99,000 officers will guarantee security in the 28M elections

The elections on Sunday, May 28, will have the largest security device in history for an election. A total of 98,991 troops will work to guarantee citizen security and the exercise of rights and freedoms during voting day, which means 6,610 more agents, an increase of 7% compared to the previous local elections and those of the European Parliament that were held in May 2019.

National Police will deploy a total of 30,638 agents, while in the Guardia Civil there will be 48,083. For their part, the regional police forces will add 5,548 troops and, finally, the agents of the different municipal police forces will be 14,300. To all of them must also be added the 422 police officers deployed at IFEMA Madrid, where the National Data Dissemination Centre will be established.

In the breakdown by Autonomous Communities, Andalusia is the one with the greatest police deployment, with 20,203 agents, followed by the Community of Madrid, with 10,225 troops, and the Valencian Community, with 10,027.

Surveillance and protection of critical infrastructures and cybersecurity

The Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Pérez, signed in April the instruction that coordinates the actions in security matters on the occasion of these local elections, whose objective was to establish the guidelines for action of the State Security Forces and Corps and its collaboration with other regional or local police forces.

During the critical phase, which is the one that will take place during the final campaign ceremonies, the day of reflection and the day of voting, the surveillance and protection of critical infrastructures will be intensified, as well as the cybersecurity of the entire process and the devices of the polling stations and their surroundings. To this end, an IT Security Operations Centre is set up to monitor and manage the security and continuity of all the information systems involved in the electoral process.

In these local elections, the accent has been placed on cybersecurity and the instruction of the Secretary of State for Security included a specific protocol on this matter in which the Cybersecurity Coordination Office, the General Directorate for Internal Policy, the Subcommittee Information Security for the Dissemination of Provisional Results in Electoral Processes, the State Security Forces and Corps, and the Coordination Network for Security in Electoral Processes.

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