THE Policia Nacional says they dealt with 513 complaints of verbal and physical attacks on health workers in Spain last year- up by 26.35% on the 2024 total.
Over 39% of cases involved physical violence on staff.
The Policia Nacional Chief Commissioner, Manuel Yanguas Menendez, said that the complaints are ‘nothing’ compared to the 20,000 incidents that happen annually.
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He said: “We have a problem, they have a problem: they are being attacked and they are not reporting it.”
“There are two types of health workers: the one who has been attacked and the one who is going to be attacked,.” Yanguas Menendez added.
Of the reported incidents, the majority were attacks on public officials (179), followed by threats (163), injuries (110), coercion (16) and ill-treatment without injury (12).
The most common aggression is intimidation (122), followed by physical violence (113) and psychological violence (48).
The largest number of reported cases were in the Andalucia region in Sevilla, Malaga and Cadiz provinces.
Policia Nacional figures show that June was the month in which the most complaints were filed.
Meanwhile, Mondays and Tuesdays were the days of the week with the highest number of aggressions, with the hour between 11pm to 12pm offering the biggest concentration.
Amongst health staff, doctors filed the most complaints, followed by nurses.
Manuel Yanguas Menendez pointed out that though the number of complaints made in 2025 represents a significant increase compared to 2024, that did not necessarily imply an increase in incidents.
He said there was a greater awareness on the part of the health community of the importance of reporting aggression and taking a ‘zero tolerance’ stance towards any type of violence exercised by people towards medical workers.
76 Policia Nacional officers work across Spain with health authorities and last year, over 12,000 workers received training on how to diffuse potential incidents.
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