How DJI Dock 3 Helps Police Secure Spain's Running Of The Bulls

Spain's National Police used DJI Dock 3 during San Fermín in Pamplona, running night time monitoring, scheduled flights over fixed sites and manual response when incidents broke. DJI published the case study on 19 August 2026, with master distributor MCR Infoelectronic supporting the deployment. Here is how a drone in a box fits into one of Europe's busiest public events, and what UK event teams can take from it.

Why San Fermín Is A Hard Policing Problem

San Fermín packs enormous crowds into a small historic centre for nine days every July. The encierros, the bullfights, the opening chupinazo and the nightly fireworks each create a different crowd shape, and the streets between them are narrow, walled and difficult to see into from ground level.

Aerial coverage solves the visibility problem, but the traditional answer is expensive. Helicopters and pilot flown drones both need crews on site for every hour of coverage, and a festival that runs from early morning through to the small hours does not fit neatly into shift patterns.

How Spain's National Police Use DJI Dock 3

The DJI case study sets out three distinct uses. The first is night time monitoring, which is where a docked system earns its place, because an automated launch does not care what time the call comes in. The second is scheduled flights over fixed sites, giving repeatable coverage of known locations at set intervals without a pilot travelling to each one.

The third is manual emergency response. When something happens that a pre planned route will not cover, an operator takes control of the aircraft directly and flies it to the incident. The dock handles the routine, and the human handles the exception.

The Scale Of The 2026 Air Operation

The wider National Police aerial deployment at San Fermín 2026 gives a sense of the workload. According to Spanish press reporting, officers flew 205 drone flights totalling 82 hours across the festival, supported by 13 helicopter missions from the territorial base at Zaragoza. Around a thousand officers were deployed in Pamplona overall.

Footage from those aerial assets fed into the coordination centre, where the state security forces run a shared operational picture. That is the part worth noting for anyone planning a similar operation, because the value is not the flight itself but the fact that several agencies are looking at the same live view at the same moment.

Why A Dock Suits A Multi Day Event

A festival is a repeating pattern rather than a single incident, and that is exactly the shape of work a dock handles well. The same sites need watching at the same times every day, and a scheduled mission removes the effort of setting up and packing down a crew for each one.

The DJI Dock 3 pairs with the Matrice 4D or Matrice 4TD, and the thermal variant matters here. Night coverage of dark alleys, riverbanks and crowd overspill areas is far more useful with a thermal sensor than with a visual camera alone, and the aircraft can switch between the two on the same flight.

DJI Dock 3 also supports mobile vehicle mounted deployment, which changes what a temporary event operation can look like. A dock that travels to the event and operates from a vehicle avoids the permanent installation work that fixed sites require.

Policing The Airspace As Well As The Streets

The other half of the story is enforcement. The National Police restricted the airspace over Pamplona for the fifth consecutive year, and electronic detection systems identified eight unauthorised drone flights during the festival. Eight pilots were proposed for sanction under Spain's air safety law and six aircraft were temporarily seized.

The rule they broke is not unusual. Flying over a large public event generally requires specific prior authorisation, and in Spain that means clearance from the Interior Ministry. UK pilots face an equivalent picture, where a temporary restriction over an event can appear at short notice and a flyer ID alone is nowhere near sufficient permission.

What UK Event Teams Can Take From This

Three lessons carry across. Coverage that repeats on a schedule is the easiest case to automate, and it is where a dock pays back fastest. Night operations are where automation adds the most, because that is when crewing costs and fatigue risk are highest.

The third is integration. A drone feed that only reaches the drone team is a fraction as useful as one that reaches the control room where decisions actually get made. That is a systems and permissions job as much as an equipment one, and it takes longer to arrange than buying the hardware.

FAQs

What is a drone in a box system?

A drone in a box is a weatherproof station that houses a drone, charges it, and launches and recovers it automatically. Operators plan or trigger missions remotely, so no one needs to travel to the site to fly. DJI Dock 3 is the current enterprise example, pairing with the Matrice 4D and Matrice 4TD aircraft.

Can police fly drones over crowds?

Police forces operate under specific authorisations that allow flights the general public cannot make, and those authorisations vary by country. In Spain, National Police flights at San Fermín fed live footage into the coordination centre under an approved protocol. In the UK, forces work within CAA permissions and operating safety cases rather than the standard open category rules.

Which drone works with the DJI Dock 3?

DJI Dock 3 is equipped with the Matrice 4D or the Matrice 4TD. Both use the same cameras as the Matrice 4 Series but add improved flight time and protection, and they can pair with the DJI RC Plus 2 Enterprise for standalone flying away from the dock.

Can you fly a drone at San Fermin?

Not without prior authorisation. The National Police restrict the airspace over Pamplona during the festival, and in 2026 eight pilots were proposed for sanction and six drones were seized for flying without clearance. Anyone wanting to fly needs permission from the Interior Ministry in advance.

How far can a DJI Dock 3 drone fly from the dock?

Operating radius depends on the aircraft, the transmission conditions and the flight approvals in place, and beyond visual line of sight coverage is a regulatory question rather than purely a technical one. In practice, teams design dock placement around the sites they need to reach and the permissions they hold locally.

Final Thoughts

The Pamplona deployment is a clean illustration of what docked drones are genuinely good at. Repeatable coverage of known sites, night operations without a crew on the street, and a manual override for the moments that do not follow a plan. The enforcement side of the story is just as instructive, because the same event that showcases professional drone use also produced eight sanction proposals for pilots who flew without permission.

The DJI Matrice 4TD thermal drone is the docked aircraft behind night operations like these, and full DJI Dock 3 deployments can be scoped with the Coptrz sales team at sales@coptrz.com or 0330 111 7177. Browse the enterprise range at the Coptrz official online store.