The alert message, sent by Civil Protection due to Storm Harry, arrived shortly after 12:00 PM this Monday in coastal municipalities of Baix Llobregat, Barcelonès, Maresme, Selva, Montsià, and Baix Ebre. The confusion was significant, as the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, had been admitted to the ICU of the Hospital del Vall d’Hebron since Saturday.
Many of the messages were headed with the title 'Civil Protection alert' but others carried the title: 'Presidential alert'.
Although the body of the message clearly warned of the sea storm and urged caution, Civil Protection had to clarify that the variation in the title depended on the “mobile brand and configuration” of the device.
This erroneous terminology primarily occurs on terminals running Android 9 and 10, or older versions, which do not receive the correctly configured alert. Starting from Android 11 and iOS 15.6, the message is correctly received as “Civil Protection alert”.
The term “Presidential Alert” originates from the United States emergency alert system, known as Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). Within the WEA, Presidential Alerts represent the highest level of emergency, a concept that the Spanish Es-Alert system should translate correctly.
