The rules for the call include important changes with the goal of promoting women’s access to the corps and strengthening the gender perspective by establishing a first-ever reservation of 25% of places for women.
In this respect, the City Council has been working for years to increase the number of women in the corps by eliminating some of the requisites that made it more difficult for them to get in, and by adapting the current rules for the firefighter model. This new model for the Barcelona Fire Service is geared towards more tasks in prevention, self-protection and awareness.
Some of the changes made in the last call are:
- Elimination of the minimum and maximum height for both men and women (previously women had to be at least 1,55 metres tall and men 1,60 metres, and under no circumstances more than 1,95 metres tall).
- Inclusion of the health sphere in the test for professions. This introduced a gender perspective which previously didn’t exist, as only three highly masculinised professions were included before then: building and civil engineering, electrical installations and mechanics.
- Inclusion of exercises in control and dragging dummies in the physical tests, more closely linked to the daily tasks of firefighters, and the elimination of bench presses and horizontal jumps, not so closely linked to firefighters’ tasks.
Another new aspect this year is the inclusion of a foreign language test, which will be obligatory but not eliminatory. Candidates will be able to choose which language they want to be examined in when they make their applications: English, French, German, Italian, Arabic, Chinese or Urdu, using the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
How to join the service?
The access process for the Fire Prevention, Extinction, and Rescue Service (SPEIS) is one of the longest in the civil service, as the competitive exam stage has nine tests in all: general knowledge, specific knowledge, Catalan, Spanish, physical aptitude, a practical test, driving test, personality and skills tests and medical tests.
The new rules have been published in the Official Gazette of the Government of Catalonia (DOGC) and includes the requisites that candidates must meet to access the corps. As from tomorrow, candidates will have twenty natural days to submit their applications.
Applications can also be made online using the Barcelona City Council website (public vacancies section) and the procedures website. As an exceptional measure, candidates can also submit applications via the General Register at Barcelona City Council or through any of the means contemplated under the legal regime for public administrations and common administrative procedures.
Besides checking the rules, candidates can also use the public vacancies website for processing applications online and paying the corresponding fee for the public vacancies process.
Information session
An information session is planned at the Cibernàrium de Barcelona Activa on Monday, 20 November, at 5 pm, with two members of the corps and a representative from the municipal Area for Human resources explaining the work of firefighters and the competitive exam process, as well as answering any other queries which come up.
Anybody interested can attend in person (Carrer de Roc Boronat, 117-127) or follow the session online: