Women account for 30% of candidates, the highest percentage to date for a recruitment process for the corps.
A total of 6, 505 applicants will be taking the first exams tomorrow in the recruitment process for 282 new places with the City Police, called by Barcelona City Council.
The exams will be held at three centres: the Faculty of Economics at the UB, the Faculty of Law at the UB and Hall 2 at Fira Barcelona in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.
Tomorrow sees candidates take the first test (culture and theory), the second test (aptitude), the third test (knowledge of English) and the first part of the sixth test (three questionnaires corresponding to the personality and skills test) in the selection stage, according to the rules for the recruitment call.
Safety measures
A protocol has been designed to guarantee maximum safety for the tests, with 541 municipal workers to ensure compliance with measures and enable the tests to be conducted properly. The staff will be coordinated by the Manager’s Office for Resources, City Police officers and security auxiliaries. The City Police will also be collaborating at the Fira Barcelona site in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.
Notable measures include: minimum safety distances of 1.5 metres between candidates on examination premises, the use of face masks at all times while on site, natural ventilation in all rooms during the exam with doors and windows kept open, and hand sanitiser in all rooms and toilets.
Candidates with symptoms matching those for Covid-19 will not be able to take the exams, neither will those diagnosed with the illness, those who have not completed the isolation period or who should be in quarantine at home because of close contact with somebody with symptoms of diagnosed with Covid-19. Before starting the exams, candidates will have to complete a declaration of responsibility using the normalised model provided by Barcelona City Council.
One in three candidates are women
Thirty per cent of the 6,500 candidates are women. This is the highest percentage of women candidates ever in the history of Barcelona’s city police corps.
This is the first recruitment process to introduce the quota of 40% women to join the force, the goal being to redress the significant imbalance in the corps at present.
Barcelona City Council is the first public administration to introduce a reserve of places for women into the recruitment processes for the City Police. This followed the change to the law on local police forces, the City Council being one of the main backers for the change, the intention being to introduce gender quotas while safeguarding the principles of equality, merit and responsibility in access to the public sector. The change includes an additional observation specifying that all new calls after 1 January 2020 must determine the number of places reserved for women and that this percentage must be between 25 and 40% of the total number of places available. In the case of Barcelona City Council, the decision was made to include the highest quota permitted by law, 40%, to move firmly forward in gender equality within the City Police.
The number of places filled by women candidates has risen considerably in the last few recruitment processes, which also explains the big increase in the number of women applying.
Other new aspects to the recruitment process
- Elimination of minimum height as a requisite for access.
- Changes to the cultural test: this test is designed to gauge candidates’ level of cultural knowledge.
- More flexible criteria relating to tattoos: tattoos will be allowed, unless their content goes against the principles, values and responsibilities established in the ethics code for the Catalan police.
- Inclusion of a new knowledge of English test: this is a voluntary non-disqualifying B2 level test, enabling candidates to score up to five additional points for their overall mark in the competitive entrance exam.