May 8, 2024. More than 95,000 agents of the State Security Forces and Corps will be integrated into the security device designed by the Secretary of State for Security of the Ministry of the Interior to ensure the correct development of the electoral process that will culminate next Monday, June 9, with the election of the 61 Spanish members of the European Parliament.
Instruction 3/2024 of the Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Pérez, in force since Tuesday, attributes to this police device, among other missions, the adoption of the necessary preventive measures to detect any action that disturbs the normal development of the elections and the protection of acts and places related to the electoral process, such as the headquarters of political parties, federations, coalitions or electoral groups that attend the elections or electoral colleges during the day of reflection and throughout the voting day through fixed or mobile security devices, among other missions.
The police deployment will consist of more than 95,000 members of the State Security Forces and Corps. Of these, 28,034 belong to the National Police (to which must be added 106 agents of the unit attached to the Generalitat Valenciana) and 47,585 to the Civil Guard. In Castilla y León, there will be 892 civil guards, 232 national police and 200 local police.
For their part, and in the territories under their jurisdiction, the Mossos d’Esquadra will deploy 4,700 agents, the Ertzaintza 1,227, the Foral Police of Navarra 260 and the Canary Islands Police another 67. 13,222 officers from different municipal police forces complete the device.
Monitoring and protection of the electoral process
Last Monday, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska activated the Coordination Network for Security in Electoral Processes, whose objective is to adopt all the necessary measures to guarantee security in the next European elections on June 9, structured in four major blocks: electoral process, personal data, disinformation and a physical security and cybersecurity room of the process, which is the responsibility of this department.
With this objective, Instruction 3/2024 of the Secretary of State for Security designs a comprehensive security device whose preliminary phase will be developed during the pre-election campaign, from 00:00 hours on Wednesday, May 15 to 24:00 hours on Thursday, May 23.
The alert phase will cover the entire electoral campaign, from 00:00 hours on Friday, May 24 to 20:00 hours on Friday, June 7, when the critical phase for the protection of end-of-campaign events, the day of reflection and voting day until the closure of the electoral colleges, the transfer of documentation and the end of the electoral activity will enter into force.
During these phases, and as long as the level of terrorist threat does not vary, Level 4 of the Anti-Terrorist Prevention, Protection and Response Plan will continue to be activated.
As far as cybersecurity is concerned, the instruction establishes a set of preventive, reactive and coordination measures - in particular with the national computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs) of reference - against possible incidents that may affect the networks and information systems that support computer systems related to elections, campaigns, public administrations and other relevant actors in this field.
The General Directorate of Coordination and Studies of the Secretary of State for Security, through the Cybersecurity Coordination Office (OCC), will be the coordinating body of the device, which will participate the units of the Security Forces specialized in cybercrime and the national Computer Emergency Response Teams (CSIRTs) of reference.