“Robbed In Barcelona” Is The News Today

A screenshot of the “Robbed In Barcelona” blog has appeared on the homepage of the mass-circulation “El Periódico de Catalunya” newspaper today. The newspaper enjoys a circulation of approximately 168,000 per day. Have a look at the article in question here.

The interest centres around a guide which was written to advise locals and visitors about who to watch out for when protecting yourself again robbery in Barcelona, where robberies of specific types commonly take place, how they happen, and what nationalities or ethnic groups specialise in them.

The guide – which the media has called “Maguilandia en Barcelona” or “Mangui” – first made an appearance on our 3,198-member Facebook group “I Know Someone Who Got Robbed In Barcelona” and this blog back in October 31st 2010, so the text has been in circulation for a while. It quickly started to appear elsewhere thereafter. We are unaware of the original source of the text, or who the author might be.

The screenshot below – in Spanish – displays text which discusses whether the information is being circulated amongst police authorities, or indeed if the content was first written by a policing authority. The police deny that it was written by them.

Robbed In Barcelona does not like racism, but we are of the opinion that pick-pocketing and bag-snatching in Barcelona is largely perpetrated by certain foreign groups who live in the city of Barcelona. Remember, this blog, this text, our Facebook group and our Twitter account (@RiBCN) are all written and maintained by people who are not Catalan, and not Spanish. We write in English because we write/speak it better than Catalan or Spanish, and also because we know we can be understood by people from other countries, those who visit this city and become victims, thousands of them. We’ve stated our rules and aims here.

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For reference, it would seem that our Spanish name is “Conozco a alguien a quien robaron en Barcelona”. It’s a pity El Periodico doesn’t link over to us, because we could really do with the extra traffic. We >only< had 4,900 visitors to this blog in May, it must have been a bad month for crime in Barcelona. Then again, it’s ALWAYS a bad month for crime in Barcelona!