Beat voters and get awarded

The Spanish government has admitted that it has decorated police officers investigated for the violence during the 1-O independence referendum in Catalonia. ‘The Ministry of the Interior has granted the Medal of Police Merit to several officials due to the merits that contribute to it’, said the Spanish executive in a written answer to the Basque deputy of EH Bildu in the Spanish congress Jon Iñarritu, who asked if the Spanish Interior Ministry had decorated any of the police officers investigated in court for the assaults and if some had been promoted.

Receiving gold and silver medals and the Red Cross police badge implies a lifetime pension ranging from 20% to 10% of salary. The decorations were awarded, according to the Spanish government, ‘given the proposal made by the Director General of Police, with the prior agreement of the governing board of the Directorate General of Police, and the fact that they are considered included in the articles 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 of law 5/1964, of 29 April, on police decorations’.

These articles regulate the gold and silver medals for police merit given to officers if they have died, if they have been seriously injured, if they have done any service of ‘transcendental importance’, if they have had ‘exemplary and extraordinary performance’ or if they have done anything that ‘deserves this reward for implying merits of an extraordinary nature’.

The gold medal implies a salary supplement of 20% of the salary; the silver one, of 15%; and the cross with red badge, 10% increase.