a quarter of A century after his apotheosis olympic, Barcelona is facing a problem that neither the city Council denies: the growing insecurity in the streets
Just a tip: until August, the crimes have risen by 19%, while in other large cities such as Madrid remain stable
The Raval has a barometer more effective for officers to gauge the productivity of pickpockets. It all depends on the queue in the police station of the Mossos in Nou de la Rambla street. “If there are 30 or 40 people waiting in the street, that day the thing is wrong”, assures a neighbor born and raised in the district of Ciutat Vella. “This year we have seen enormous tails in the whole block, especially in summer.”
Someone had to realize the damage of the scene to the image of the city. “For months, if you accumulate ten people get an agent and asks that you come back the next day,” he says. The measure does not conceal, in any case, a reality that neither the city Council denied at this point: Barcelona is undergoing a crisis of insecurity.
In the last year, crime in the city have grown in numbers far superior to that of the rest of the big cities. 19% up to August, especially thefts and robberies, according to data from Mossos and Guardia Urbana. To understand the gravity of the fact, in Madrid rose just 1%, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior.
The insecurity, with Ciutat Vella as a protagonist, is just one more notch of the debate about the “degradation” and loss of gloss legacy of the 1992 Olympic Games in which the opposition blames the mayor, Ada Colau. The city Council, for its part, tries to be loaded reasons for lowering the depth of the crisis and find solutions. The list that has to face the Consistory, however, is long: the top blanket, the narcopisos, the loss of prestige or antisocial behaviour by the saturation of tourist, are the material of war, politics, and neighborhood in a city that faces the may elections under high pressure.
The antisocial behaviour has in the Barceloneta your showcase. And a summary grotesque: fecal matter detected in the mojitos, which are offered without control on the beach
the 29th of October. More than 850 police officers between Mossos and Guardia Urbana star in the biggest operation against the narcopisos, a name that leaves no room to the imagination: floors are unsanitary where they buy and consume heroin. Gala Pin, a councillor of Ciutat Vella, closely following the operating, with just 54 detainees and the closure of 26 floors. A contributor to talk with her, about two journalists.
– How do you see it?
-eager to embrace the police.
The talk earns sense if you remember that Pin, as Colau, was an activist of the movement squat, and his first months in office were of daily stress with the local police. An agent he jokes now about his change of attitude: “And think how we had to get in the evictions”.
The coup against the narcopisos is the greatest achievement in the field of security Colau since its arrival in 2015. The newly adopted mano dura, however, has come after two years of criticism neighborhood. From 2016 the old chinatown has become accustomed to situations that they believed forgotten, comparable to the arrival of heroin in the 1980s. Drug addicts lying on the street or desperately looking for the five euros it costs to one micron. Syringes next to portals. And fights own of Quentin Tarantino. For the video library black of the city are several fights, machete taped by the neighbors.
The Raval has lived the whole life with drugs and pickpockets with the naturalness of evil known. “There has always been skullduggery, but lived here and had a respect for the neighbors. That has disappeared because of the arrival of the mafias. All given an equal,” says Angel Cordero, a member of the platform neighborhood Ara Raval, which supports the improvement from the operating but figure in about twenty the narcopisos that are still active. Have also been detected in the neighbouring district delEixample.
The situation overrides any hint of dissembling. The commissioner of Safety, Amadeu Recasens, supports the increase in insecurity in Ciutat Vella. “There has been a boom, and seek solutions,” he explains. However, it denies that all respond to the inaction by the city and points to a number of factors. The first, organisational. The procés multiplied during 2017 demonstrations in Barcelona. 1,500 was passed to 3,500 marches a year, forcing it to divert to the Mossos and Urban, with templates limited for budgetary reasons of the Generalitat and the Government. The result was a vacuum in security that took advantage of drug traffickers and pickpockets.
class=”icon-foto_16_g”> A drunken man rests as for the morning in a bank. ALBERTO DI LOLLI
Is ejected to the neighbors, multiply the floors empty and drug dealers to the occupy
The top blanket think that is one of them. A phenomenon that the opposition linked to the “inaction” of Colau, as if one had never existed without the other. An argument that does not hold. The blankets go in the city more than a decade. Neither PSC or CiU found a solution that we now require. The number of sellers, in any case, yes has grown so that the parties and the candidate outsider Manuel Valls to create an effect called by the municipal policies of soft hand. The Consistory stood at 700 the number of manteros. The opposition sees in the streets more than 2,000. Every day dozens and dozens of them offer fakes on the metro to plaza Catalunya, or in the paseo Joan de Borbó. Only the rain, or the sporadic police operations to lead them to desist from selling shoes, bags or t-shirts of football. The scene contrasts with the luxury yachts moored in the Port Vell, a few meters away.
From the first day, Colau resigned to the police as “the only solution”, and added outputs “social”. Against you play many elements. The security between them. The top blanket also has left images that resemble a city out of control. The last in August, when a tourist, and several vendors are engaged. The visitor ended up being injured and the Guild Hotels and the Barcelona Foundation, the Trade broke out against a new blow to the international image of the city.
Álvaro Porro, commissioner of the Solidarity Economy, does not deny “incident specific”. It regrets, however, that “to amplify only the negative images” and tape is the result of a plan to move forward, is progressing, although slow. Of time, with results that do not meet merchants and restaurateurs, who since the summer have been organized in new platforms abiertamentity hostile to Colau. The Consistory believes, however, that the figures they endorse. In 2017, it was requisitioned by 957.000 fakes, 100,000 more than in 2015. More pride show in the 130 contracts for vendors. “We’re getting out of the circle of the forgeries and legalize”, celebrates.
The image of Barcelona as a souk asilvestrado shares space in the criticisms with the strategy against the mass tourism of Colau. The moratorium that prohibits the construction of hotels has infuriated foreign investors, and has been used by the opposition to blame the mayor for the loss of “thousands of jobs”. A position that does not share Joan Gaspart, owner of the chain Husa and president of the consortium Turisme de Barcelona. Pin Barca in the flap, is reluctant to criticize the mayor. “What all is solved by changing to Colau? The answer is no. If there has been loss of tourists has been because we’d come from exceptional years and at some point we were going to lose,” he argues. What holds despite the fact that some data will play against the sector.
The consultant, Reputation International downgraded the city of the post 8 to the 15 in its barometer annual. In spite of the accusations against Colau, it was not only the insecurity and antisocial behaviour reducing the points to the city. It was “political instability” on account of the procés, the other great battle in Barcelona.
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