Madrid, June 11 – The Madrid City Council has replaced Enrique López Ventura, the General Director of Firefighters, following months of complaints from the body’s unions. The unions had recently broken their ‘social peace’ with the government of Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP) and warned in a letter that they would not negotiate until a new director was appointed, having criticized Ventura’s management for years.
“Mutual Agreement” After Pope’s Visit
Vice-Mayor Inma Sanz, who oversees the Emergency Services, stated that the replacement was by “mutual agreement” and had been postponed until after the Pope’s visit to Madrid. The new appointee will be announced in the coming days.
“It was a planned and agreed-upon decision, but we logically wanted to postpone it until after the Pope’s trip, which required all our efforts to ensure its success,” Sanz explained during the weekly press conference following the Government Board meeting. The Vice-Mayor thanked Ventura for his seven and a half years in the position, highlighting his long tenure. She did not mention the conflict with the firefighters or the complaints, which intensified last month.
Unions Broke Social Peace
Three weeks before the Pope’s visit, municipal firefighters, through their unions (CC OO, CSIF, CITAM, UGT, and CSIT Unión Profesional), sent a letter to Mayor Almeida announcing the rupture of their social peace. This was a decisive move after years of unresolved demands and an entrenched struggle, as they had lost confidence in the City Council. A key reason was their view that Ventura was not a valid interlocutor for their demands.
“As a result of the numerous warnings and reports submitted over the past few years, the already communicated rupture of social peace is not a response to a specific disagreement, but to a sustained situation of blockage, unilateral decisions, restrictive interpretations of the Firefighters’ Agreement, and a lack of effective responses to problems repeatedly raised by this union representation,” the letter stated.
David Gómez, spokesperson for Comisiones Obreras (CC OO), the majority union in the fire service, welcomed Ventura’s departure. He believes that, despite being termed a replacement, it is effectively a dismissal due to the ongoing complaints. “It responds to a request we had been making, along with other union organizations, given the evident loss of confidence in the current service management,” he said by phone.
Pope’s Visit Highlighted Management Issues
The union believes that the operational arrangements for the Pope’s visit were “what ultimately tipped the balance.” Four days before the visit of Pope Leo XIV, CC OO sent new letters to the mayor and to the Government Delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, warning of a recurring issue: the service had not been sufficiently reinforced, and firefighters had only been redistributed from some areas to others, leaving several districts “unattended.” “They are robbing Peter to pay Paul,” they wrote. Following these letters, and three days before the pontiff’s arrival, firefighters began receiving calls from the City Council to join the deployment.
“It highlighted management and planning problems that we had been raising for a long time,” Gómez noted. However, he emphasized that the change of director does not resolve “the serious structural problems affecting the service,” listing: a lack of staff, non-compliance with agreements, absence of planning, and difficulties in ensuring adequate staffing levels each day.
Unfulfilled Agreements and Staff Shortages
In 2024, an agreement on the working conditions of the fire service was signed, which included a series of commitments that firefighters claim have not been met. These include specific measures for family reconciliation, a major concern for the professionals. “We request that an effective dialogue be immediately established, different from the one that led to the current situation [with Ventura], with decision-making capacity and real willingness,” they urged the mayor.
Adding to this is a long-standing conflict with the municipal government over staff shortages. The current firefighter workforce, according to City Council figures, exceeds 1,500 personnel, with 127 new recruits in February. The goal is to increase this to nearly 1,750. This figure was promised in the Villa Agreements, signed by all parties in 2020, with a five-year target. Unions point out that while the workforce is growing, it is not doing so at a sufficient pace, while interventions have increased exponentially in the last five years, from 23,780 in 2020 to 31,324 last year.
The Vice-Mayor has repeatedly argued that when the PP regained control of the city government in 2019 – after Manuela Carmena’s term and in coalition with Ciudadanos – the fire department was depleted. “Completely devastated,” she stated in May’s plenary session. “We have incorporated 430 firefighters, including specialists and drivers, and another 280 will be incorporated between this year and next,” Sanz assured.
CC OO hopes that the replacement will mark the beginning of a new era of dialogue and respect. They are “expectant” to learn the name of the new General Director. “We ask for someone with a completely different demeanor than the previous one,” they urged.
