Not all cities or territories can boast a vernacular police force, immediately recognizable and with a history as exciting and as entertaining as that of the Mossos d'Esquadra. It surprises me that no one has yet gone to Netflix or Movistar with the story and the idea. Many Riot Police, many arch-hairy, hieratic-headed bobbies in The Crown, but when will there be a miniseries about Major Trapero or a Game of Thrones that goes back to the founding of the corps in the time of Philip V (to pursue anti-Bourbon miquelets, which is quite amusing), that covers a few comings and goings from republican legality to Francoist illegality and starting all over again.
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When in 1983 the Parliament refounded the Mossos already in democracy, Manuel Fraga, for example, was green with envy, composed and without his own police force there in his native Galicia. However, no one would say that the start of the latest reincarnation of the Catalan police was precisely easy. At first, they seemed like a decorative police force. No one thought of going to them to report anything and they didn't have a penny. A deep throat I once had there complained to me with great despondency that, in the meetings to prepare the security plan for Olympic Barcelona, it greatly depressed them to see the representatives of the Ministry of Interior swimming in the abundance of reserved funds "while I, to pay an informant, have to falsify a dry cleaning bill."
I grew very fond of them because once they lent me three bulletproof vests to go with two colleagues to Yugoslavia in the middle of the war. The great thing was that I didn't have to ask for them. With how silly I am, it would never have occurred to me. No way, it came from them. Or rather from him, from my deep throat. I just mentioned my travel plan, he put his hands to his head and placed the three vests on the table. I was moved by the paternal touch, that tender and so nostrada family thing: criatures, no feu el boig i no prengueu mal.
It must be said that we carried those brand new bulletproof vests in our backpacks the whole trip, but we never actually wore them. They weighed like diving suits and gave off a hellish heat. I want to believe that the technology of the matter has evolved since then and that the Mossos' budget has also evolved to be able to afford it. It breaks my heart just to think that they still have to go into action carrying on their bodies the equivalent of El Cid's armor marching into exile with twelve of his men...
My relationship with the force cooled somewhat over time. Over time and with the transfer of traffic control competencies. I'm talking about the pre-AVE era, when to go to and from Barcelona to Madrid you had to cling tooth and nail to the air shuttle. You see me taking a taxi to El Prat in agony. That is, at full speed. Not like Sam Peckimpah's The Getaway, but you get the idea. The airport terminals were already in the distance, we were already making it, when suddenly a Mossos car flashes its lights at us and pulls us over. An agent gets out, scolds the taxi driver, who, seeing that I am about to faint from nerves, from fear of missing the last plane, heroically starts off: he asks for a time-out to take me to my destination and then return and face his own, that is, the predictable hefty fine for speeding. The other one thinks about it and scratches his head with what seems to me an unbearable slowness... until finally, half magnanimous, half thug, he lets us go.
A week ago I experienced a kind of déjà vu of this situation that made me put everything I had lived and learned into perspective. And even what was over-understood. Two in the morning from Saturday, November 14 to Sunday, November 15. I leave TV3 facilities in a taxi, where I have been for several hours, participating in the FAQS program. I can't wait to get to the hotel, first because I'm exhausted, second because halfway through the program my mobile battery died, which practically leaves me disconnected from the world.
I don't even realize how disconnected I am until again and out of nowhere a Mossos car appears, flashes its lights at us, pulls us over and makes us stop on the shoulder. And who are you? I explain that it's me. Oh, okay. And where are you coming from and where are you going? Well, from TV3 and to the hotel... Then you'll have a paper to prove it, right? A safe-conduct?
Damn. I had it, in fact. The program people had sent it to me, and I had meticulously printed it, only to then leave it like an idiot at the hotel. What's the point if they never ask for it. What's the point if you already have it on your mobile.
Totally for nothing, I realize in a flash of panic. I can already see myself spending the night in a dungeon if they don't let me plug in my mobile. Nerves. A lot of nerves. The taxi driver, another gentleman, shows the Mosso officer the application where my name is, that he has indeed just picked me up at TV3, etc, etc. The Mosso nods, more polite than convinced. "I'm from FAQS, from FAQS!", I repeat hysterically. I rip off my mask praying that he recognizes me from having seen me on TV sometime. He doesn't look like it. Or he does, but it doesn't impress him. Sic transit gloria TV3. In a fit of desperation, one of those that when you think about it later your hair stands on end from what you could have caused, I break into a scream: "Listen, I have the safe-conduct at the hotel, if you want to come with me, I'll show it to you and that's it! I can't do anything else!" Lie, yes I can do something else: shoot myself in the foot directly.
Suddenly, I realize that the Mosso, who has been observing me for a while from all angles without my face evidently ringing any bells, relaxes and smiles. From ear to ear. "Don't worry, miss: if you say you're from FAQS, I believe you... I believe you're from FAQS." There's something very funny (for him) in his tone and expression that escapes me. I don't get where the joke is. But the two fingers of common sense I still have awake at that point restrain me from trying to force his irony and my luck. Doesn't he say he's letting us go just like that? Well, go. Go!
Only when the scare has passed does it occur to me to look slightly to my left, towards the point where I thought the Mosso had his eyes when he started to smile. Almost to laugh. At me? And at this point I'm the one who bursts into a laugh of relief. It turns out that all that time I've had next to me, nervously clutching with my fingers... a FAQS mug, with the program's letters clearly visible in red on a white background! Many times I asked them to give me one and look, it had to be today. Well, thank goodness because it has served as a makeshift truth machine. An improvised safe-conduct.
I suppose the agent saw the mug, drew his conclusions and must still be laughing at my expense. At my absolute fright and radical incomprehension of why he was letting me go just like that. Elementary, dear Mosso. Definitely the police are not stupid... and thank goodness.