Madrid shields itself with 10,000 Police officers for the NATO Summit

USPA NEWS - Spain will deploy 10,000 Police and Civil Guard agents to protect the NATO Summit to be held in Madrid on the 29th and 30th. The security forces have been working on the surface and underground for several days, closing any access to hypothetical terrorists to the Summit stage. In addition, the intelligence services believe it possible that Russia could launch cyberattacks against an event in which leaders from 40 countries will participate, including the King of Spain, Felipe VI; the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.

President Jose Biden will arrive in Spain next Tuesday. His plane will land at the Torrejón de Ardoz military airport, near Madrid, where he will be received by King Felipe VI. Both will talk at the airport itself and, after that interview, President Biden will go to the Moncloa Palace, headquarter of the Government of Spain, where he will meet with the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. With both, Biden will deal with issues related to the NATO Summit, including requests for admission from Sweden and Finland, and the war in Ukraine.

The alert is maximum in the capital of Spain. During the two days of the Summit, urban buses will be free. The City Council of the capital of Spain wants to reduce private traffic in the downtown as much as possible, to leave the streets for the official delegations that will cross it on their way to the Madrid Fair (IFEMA in its acronym in Spanish), where hold the Summit. Located on the outskirts, IFEMA will allocate all its resources to holding the event. But the metro station located inside the enclosure will remain closed for both days, to help control the security forces.

The Spanish Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, to whom the intelligence services depend, confirmed this Friday that there are indications that Russia could launch cyberattacks against official centers and critical infrastructure, and against the Summit's computer systems. The Russian Government considers NATO its enemy and accuses it of helping Ukraine in the war that the former Soviet republic is waging against Russia. But the Spanish Government is convinced that Moscow, with a long history of cyberattacks, will not achieve its objective of hindering the Madrid Summit.

A meeting that must define the lines of action of the Alliance for the coming years, with special attention to the Southern borders – the Maghreb – and East. President Biden announced that he will present a plan to strengthen the security of NATO's Southern flank, fighting illegal immigration. Spain expressed its support for these measures, since it is one of the main gateways to Europe used by mafias that traffic in immigrants.