the Professional Union of Municipal Police (SPPM). “The vast majority did not go to work. Some because it was not their duty, others because they were sick, others because they did not know because the emergency plan decree was approved in an internal document on Friday afternoon that customers cannot access,” explains Santiago Raposo, head of the Csif of the local police in Seville.
In the background, municipal officials are dissatisfied with the trick used by the city council to ensure security throughout this month and the first week of January, after the entire opposition voted against the mayor’s Christmas plan which requires an exceptional loan of 5.6 million euros to ensure the overtime payment of police officers. The municipal intervention had warned that only the remaining 17 thousand euros of the 17 million productivity budget approved for this year could be spent until the end of the year. The city council wanted to provide the money responsible for the 2026 budgets, but all political parties opposed it, criticizing the councillor’s lack of foresight and mismanagement for allowing more incidents than local police had the capacity and budget to cover and then running out of money for Christmas. “Security is above accountability,” Treasury Department delegate Juan Bueno said at the plenary session.
Deputy District Director regulates traffic in Triana
Given the impossibility of approving this Christmas plan – which was opposed by the unions because they wanted to classify 40 days as special, which would allow a larger number of agents to be mobilized, thus increasing the number of overtime hours, and the City Council recognized only 20 days, due to this lack of funds – the council chose to activate the current plan, which dates back to 2004 and whose last update was approved in the 2023-24 Christmas plenary session. Since it was scheduled to enter into force on December 19, it was decided to activate the first phase of the city’s emergency plan, used in the event of climate disasters, for example, to ensure the presence of the police on days that suit the government team, in the previous weeks. In this way, the mayor intended that security would be covered this weekend, with the lights coming on and the derby match, and the following match, which coincides with the Constitution Bridge – which witnesses the largest influx of visitors to the city -.
Csif has already filed an administrative appeal against the decree activating the emergency plan, and the SPLM will do so in these days. Both are also considering the option of prosecuting the mayor through criminal proceedings for evasion. “This weekend, the local police were not at a standstill waiting for an emergency to happen,” says Raposo. “Many of them were deployed to attend processions – two came out on Saturday – or demonstrations – two between Saturday and Sunday, that is, they were mobilized to cover events, not emergencies.”
On Saturday during the Christmas lights switch-on, “finding a local police officer in the center of Seville was like looking for Wally,” said a neighbor in the crowd. On that day, in Triana, the deputy district director had to direct traffic to allow a band singing Christmas carols to pass, in the absence of the municipal police. There was also a shortage of agents to regulate traffic and interruptions for the Sevilla-Betis match on Sunday. “Fortunately, the responsibility of the people of Seville is always above all else. It is a city that knows how to deal with this time of major events,” the mayor said, also acknowledging that the deployment of civil protection personnel and a “very important number” of the National Police helped avoid major problems.
The council member blames the unions because they did not know how to convey to their members that their demands regarding the Christmas plan “were above the law, because there is a limit to the productivity that the city council can push.” Police representatives blame the mayor for “spending” the $17 million budget on these activities “in the first six months of the year.” “Seville has become a theme park and anyone comes here, organizes an event, calls the police, and they get it for free. Here we are talking about public money,” says the Csif president.
One week before the start of the Inmaculada Bridge, Sanz appealed to the “public service function” of local police employees to “not abandon” the rest of the gatherings that were still taking place. Unions also say their doors are open for dialogue. Right now, it seems difficult for the Christmas spirit to prevail over legal proceedings in the courts.