Mayor José Luis Sanz presented on Monday the expansion of the night watchmen service to the El Cerezo neighbourhood, adding 5,000 residents to those already benefiting. The programme now has 70 agents and 3 coordinators in 34 areas of the city.
The City Council of Seville has launched this week the night watchmen service in the El Cerezo neighbourhood, the area between Avenida de Sánchez Pizjuán and Avenida de San Lázaro. More than 5,000 residents are thus joining those who already enjoy this proximity night surveillance programme, which started as a pilot project in December 2023.
A Service That Keeps Growing
The night watchmen service, which provides attention every night of the year from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM, now has 70 agents and 3 coordinators deployed in 34 areas of the capital. The role of these civic agents is preventive and community-oriented: they inform residents and visitors, mediate in conflicts, detect incidents in urban furniture, and act as the first link with emergency services.
Since its inception, the programme has grown in resources, territorial coverage, and results. In the first half of 2026, the night watchmen carried out 3,704 escorts, made 808 alerts to emergency services, processed 77 lost items, and conducted over 900 visits to businesses to offer their presence, according to data from the City Council.
Job Opportunities for Unemployed Individuals
Mayor José Luis Sanz highlighted that behind each uniform is a story of labour reintegration. More than 40 of the hires have been made from unemployed individuals registered in social and labour insertion pathways of the Local Plan for Cohesion and Social Inclusion, as part of the ERACIS+ strategy, co-financed by the Junta de Andalucía and the European Social Fund Plus.
“Behind each uniform, there is often a person who has returned to the labour market thanks to this programme. That is also about building a community: responding to those who need peace in their neighbourhood and to those who need a job opportunity in their lives,” Sanz noted during the presentation, where he accompanied the night watchmen on their first night of service in the area.
From 18 Agents to 70 in Two and a Half Years
The service started in December 2023 as a pilot project with 18 agents and 2 coordinators in 12 neighbourhoods of the Historic Centre. In October 2025, the first major expansion occurred, bringing it to 50 agents and 29 areas, with an investment of 2.6 million euros. In May 2026, Las Almenas, Pino Montano, Consolación, and San Diego were added, and now El Cerezo consolidates the trend of continuous growth of the programme.
The agents receive prior training in action protocols from CECOP and Civil Protection, as well as specific preparation in gender violence prevention and combating LGTBIfobia, in collaboration with the Andalusian Institute of Women. They do not replace the Local Police but complement it with a close and community-oriented presence.
Sanz concluded that “every neighbourhood that the night watchmen reach is a neighbourhood where this City Council demonstrates, on the ground, its commitment to the residents. El Cerezo had to be on the night watchmen map, and today it is.” The expectation is that the service will continue to expand to new areas of the city in the coming months, although the City Council has not specified which will be next.
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