"We live in a country that readily buys into the myth of regulations"

(laughs) Or you could say it is a little paradoxical. The subtitle La seguretat en la societat del risc ['Security in the risk society'] is intended to reflect one of the paradoxes of our times. The safest society there has been, historically speaking, in terms of life expectancy, access to food, scientific progress and so on, is one of the societies most plagued by insecurity. Many sociologists call it the risk society. Yes, if the security being sought is that of an individual or a specific group. We need to set our sights on universal security, which means aspiring to all humankind living in sufficiently secure conditions. That is the only form of security possible, in my view. As that is not the case at present, and given that we live in a terribly fragmented, ultra-competitive society, seeking security only makes the problem worse. It is the only one. Constant stability is death. Constant innovation is chaos and, thus, also death. Life is an unstable point of equilibrium between innovation and stability. There are exceptions, but approaches to security generally differ from those taken in the case of medicine. Diagnoses are deemed less important; we are steadfast in our individual and collective prejudices. Rather than acting proactively, we react to episodic security crises on the basis of our most ancestral emotions, something that complicates our pursuit of security tremendously. Of course. If we do not know what is making us insecure, if we do not know what illness we are suffering from, there is little chance of us identifying a form of treatment. That is easy to grasp in medical terms, but not where security is concerned. Our disregard for rational analysis, for diagnoses, has major repercussions. We issue general prescriptions that have little effect. There is often a feeling -not necessarily borne out by reality- that crime is increasing. Our immediate reaction is to call for more police or tougher laws. Some security policies exacerbate problems rather than solving them. I would say that a good security policy encompasses a social policy. The former acts on three levels. Firstly, it implements security measures to protect citizens from the main threats that crime entails. Secondly, it reduces generic fear of potential crime. It is the duty of democratic institutions to dilute that widespread fear. Thirdly, and this is where security policies of a social nature come into play, it identifies the social and economic factors that generate and nurture all kinds of interpersonal and group violence. I would not say that there is a conspiracy, but the influence of political and economic interests, both globally and locally, is clear to see. One example is the war in Iraq, which has provided a number of US companies with a huge amount of business. We have also seen the phenomenon of terrorism manipulated for political gain. There are major sectors of the formal and the underground economies that thrive on insecurity. That makes conflict resolution extremely difficult because, when conflicts become chronic, groups and corporations that prosper from them spring up everywhere. Drugs would be a good example. A community within which there are highly marked religious, cultural and language differences has been formed very quickly and in a very small area, without any health, education or urban development planning or measures geared to integration being in place. The situation was bound to come to a head somewhere. In Salt, that happened in the worst way possible. The episode should teach us the value of early intervention. Many new people have arrived in a short period of time and economic circumstances have pushed them into certain neighbourhoods, where there is an extremely high rate of unemployment among youngsters. Those factors give rise to ethnic, social and generational polarisation, a terrifying combination of conditions where insecurity is concerned. It is a decision that I find difficult to fully comprehend. Having read the statements made, I see that it is a case of objecting to the code as a whole rather than to specific aspects of it. In other words, the code is regarded as an interference, and that is a stance that the police unions themselves have taken. The fact is that the Council of Europe issued a recommendation endorsing regulations of the kind in question many years ago. There is not much chance of everything going without a hitch. Bear in mind that cases of new forces being created in times of peace are few and far between in Europe. That is something that happens in countries where a war has just ended and a force needs to be regenerated, but not in a situation like the one in Catalonia. It is a complicated matter, a police force cannot be improvised in any way. It requires many officers, a background in policing and firm ties with the territory and its society, and that entails a very long period of time. The Mossos are still at a stage of acclimatisation, of settling in. You said it yourself, they are a group that is criminalised. The phenomenon of some groups being criminalised to a greater extent than others occurs in every historical context. That is not to say that they constitute a greater actual danger to society. For some reason, though, there is a combination of factors which leads to social tension being channelled towards them. It is a scapegoat mechanism. Whatever the situation, we always need to channel our tension towards a given group. We live in a country that readily buys into the myth of regulations, the idea that rules are the answer to every problem. Civil society has very little hesitation whatsoever in calling for more and preferably tougher laws in response to certain problems. The number of times Spain's penal code has been reformed must be a record. Something is not right in that respect. Penal codes should not be being reformed every couple of days. Bylaws can work, but something is wrong when they are springing up like mushrooms. When you put it like that... I think that the debate for and against legalisation has become sterile. The drugs problem has evolved. There are many aspects that need to be taken into account, such as each individual's right to be able to consume such substances. However, there are a number of other considerations on top of that, such as organised crime, an element of the problem which has affected Colombia and now Mexico. Failure to approach the problem properly has made it worse. The economy stemming from the laundering of drug money is enormous, and it conditions the financial system and the world economy. We need to ask ourselves if the global war on drugs has had the desired effect or if it has made the problem worse and, in that case, whether it makes sense to continue following the same strategy. There has been no drop in production despite the endeavours of the past two decades.