DMAX premieres the new season of ‘Border Control: Spain’ and escorts Civil Guard agents to guard customs
More than 9 million international visitors arrived in Spain in July 2022 alone, more than double that in the same month in 2021, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE). This passenger volume, typical before the pandemic, has been a challenge for professionals guarding security at Spanish customs after two years of restrictions on the mobility of people and goods. The agents of the Guardia Civil and the Tax and Customs Administration are daily witness to surprising, dramatic and sometimes even comic stories that could make reality surpass fiction.
In this context, DMAX has just released the new episodes of ‘Border Control: Spain’ (Sunday at 9.30 pm), one of the most classic programs, having had six seasons since 2016, which have access to a place usually limited for the majority: the border points of our country. Real cases that occur at security checkpoints at airports, ports and other points of entry that agents have to deal with, sometimes creating unbelievable situations. The current season’s chapters were shot in the first half of 2022.
This is the case of the agent Conchi Fernández, who has been working at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport since September last year to carry out arbitrary checks on the luggage of international passengers and to ensure that “everything brought into the European Union is becomes legal and right”. He entered the Benemérita in 2008 with a completely different fate, as he devoted himself to training for the Operational Intervention System of the Guardia Civil. “I’ve only been to the airport for a short time and if I had known about this service sooner, I would have asked for a different destination,” he says.
She says the best thing about her job is that she never knows what she’s going to find because “every day is completely different”. What catches his attention the most, he confesses, is when passengers from other parts of the world bring in animals, such as monkeys or armadillos, to eat them. “If you tell them they can’t enter the EU, they don’t get it,” he says.
A demanding surveillance task, but one that also implies a certain empathy with some passengers. The officer recalls a special case, that of an elderly woman who was ill, became disoriented at Madrid airport and thought she was in Venezuela. “She cried inconsolably and then the whole process of identifying the person she was traveling with and helping her out was very satisfying,” she admits.
But how do you balance empathy with the determination a Civil Guard agent must have? “It’s not easy. I can’t get carried away with the most sensitive part. I’m here to comply with the law and to make the person understand in the most pleasant way that what he is doing can be a crime,” adds Conchi Fernández, who also explains that she does “important personal work” and that, sometimes you come across passengers arriving with their children, so caution and sensitivity should be paramount. However, patience is especially noticeable during workdays where stress takes over the travelers before the flight. “Patience is something we should always keep in mind,” he says.
In the new chapters, viewers can get to know all kinds of real-life cases, such as the one where a young couple of alleged Madridista fans end up in Barajas, wearing the team’s shirt and intending to go to the semi-finals of the Champions League despite that. they don’t have a ticket, but it will turn out to be just a cover to hide the contents hidden in the false bottom of their suitcases. In addition, the program’s cameras will witness the location of several suitcases containing over-the-counter Viagra pills, which are seized.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
