Seville was left without a security plan for Christmas 48 hours before the Christmas lights and decorations were to be switched on in more than 300 streets after all the opposition – PSOE, Vox and Podemos-IU – voted against its approval, which implied the authorization of a credit of 5.6 million euros to pay overtime to the Local Police. “We will continue to work so that Sevillians can enjoy Christmas and continue to guarantee safety on these dates,” said the mayor of Seville, José Luis Sanz, at the end of the extraordinary plenary session imposed by Vox to address the issue. “We will let you, gentlemen of the opposition, continue to work to ruin Christmas for the Sevillians and question the security of this city,” he concluded.
But faced with this situation, unprecedented in the city for these dates in which people multiply in the streets and many events related to Christmas are also concentrated – such as parades, markets, attractions – but also unrelated to it – parades, neighborhood events, sports competitions, concerts and the Seville-Betis derby… -, the City Council has not developed a plan b. The municipal sources consulted are evaluating the possibility of approving by decree the plan presented in recent days, but which is opposed by the police unions and which does not have the approval of the Intervention, or applying the last approved plan, the one corresponding to Christmas 23-24, but which presents a serious problem: its start is scheduled for December 19th, therefore the first weeks of December, which include the Constitution bridge, where many activities are concentrated, would remain without coverage.
The PP, which governs in a minority, wanted to present the approval of this plan as a strictly security issue: “The ultimate and sole objective is to safeguard the security of next Christmas,” said the party spokesperson, Juan Bueno. But the entire opposition accused the government team of “lack of foresight and poor management” for allowing the Christmas period to arrive without a consensual or budgetary proposal.
“Security is guaranteed with planning, anticipation and negotiation, not with improvisation and blackmail. There is no police, no productivity and overtime is not paid, Seville is full of uncontrolled events,” scolded the municipal spokesperson of the PSOE of Andalusia, Sonia Gaya. All opposition representatives have disgraced the government team for not being able to negotiate the Christmas Plan with the Local Police and its improvisation, when it is not the first time that the City Council has had to resort to raising objections to the Intervention to ensure police presence at large events.
The Christmas Plan studied by the City Council proposes to recognize weekends and holidays between 28 November and 21 December as special days, extending this consideration to all days between 22 and 7 January, allocating 5.6 million euros for this purpose. But the Local Police asks that the same amount as last year be invested, around eight million, and that all those between next Friday and December 7th be considered special days. That plan, corresponding to last year, cannot be applied now, because a point was inserted which stated that it would only be valid for one year, therefore, if the latter is not approved by decree, the one that will come into force will be the one from two Christmases ago.
Furthermore, this Plan did not have the approval of the Intervention, which warned that the entire credit allocated for the payment of overtime to Local Police officers had been exhausted for the month of April and that to guarantee safety during the holidays the Municipality only had a residue of just over 17,000 euros. The municipal government team had proposed to advance the 5.6 million it had budgeted from municipal accounts for 2026.
For the PP, “safety will always be above all accounting,” according to Bueno, who boasted that as of November, Seville had hosted more than 3,300 events without problems. However, the opposition has reproached the Municipality for not being able to limit or refuse the celebration of any of these activities when it is aware that it does not have the economic and human resources to provide for all of them without neglecting the rest of the citizens’ needs: “we want policemen who take care of the Sevillians, not event policemen”, said Ismael Sánchez, spokesperson for Podemos-IU.
This argument was also repeated during the discussion on the first item on the agenda to overturn the Intervention’s objection and be able to pay local police officers and firefighters the overtime hours owed to them from May to October of this year. Once again the PP put security before any other objections, while the opposition once again questioned the management and anticipatory ability of the government team. “Either we guarantee the safety of Sevillians and visitors or we generate money as if we were a machine to make millions,” said Cristina Peláez, spokeswoman for Vox.
At this point, however, it was the far right – which forced this monographic debate on the Local Police, forcing the mayor to remove this point from the agenda of last week’s ordinary plenary – which with its abstention allowed this almost five million item to be unblocked. In this plenary session, however, what has been highlighted is “the organizational collapse”, as highlighted by the Podemos-IU spokesperson, of the local police, to which the entire opposition has offered to help the reform, but not with “patches” that imply the subsequent revocation of objections, as already happened in October last year so that the officers could collect overtime.
And the protagonists of the plenary session, the local police officers, were forced to leave the room when, dressed in Santa Claus hats and banners, they started whistling before the mayor’s intervention. “It is curious that we who just approved with our vote are being asked to pay the police and firefighters for a number of hours of work or that those who were able to submit a Christmas plan for 2025-26 are being asked,” Sanz said. “This mayor has just approved with his vote a Christmas Plan which is what the City Council can afford at this time,” he added. While the Government team evaluates how to guarantee safety on these dates, the unions are already warning that if it is done by decree they will appeal.
